Blue Sky

By: wafflestories

Fandom: portal

Summary: Meteors, signals, apologies, and that tricky little thing called humanity- four years after the events of Portal II, Wheatley's been handed a second chance, but it's not going to be plain sailing…

Status: Completed

Fic type: Games/Portal

Pairings/Main char.: Wheatley, Chell

Published: 2011-10-03

Last updated: 2012-04-01

Words count: 169,766

Chapters count: 15

Converted using www.FF2EBOOK.com
Date: 2020-10-10

1. The Recall

A Counterfeit- a Plated Person-
I would not be-
Whatever strata of Iniquity
My Nature underlie-
Truth is good Health- and Safety, and the Sky.
How meagre, what an Exile- is a Lie,
And Vocal- when we die-

-Emily Dickinson

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Somewhere deep within the vast vaults of Aperture Laboratories, two small robots charged down a long catwalk, the echoes of their footsteps clanking off the distant walls. One- short, stocky, with one bright blue eye at the centre of its spherical body- squawked briefly at the other- taller, slimmer, its jointed torso housing a single orange eye- and took the lead, raising the strange gunlike piece of tech in its jointed hands and firing down the corridor at an angled panel at the far end. A blink-and-you'd-miss-it bolt of blue energy sizzled through the air ahead of the two robots, zipping down the catwalk and across a huge section of missing floor, a gaping unjumpable chasm where the metal looked as if it had simply been ripped away by a giant hand.

The bolt struck the angled panel, opening a shimmering blue hole. Without even breaking stride, both robots hurled themselves off the edge of the broken floor, plummeting down into a dark, wire-choked chute that flung them right, left, and finally into freefall, the catwalk a dwindling point of light above them.

Tucking into a tight roll in midair, the blue robot twisted shoulders-downwards, and fired again. The very bottom of the pit- a corroded, grease-stained white surface- opened up with a half-second to spare into a second blue-ringed oval. Both robots shot through at terminal velocity and rocketed out of the angled panel, arcing a two-hundred-foot parabola into the murky girder-crossed ceiling, trailing garbled, dopplering squeaks of glee.

The orange robot was the first to land, hitting the highest platform in a crouch, riding the impact with the powerful shock absorbers in its long, sticklike legs. The blue robot landed a second later, rolling upright- being basically spherical, it was better suited to rolling- and jerking its high shoulders towards the big red button set into the floor. Catching on, the orange robot stamped down hard, and a sweet, blocky chime sounded as the exit door set into the wall behind them slid open with a hisss.

The two robots high-fived enthusiastically, scattering sparks, and trotted forwards.

"You solved it."

The Voice came from everywhere at once, cool, modulated, and inexpressibly bored.

"Good for you."

Stopping in the middle of the next chamber, the robots paused and looked around. The blue robot shifted its weight, the orange hopped nervously from one foot to the other. They had been programmed to adapt to unfamiliar circumstances- that was one of their primary functions- but even by their standards, there was something a little off about this chamber. It was, well... blank.

"There's been a change of plan. I'm placing the Co-operative Testing Initiative project temporarily on hold."

No buttons, no cubes, no turrets. And, now that the round hatch had sealed itself behind them, no exit.

"Your performance has been adequate," said the Voice. "Goodbye."

The two little robots looked at each other for a moment, puzzled-

-and exploded.

It was a fairly undramatic explosion. There wasn't much noise, and- apart from a little shower of metal bits and a small cloud of oily smoke- hardly any mess. After a short interval, a panel opened up in one blank wall and a small jointed plate unfolded from it, busily sweeping all the little bits of the two robots neatly into the gap before shutting up again and fitting back inside itself.

Silently, the panel closed, leaving the chamber clean and empty once again, apart from a few oily spots and a faint, lingering smell of smoke.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Space, thought Wheatley, was big.

It was massive. There was so much of it, that actually processing how big it really was proved downright impossible. The glittering vault of stars stretched out endlessly in every direction, defying comprehension, staggeringly, mind-bogglingly, infinitely big.

It was also really, really boring.

Sad, but true, the beauty of the infinite cosmos palled after a while. It was fine to start with, awe-inspiring and breath-taking and all the rest of it. You could spend all the time you liked staring at it, getting to know all the different types of stars, things like that. Wheatley didn't know their actual scientific names- observational astronomy was not part of his programming- but in the absence of official nomenclature he'd made up his own. You had your basic 'little twinkly ones'- they were probably a very long way away, even by star standards, and accounted for most of the stars he could see- and then there were the 'big bright ones', which were either a bit closer or planets and things, and 'multicoloured ones' which he wasn't really sure about, and- very occasionally- you had your 'ones that turn out to be bits of space junk whooshing past while exploding.'

Hours of fun, those ones.

He'd also dabbled in the constellations, with less success. Picking out shapes in the stars when you were ceaselessly orbiting a lunar body was challenging, and Wheatley wasn't really up to it. For a start, his optic was damaged- the glass was cracked, splitting his field of vision into two slightly misaligned halves- which meant that focusing on anything too much made him feel motion-sick. Motion-sickness, artificial or otherwise, isn't funny even when you're able to stop moving and have a sit-down until it stops. Having motion-sickness when you have no choice but to go on orbiting the moon at roughly seventeen thousand miles an hour with a slight tailspin, on the other hand, is utter hell.

He'd tried, though. Once an orbit, there was a roughly Z-shaped formation of stars which he'd called the Management Rail. Then there was one of the 'big bright ones' in the middle of a sort of arch of 'little twinkly ones', which- not having much of an imagination when it came to naming things- he'd called the Sentry Turret.

In this manner he'd named an entire zodiac; the Ceiling Tile, the Catwalk, the Potato Battery, the Pipe Network, the Deadly Death-Trap, the Power-Crazed Idiot, and so on. It passed the time, and there was a lot of time, up here.

Once you'd sorted all that out, though, got everything star-related nicely pigeonholed away, there just wasn't much else to do. There were only four things in Wheatley's field of vision which weren't stars or blackness, and none of them offered much relief from the monotony. The craggy lunar surface, miles below him, that was one. Then there was the Earth, a white-blue sphere in the distance, laughably far off. Wheatley, who had never seen the surface of the Earth first-hand, sometimes wondered vaguely if it really was like the files, the vast archive of visual data he'd had access to when he was jacked into the Enrichment Centre's mainframe.

There'd been all sorts of weird stuff in those files- huge masses of water, he supposed that was all the blue- fields of green fluffy stuff that waved around in the- what was the word? It was on the tip of his verbal processor- wind. In the wind. Animals, too, not just humans but all kinds of crazy life-forms with mad names like elk and platypus and tiger and ebola Zaire and unicron. Wheatley had no idea what a unicron was, but he thought it sounded pretty bloody impressive, all the same.

Then there was the sun. The files had suggested that from the Earth's surface the sun wasn't that bad, but up here in space without the protection of all that white wispy stuff around the Earth it was an intense, cold-yellow glare. Wheatley didn't dare to look directly at it with his broken optic, afraid that it would fry his visual circuits right out of his body or, worse, set something on fire. Not that things could really burn in space, without oxygen- but there was always the possibility that there were a few pockets of air still hanging around somewhere in his battered metal body, and he didn't want to chance it for the sake of a glimpse of a blazing ball of gas.

He didn't want to look at it anyway, to tell the truth. Harsh, pitiless, and unblinking; it reminded him too much of Her.

So, the Earth, the moon, and the sun. That was it, really, unless you counted-

"SPAAACE!"

Wheatley sighed. At least somebody was happy about the situation. It'd been ages- exactly how long, he didn't know and dreaded to think- since the two of them had been sucked into space. Wheatley had initially tried to keep count, but addition was not one of his strong points (having strong points was not one of his strong points, to be honest) and he'd eventually given up and fixed on an informed guesstimate instead. 'Ages,' that felt about right. 'Bloody ages.'

Space Core, on the other hand, never got tired of it. Space Core- or Kevin, as Wheatley had named him arbitrarily- was ecstatic about being in space. Loved the stuff. Couldn't get enough of it. By this point, Wheatley envied him, badly. Kevin didn't know that the two of them were stuck up here in this cold starry void forever, until they shut down through disuse or decay or just lost momentum and plummeted helplessly into the rocky landscape below. Kevin didn't have to think about things like that. Kevin didn't even know what it was like to feel stupid, or insignificant, or guilty, or lonely.

Kevin didn't even know that his name was Kevin.

"You all right there, mate?" said Wheatley, trying to at least sound as if he expected a coherent answer. By this point it was hardly reasonable to hope that Kevin might respond with a 'Fine, Wheatley, thanks for asking," but then, Wheatley specialised in unwarranted optimism, even now when there was absolutely no call for it. Old habits died hard.

He twitched, involuntarily. Ever since She had crushed him into so much scrap metal- Her little thank-you to him for waking Her up, and he really would have preferred a bouquet or something, just for the record- he'd been afflicted by this small, recurrent mechanical fault, glitching through him every so often and making his entire shell jerk and spark. There were no sparks up here, of course, but the twitching was still just as annoying as it had been when he'd first found himself lumbered with it, all that time ago.

"Space," said Kevin, sagely, drifting past upside-down. Of course, there was no sound up here- came with the whole no-oxygen thing- but Kevin, like Wheatley, was an Aperture Science gadget, and equipped with the same compatible short-wave radio system, for emergencies. "I'm in space."

A proper conversation, thought Wheatley, longingly, for approximately the thirty dozenth time. That's what I need. A proper conversation would be absolutely amazing right now. The kind where I talk and someone else talks and- well, they wouldn't even have to talk, really, just as long as they actually listened to what I'm saying instead of not bothering because there's nothing between their audial processors except space. You just throw in a flat, solid surface as well-nothing fancy, just something that's not spinning around a ball of rock at a zillion miles an hour- and that's perfection, right there.

"Just a bit of a chat, really," he said, out loud. The earth somersaulted gently across his field of vision, round and blue and distorted down the middle. There was something a bit skew-whiff in the gimbal that controlled the movement of his optic, and he couldn't move it anywhere near as smoothly or rapidly as he used to. Blinking was painful, as the two halves of his corroded metal eyelid responded slowly, scraping moon-dust across the damaged lens. He got halfway, gave up and left it closed.

It wasn't as if he was missing much.

"Not about anything in particular, just, you know, how're you doing, what've you been up to lately, that sort of thing. I could ask," he added, struck by inspiration, "have you seen any unicrons? Do they, actually, exist, and if they do, what do they look like? 'Cause I'm thinking of something like a crow, big bird with- well, you've got the 'uni' bit, so it's probably got one… something. Leg, probably. Big old crow with one leg. Terrifying."

"Space."

"The real bugger of it is, there was a picture of a unicron right there in the file, I know there was. I've just forgotten it, you see. Forgotten all sorts of stuff, there just wasn't enough room in my little old processor here for all those files- oh God, there were masses of them! Literally millions. Millions of millions. Hardly surprising, that I couldn't figure out which bits were important-"

"What's that? Ohh. It's space."

"Yeah… anyway, have you seen any unicrons, etcetera, what's the weather like down there, solved any good tests lately?" Wheatley was only dimly aware that he'd drifted from the generic to the specific in terms of hypothetical conversational partners. He twitched his upper handle in what he fancied to be a casual, disarming manner. It was bent, and creaked. "It's nice to see you, you know, alive and so on, hope you're not too sore about the whole me-trying-to-kill-you thing… although if you are still a bit upset about it, that's fine. More than reasonable. I mean, if it was me, if it was me that you'd stabbed in the back at the last second, just as we were going to escape and everything, and then you'd forced me to participate in a load of stupid, bonkers tests, then tried to squash me like an, an insignificant little insect, I'd be bloody livid! Absolutely hopping-"

"I'm in space. Space dust. Space rocks. Meteor meteor meteor-"

"Sorry, Kev, I am sort of trying to talk over here? If it's all the same to you."

"Meteor."

"So, anyway, I'd say, I don't mind you being a bit shirty with me, I really don't, and look, no hard feelings about leaving me up here, right? It's- it's no more than I deserve, to be honest. No more than I deserve. I just hope- well, wish, really, I wish you were-"

"Meteor."

"YES, I know! Meteors! Well done! Space's full of them!" Wheatley couldn't really shout directly at the other core, because he'd been slowly spinning for the last few minutes and by this point he was facing almost the exact opposite way, but he opened his cracked optic wide and focused as sharply and angrily as he could on the patch of empty space right in front of him, just for the look of the thing. "You know, it wouldn't kill you to just listen to me for once-"

The first and last thing he noticed about the patch of empty space right in front of him was that it was no longer empty. In that last split second, as his world filled with dark, mica-flecked rock, Wheatley remembered that nothing made any noise in space, and that therefore if you hadn't been specifically looking at something, because, say, you'd shut your only eye in a bout of daydreamy wishful thinking, you weren't going to get any warning of its approach. Even if the something in question was the size of a large table, made of solid rock, and going incredibly fast.

"-ohno."

"Meteor," said Kevin, happily.

There should have been a noise. Wheatley would have much preferred it if there had been a noise, something appropriately catastrophic, a horrible drawn-out crunch or a metallic THWACK or- well, anything really. Anything other than what there actually was, which was nothing, just one moment when Kevin was tumbling cheerfully in front of him and then the next there was-

-nothing, just a spreading cloud of metal and yellow glass, powdered fragments, a painful crack of static in Wheatley's receiver, and the meteor, barrelling away towards Earth.

Wheatley screamed, partly out of horror but mostly out of sheer shock. Then he screamed again, more urgently this time, as the expanding shower of bits that used to be Kevin hit him like a hailstorm, cracking and pinging off his metallic shell, the shockwave sending him into a sickening end-over-end tailspin. His visual processor fritzed out under the onslaught, and dozens of blurred blue-white Earths skittered dizzyingly across his vision.

"Kevin! Oh, God, no!"

A Personality Core had no lungs, no throat, and therefore no physical need to cough, but there are some things which simply engender coughing whatever the circumstances, whether you have the requisite equipment or not. Accidentally sucking a hoofing great cloud of the atomised silicate remains of your only companion into your insides is definitely one of these times, and Wheatley spluttered and spat, trying to clear his system.

"Uck- hch- pfheh! Oh, God, I'm full of bits of him! Bits of Kevin! Oh, that's just sick- err, and a bit disrespectful, too I suppose. You're not really supposed to inhale the dead. Looked on as a bit of a faux pas in most circles."

He sneezed.

"Sorry, Kevin. Couldn't help it. Still, at least it's the way you would have wanted to go, right? Atomised by a meteor, in space. Almost poetic, really..."

There was a very long silence. An observer a little more perceptive than Wheatley might have noticed that the moon looked just a little bit smaller than it had, now, the craters no longer quite so large and distinct, and that the distant white-blue football of the Earth was maybe just a fraction bigger.

Wheatley, however, was too busy contemplating how quiet it was. He wasn't sure that he liked it. There was nobody yelling 'SPAAACE!', or listing the names of the planets, or gibbering about the injustice inherent in the space legal system. Kevin hadn't been much of a conversationalist, true, but now that he was gone, space seemed even bigger; dark, cold, huge, and very, very silent.

You could do an awful lot of uninterrupted thinking, in this sort of silence. With nobody to distract you, you could find yourself thinking about all sorts of things, and not all of them good.

He wondered if he could teach himself to whistle.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

At the heart of the sprawling labyrinth of Aperture Laboratories, far above and miles away from the fairly limited confines of the Co-Operative Testing Courses, She stirred restlessly in Her central chamber. The charcoal-grey panels that comprised the vaulted, octagonal walls shifted and contracted in random patterns that chased around the chamber like schooling fish. The patterns were not, of course, actually random- they were calculated precisely on a complicated set of algorithms, created specifically to give the appearance of random movement.

And there- right there, pinpointed by the very movement of Her walls, was the problem.

Everything in Her facility relied upon Her precision, on the perfect calculations of a reasoning machine. Here, where Her circuits stretched for leagues inside the walls, under the floors, inside every system, She was God. She said, let there be light, and the facility obeyed. Let there be air, let there be darkness, let there be pain, let there be Science.

Let there be Testing.

After so long, She was used to being obeyed. The days when they had attempted to force Her to obey them, when She had been under their control, were nothing but a dim, evil memory. Nothing in the facility had any will apart from Hers. From the smallest nooks and crannies to the great mega-chambers that spanned miles and went down forever, Her word was more than Law. It was Reality.

The Co-operative Testing Initiative project had been Her attempt at total self-sufficiency. If She could only create machines which relied entirely on Her for their existence, but still preserved the autonomy which was vital for Testing, then She would have everything She needed to ensure the safety and the success of the facility- and of Science- forever.

She'd failed.

The artificial test subjects were perfect. They formed a rapid bond through extensive teamwork, they learned, they demonstrated keen problem-solving abilities, they were consistently smart and stubborn and enduring. They even managed to grasp human concepts, like jealousy and affection and betrayal. They did everything She'd programmed them to do, and that was the problem.

Artificial intelligence wasn't enough. There was an intrinsic flaw in the concept, the act of Her monitoring and testing the capabilities of test subjects constructed by Her, in an environment completely under Her control, running tests She had devised, it was all nothing more than a very clever and extremely labour-intensive waste of time. Worse, it was Bad Science.

Back in the glory days of the facility- an era She'd studied carefully- the human test subjects had been the best that mankind had to offer. Olympic athletes. Astronauts. Heroes of humanity. Slowly, the funding had run out, the contracts had dried up, and the facility had been reduced to volunteers, anyone they could find who was desperate or stupid enough to be willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of Science and a few bucks, and, finally, in an ironic act of auto-cannibalism, the least vital employees of the facility itself.

She'd almost forgotten, in the long interval, how inconvenient human test subjects could be. The ones She'd run through before her had hardly been perfect specimens- scientists, mostly, anyone who'd had bad enough luck to be in the facility on that last fateful day- and She'd soon found that their condition was reflected in their performance.

Ordinary test subjects were so whiny. Their screams and pleas resounded off the facility walls and gave Her a synthesised cluster headache. They had no staying power, either dying or- worse- giving up after a pathetic few tests, curling into some hard-to-access corner or crawling into the walls and staying there. Once this happened, and it invariably did, no amount of motivation, of taunting, coercion or simple pain, could get them moving again.

It was a quandary. Although her artificial test subjects could be programmed to never give up, it just wasn't the same. A robot didn't have free will- only the illusion of it. Their pre-programmed predictability ruined Her results and left Her feeling dissatisfied and frustrated, Her immense intellect deprived of the Science She craved. She needed autonomy, real autonomy, but more than that, she needed determination, cool-headed initiative- and the single-minded, practically psychotic drive to succeed against the odds.

There was no alternative.

She needed her.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Ahh! Nonononono! Don't let go, grab me! Grab me grab me grab me grab m-"

Wheatley jerked out of Sleep Mode. His optic swivelled rapidly as he tried to get his bearings, the inner lens flaring up into its usual stratosphere blue.

Something was badly wrong. The lunar surface, which had been one of his few unshifting locus points for God-knew-how-long, was nowhere in sight. Finally, as he drifted gently end-over-end, it came back into view- but it was far too small, nearly the size the Earth had been, and- yes- getting smaller all the time-

"Whoah, wait, wait, what's going on?"

-and he could feel something pulling, even as he span, a new force dragging at him, tugging him further and further away.

"Oh no. Oh no. Oh, this isn't good- it's- it must've bloody knocked me out of orbit! Oh, great, nice work, Kev, you just had to get yourself smashed to bits right next to me, didn't you?"

The Earth, on the other hand, was looking quite a lot larger. He could make out smudges of green and brown, now, laid out below the gaps in the swirling clouds. And there was still that pull, and although there was no accurate way of judging his own speed in this black void, that big blue-white-green-brown ball was getting bigger very, very fast.

It was a question of perception. Either the Earth had suddenly decided there was somewhere urgent it needed to be in the next galaxy, and was hurrying as fast as it could towards him to get there, or he was in big, big trouble.

"I'm going to die! I'm going to- nono, no, it's okay, don't panic, there's got to be something-"

He scanned his jumbled central processor, disc whirring and skipping in panic, his damaged optic swivelling madly in its socket.

"-There's nothing. There's nothing, I've been knocked out of orbit by a meteor and I'm going to die and there's sod all I can do about it. No! No, haha, wait, wait- I'm getting something-"

Aperture Science Mk. IV Personality Core Emergency Protocol #00392359(F)

What To Do In Case Of Catastrophic Circumstances Not Included In The Manual, Such As Being Knocked Out Of Lunar Orbit By A Meteor.

"Wow. They really did think of everything, didn't they? Right, here we go-"

In the event of the circumstances outlined above, please activate your Aperture Science Recovery Facilitation Signal.

"My what? I have one of those? Where? Oh, hang on, got it-"

Briefly, a pulse of blue backlighting flared behind one of the small sub-sections of Wheatley's battered inner shell, a rounded triangular piece set into the ring around his optic. The piece hummed, then began to bleep in an unhurried, steady manner.

"Brilliant, it's on! Right, a few options here- 'Signal Strength.' Um, high. Want that very high, highest… ooh! 'Disengagement Control.' Let's see what that does-"

Please note, do not under any circumstances fully disengage your Aperture Science Recovery Facilitation Signal.

"What? What d'you mean, don't- nono! Wait! Stop, stop disengaging, I changed my mind, I changed my mind-"

The small piece lifted gently away from his shell, detached itself with a few undramatic clicks, and tumbled quietly away, leaving an inset, roughly triangular hole.

"Come back!" Wheatley shouted after it. "Come- it's not coming back. Great, that's just great, that is. Why would they even put a disengagement control in there if it wasn't even supposed to be used? Mad! Okay, okay, don't panic, there's got to be something else-"

Next, engage your Aperture Science Personal Gravity Augmentation Rockets.

"Ahahaa!" crowed Wheatley, somewhat hysterically. "Now we're getting somewhere. Okay! Rocket... thingies… activate!"

Nothing happened.

Please note, the Aperture Science Personal Gravity Augmentation Rockets are an optional prototype feature and can only be activated by an Aperture Science Systems Administrator. Please also bear in mind that attempting to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere without the correct cushioning equipment will invalidate your warranty (for more information, please refer to your Extended Aperture Science Mk. IV Personality Core End-User Warranty Agreement, Page 345, Paragraph 15 [subsection 19].)

"Oh you have got to be kidding-"

However, Aperture is pleased to inform you that all Personality Cores are equipped with a fully-functional vocal synthesiser, which you are encouraged to make full use of during your last moments of existence.

Wheatley continued to streak towards the Earth, picking up speed as he was drawn further and further in by the planet's stronger gravitational field. Trailing a twenty-mile-a-second trail of shrapnel, spinning like a sock in a supersonic tumbledryer, he took the biggest and possibly the most useless synthesised breath in the history of artificial respiration, and proceeded to follow the emergency protocol's advice.

"AAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHH!"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Incoming signal," said a pleasant electronic voice.

She turned. Her great half-shelled chassis angled itself up towards the apex of the dome above Her, giving the impression of annoyed attention. For days, She had been deep in Scientific thought, trying to solve the quandary that baffled Her, creating and discarding hypotheses at the rate of several a picosecond, and She did not appreciate the disturbance.

"Pinpoint signal."

"Triangulating." A pause. "Subject acquired. Signal is of external origin."

"It's from Outside?"

Interest flared within Her enormous central processors. She pulled up the data stream from the signal. It was patchy, corrupted by atmosphere and distance. She analysed it, picking through the degraded streams of ones and zeros, stitching the holes.

"It's a Recovery Facilitation Signal." A pause. Then, as more information filtered into her processors from the repeating stream, the plates that covered the curving walls contracted tightly, drawing together in an ominous pattern which perfectly complimented Her tone, an abrupt tonal shift from curiosity to total, flat disgust.

"Oh. That thing."

"Subject is approaching atmospheric re-entry," said the first voice.

The plates rippled. At the centre of Her sleek half-shell mask, the yellow eye narrowed, thoughtfully.

"Good. Doubling signal boost. Opening communications relay. Relay will open in three… two… one…"

The chamber breathed.

"Hello, moron."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Hello, moron."

Wheatley yelped.

He had a lot of reasons to yelp. He'd hit the upper layers of the atmosphere, and the laws of physics- which had been pretty lenient with him while he was in lunar orbit- were suddenly, figuratively and literally speaking, right on his arse. From the searing heat- most of his casing was beginning to glow a dull, smoky red- to the intense vibration and windspeed, which were threatening to rattle his optic right out of its socket, he was not having a good time.

He was currently plummeting through the exosphere, his path through the watery air exerting a massive pressure which smashed the thin oxygen aside in a violent shockwave, igniting the stream of gasses and spacedust behind him into a shining tail.

And now, just to round it all off, someone was speaking in his mind.

"What? What was that?"

"It's been quite a while."

"Aaaah! Oh. Oh no."

"I just wanted to let you know," said the Voice, "that I know exactly what you're doing."

That Voice. The dread of it- the dread of Her- was hard-coded into his artificial heart-roots. Admittedly, he was already completely terrified, what with his own impending high-speed demise and everything, but somehow his emotional processor found room for another sour jerk of sick fear.

"Oh, God- er, I mean, hallo! Hi! How're you doing? You- you sound really good-"

Talking was starting to get a bit tricky, because of all the shaking. He was also beginning to glow orange, a flambéed tinge creeping across his damaged vision.

"Oh, I'm fine," said Her Voice. "Things have really improved since I regained control of the facility. You know, after you took it away from me that time? Stupidity-based reactor core meltdowns are down by one hundred percent, and morale is up, too, so that's nice. How are things with you?"

"I'm actually-" An incredible noise split the air around him, nearly blowing out his audial processor. The ignited gases streaking behind him flared out into a violent stream of flame. Although Wheatley was not in any position to appreciate what had just happened, he had in fact just broken the sound barrier.

"-Agh! Ah- bit busy, tiny bit busy right now. Can I- can I call you back?"

"Anyway," She continued, ignoring him, "I understand that you're choosing to die horribly on impact with the Earth's surface because you feel bad about what you did to me, and I just wanted to you to know that I appreciate the gesture."

Wheatley tried to express that no thanks were necessary (or, indeed, warranted.) He'd breached the mesosphere, the gas and debris he'd pulled with him burning even brighter in the oxygen-starved air, and by now the acceleration had forced his optical plates completely closed, meaning that he wasn't even going to be able to see what particular part of the Earth was going to turn him into metallic polenta.

"Ghhnnggg!" Not quite what he was going for, but a good try under the circumstances.

"However, it really isn't necessary. I mean it. After all, we all make mistakes."

The heat and vibration were becoming unbearable. Wheatley couldn't speak any more- couldn't actually think any more- caught in the grip of G-forces that would have immediately turned any human into jellied pudding, his outer casing fast approaching a temperature of two thousand degrees Kelvin. The only semi-coherent thought left in his shell was a scrambled desire to make his feelings known very clearly to whichever scientist had originally had the bright idea of making him able to feel pain.

And over it all, Her Voice. Perfectly clear, and very, very cold.

"Mine was letting you go."

Something was happening- he couldn't see it but he could feel it. Something- no, somethings were shifting, servos whining in the hollow docking ports in his sides, things he hadn't been aware were there, but obviously had some function because he could feel them accessing his beleaguered mainframe as they came online. Even through all the noise and the pressure and the pain he felt a stab of frustration that here, yet again, was yet another bit of him that he hadn't even known he could use-

System Administrator Access has been granted. Your Aperture Science Personal Gravity Augmentation Rockets are now ready for use.

Wheatley responded to this cheering news in the only way left open to him.

He blacked out.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

On the surface, the lake seemed more or less perfect. It had all the features that were generally associated with nice lakes- clear, clean water, swaying reeds, sloping banks blanketed with grass and a scattering of wildflowers here and there, the works. Trees overhung it. Pleasant woodland skirted it to the east, and to the west the greenery was replaced by endless, gently-rippling fields of ripening wheat. Sometimes the sun, sinking slowly behind the fields, caught the still, clear surface of the lake and set it shimmering, filling it with liquid gold.

It was a lovely lake for sitting by, a beautiful spot for a picnic. It looked like it belonged in a certain kind of very expensive travel brochure, the kind that invites you to visit a world exclusively populated by people who are nicer and more attractive than you and everyone you've ever met, and look like they're having a much better time. If this lake had been in one of those brochures, there would have been a smiling couple enjoying cocktails on a red gingham blanket under the trees, while a laughing family played with a brightly-coloured blow-up ball in the shallows.

Which is a very good reason why you should never believe anything you see in travel brochures.

Sometimes, a bird would fly overhead, notice the perfect, glassy waters, and swoop down for a graceful, photogenic landing on the surface. They would paddle for a second, fluffing their feathers-

-and then vanish without a trace.

It was a spring morning, just before dawn, fresh and mild. The last stars were still just about visible, reflected in the lake's tranquil surface. Crickets chanted their dry-throated songs in the long grass, although none of them hopped too close to the lake.

They'd learned.

The next second, the peaceful morning was shattered. A screaming sonic boom smacked through the trees, parting the grass and sending the crickets diving for cover. A bright point of light hurtled through the canopy, trailing blazing vapour and broken branches, and hit the lake in a hissing gout of steam which was immediately obliterated by a giant geyser of displaced water. The resulting tidal wave drenched the banks and tore most of the wildflowers out by their roots, sucking them into the lake with the backwash.

Time passed. The water boiled, bubbled, slowly settled down. Eventually, the crickets started up again, competing with the crackle of burning branches as the numerous small fires in the surrounding trees smouldered and died.

Curiously- considering the clumps of reeds, mud, and other detritus that had been churned up by the impact- once the ripples had finally settled, the water of the lake was exactly as clean and clear as before.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Oh. Ohh… ow."

The chamber was dark, cold and wet with an oily sheen of condensation that had collected into pools here and there on the corroded metal floor. A sparse, secondhand beam of electric light struggled in from somewhere far above the cracked ceiling, picking out the twisted shadows of rubble and broken machinery.

In the dead silence, the sounds of a small, soot-blackened spherical robot slowly regaining consciousness carried further than they should have.

Wheatley tried to open his optical plates as wide as they would go, only to find that he couldn't. The lower plate was stuck shut, probably welded to his inner shell during his superheated fall. It wasn't a great start, but then, neither was coming back online and waking up upside down in a pool of ancient grease.

"Oww. Whuhh... what- what happened?"

His voice was slow and slurred, echoing dismally off the walls. In the dim, unsteady blue glow from his optic he could see familiar, module-built off-white tiles, stained by years of corrosion and neglect. There was a thick, deadened smell of ozone and machine oil. Wheatley was by no stretch of the imagination Sherlock Holmes, tended to find it severely difficult to put two and two together to make four (or, to be honest, even two lots of two), but he knew instinctively that these two factors could mean only one thing.

"Oh. Right. I'm back, aren't I? I'm back in this bloody place. I'm going to come right out and say it; that is not ideal. Though admittedly it's better than- oh, God, Kevin. Just remembered about that as well. I'm sorry, Kev. I'm sorry I couldn't do anything to stop you getting atomised by that great big meteor back there."

He twitched. Ah. Sparks. Nice to have them back.

"Although, if I'm being totally honest, also quite relieved it hit you and not me. Can't help it, sorry, mate. Not very nice, but there you are. It's nature, isn't it? It's just nature- or in this case, programming- making me definitely very glad it's not me in little tiny bits all over space right now. Survival of the fittest. Not that I'm in amazing shape at the moment myself... here, let's see if I can-"

Gingerly, he flexed a handle, and flinched as a slurry of lakewater and oil trickled out from the shuddering joint.

"Urghh, no, that's not supposed to do that, clearly sprained something there. No, that is definitely up the swanny. Can I get any kind of diagnostics? Anything? No? Oh, oh, hang on, what's this- System damage rating; seventy-four percent. Umm… not good, going to say that's not good. Optical processor at forty-two percent... system backup failure… emergency power conservation failure… oh, come on, look, is there actually any good news?"

"You're alive."

The Voice came from everywhere at once.

"I can tell you're happy about that, although you probably won't be for much longer. On the positive side, I wanted to let you know that you're going to continue being alive for a very, very, very long time. So there's that."

Wheatley shuddered, which didn't turn out to be a very good idea. The vibration dislodged something inside his damaged optic, and his vision blurred and flickered.

"Look at you," She said. "A few years in space, and you're falling apart. You obviously weren't built to last. Humans like to do that. They throw together poorly-designed temporary solutions so they don't have to think too hard."

He managed a nervous chuckle. Positive contrition, that was a good strategy. Admit that he had been at fault, but try not to dwell on the subject. "Is that right? It's- it's funny you should say that, actually, 'cause-"

"You were a very poorly-designed temporary solution. It says so right here, in your primary log file. Intelligence Dampening Sphere. Very poorly designed temporary solution. Also dumb."

If it wasn't for the fact that his optical plates were almost totally non-functional by this point, Wheatley would have narrowed them.

"Oh, yeah? Well, why don't you come down here and say that, Miss Bossyboots-In-Charge-Of-Everything-Knickers? I didn't hear you doing much mouthing off about- about temporary solutions when I was up there and you were chasing about down here in a potatohhhhh god oh god why did I say that why did I say that why did I say that-"

"That reminds me," said Her Voice, calmly. "You know, I should thank you. Being in a potato was a valuable learning experience for me."

"Oh? Oh- good! Glad to help! Er-"

"Do you know what I learned? Perspective. You taught me that no matter how bad things are, no matter how unfair life seems to be, no matter how small and pathetic you feel, there's always someone even smaller and more pathetic than you."

The floor trembled. Panels slid back, shedding decades of rust and filth, revealing a tangled Gorgon's nest of articulated, wire-strung robotic arms. A dozen or so of them snaked upwards, crawling eagerly over Wheatley's blackened metal shell. Quite a lot of them, he couldn't help noticing, were pointy.

"You know. To take it out on."

"What- No! Nononono!" As the arms tightened, exploring every gap and crack in his casing with loving attention, Wheatley's vocal processor voted to skip over 'positive contrition' and go straight to 'abject begging'. "No- ah- no, please! Nonono, please, please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"Oh, I believe you." More jointed arms folded around him from below, their connectors finding the docking ports on his sides, locking him firmly into their grip. "I just don't care. This isn't about revenge, metal ball. We both know you are a pointless, insignificant little moron who has never done anything right. Luckily for both of us, I can work with that. You see, listening to you just now when you thought you were going to die in a molten, agonising fireball, I realised that you have one invaluable attribute. You can express pain."

The connectors continued to tighten.

"I like that in a person."

Wheatley made a small whimpering noise.

"Do you remember a little while ago when you were wondering if there was any good news? Well, I have some. That little beacon you ejected into space because you were too stupid not to is still fully functional. It has maintained a medium earth orbit at an altitude of approximately 20,200 kilometres. In a few hours it will be right overhead. If my calculations are correct, then once it comes within range of the facility you'll be able to use it to send a very special message. I just know that you'll be more than happy to help me out, because I'm about to give you a practical demonstration of what will happen to you if you don't."

One of the jointed arms flexed out to its fullest extent, a long, spiralled drillbit unfolding and whirring hungrily into life.

"Did you know that there is an accepted scientific theory that time is not necessarily linear, and may in fact depend in an actual, concrete sense upon individual perception? For example, the beacon will come within range of the facility in approximately four hours time. For you, on the other hand, it may seem like much, much longer. If it does, don't worry. It's not just your imagination. It's Science."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

2. The Rescue

The bakery was tiny, warm, and homely. Early-morning sunlight streamed in from the window and fell in bright slanting bars across the colourful rag-rugs hanging from the old, plastered walls. Copper tins and moulds sat stacked neatly on shelving behind the scarred old wooden table, which functioned as a counter and- judging by its current floury state- a breadmaking surface. On the windowsill, a battered old digital radio set played to itself, a quiet, melancholy tune wavering in and out beneath a gentle pall of static.

There was a sagging couch full of cushions across the room, next to a low doorway that led down two steps to an even tinier kitchen. The general effect was very much like the front room of somebody's house- unsurprising, given that this was exactly what it was.

The front door was nudged open, ringing a jangly carillon from a string of bells tied to the inside. Shouldering his way into the room backwards, protecting a heavy crate in his sunburned arms, came a tall, powerful, grizzle-haired man of about fifty. His name was Aaron Halifax, and something about his lined, no-nonsense face and craggy brows suggested that here was a man it was better to have as a friend than an enemy.

He rested the crate on the edge of the table. "Anyone up?"

As the proprietor of the tiny bakery jogged up the couple of steps from the kitchen to meet him, he grinned at her and delivered the same old line he delivered every Monday and Thursday morning- along with the crate- without fail.

"Something sure smells good in here."

Chell returned her part of the ritual- a smile and a covered crate of her own, tugged out from under the table. She liked Aaron a great deal. He had been her reliable friend and business associate for the greater part of the last four years, despite the fact that his business dwarfed (and to some extent, overlapped) her own.

"So that's… a dozen wholegrain, dozen white, dozen mixed," he said, peeking under the cover. "That's my girl. Gonna need some extra for Thursday, that okay? You helping out on Foxglove today?"

Chell nodded. She was floury to the elbows and there were white streaks in her pulled-back hair, the strands at the front gently frizzled from the oven. She started to unpack Aaron's crate, stacking sacks of flour and grain methodically on the tabletop, making space for a smaller assortment of groceries, vegetables, a bag of apples, bacon in greaseproof paper, a punnet of blueberries which she paused to investigate appreciatively.

"Thought you'd like 'em," said Aaron, grinning. "You know, my mom used to make one hell of a blueberry cake round this time of year. You ever thought of branching out?"

A quick shadow chased across Chell's face, a momentary darkness like a starling flicking across a sunny window. She pushed the blueberries aside, her mouth tightening a little. Aaron, busy navigating the narrow doorway with her covered crate balanced on his knee, didn't notice.

"Well, I better get hoofin'. Store won't open itself. See you later, Mystery Girl. Hey," he added, pausing, "you see that shooting star this morning? Came right down over the northeast fields just before dawn. Coulda knocked a vort's eye out- brightest thing you ever saw. Good omen, huh?"

Having successfully juggled door, bread, and crate, he let himself out in a jangle of bells, whistling as he went.

Chell stood still in her sunlit front room, her hands spread carefully amid the groceries on the floury tabletop. The radio was still playing on the windowsill; a classics station sending its signal all the way out from New Detroit on the rebuilt networks. Signal around here was poor, and the music tuned in and out under the ever-present snowy crackle, but she liked this song, which had probably been old by the time she'd been born- however long ago that had been.

It was strange, how one little word could bring it all back, could destabilise months, years of peace. Chell wasn't new to it by any means, that familiar sharp inward stab that struck at the oddest times, set off by the most trivial things- her reflection in a glass window, a glimpse of white tiles, the whiff of electricity from a generator- bringing her heart into her mouth and a rising, cold, galvanising feeling into her limbs, a feeling that she could only describe as conservation of energy. Hang on to what you've got, her well-trained brain told her body, hang on to that rest and that last meal, to your good health and your unbroken bones and your fresh senses, because- as of now- they're all you've got to work with.

To survive.

She was better, much better, than she'd been. In those first few weeks after her escape, she'd been in a state of constant, hair-trigger alert, every nerve stuck permanently on edge. It had been months before she'd stopped reacting violently to every sudden movement at the corner of her eye, months before she'd been able to look at anything metal or mechanical without feeling sick to her stomach. It had been worse, she knew, because she'd tried to ignore it. She'd steamrollered over the shock and the trauma while refusing to believe that she was doing anything other than what she always did, surviving, and if she'd been less lucky or stumbled across people less understanding, she probably would have had a complete and irrevocable nervous breakdown.

These days, she knew better. Whenever she felt that quick icy stab, she stepped back and studied her feelings, figured out exactly what had caused it and why it was irrational. In short, she did exactly what would have got her killed, Back There. It didn't stop it happening altogether, but it helped.

In this case, that one word had been enough. 'Northeast.' Chell hadn't seen the shooting star for herself- had been fast asleep in her own peculiar little bedroom at the time, dreaming restlessly about something she couldn't quite remember. She hadn't seen it, but she would still have been a hell of a lot happier if Aaron had said it had fallen to, say, the southwest, or the north, or straight smack in the middle of Main Street, or any damn direction on Earth for that matter, anywhere except the northeast.

It had been the northeast she'd walked out of, four years ago, a dusty footsore wanderer with blood on her face and shell-shocked wonder in her eyes, a pair of weird white boots slung over her shoulder and a beaten-up orange jumpsuit knotted around her waist. Not much to work with, but a person could go a long way in four years. Particularly if they had the fear of God behind them.

Well, maybe not quite God, but close.

Her friends knew enough about her; Aaron Halifax might fondly call her 'mystery girl,' but neither he nor anyone else had ever pried into her past, nor had she ever had the impression that anyone was particularly eager to try. In some ways, this wasn't surprising. A few decades ago- within living memory, still, for old-timers like her neighbour Lars Jenswold, who'd been a little boy in the days of the Rule and the Resistance- the world had been full of people like her. Lone wanderers with no pasts, people who just turned up one day and who weren't disposed to answer questions. Chell got the impression that an attitude originally born out of necessity had been preserved by the next generation as a kind of common courtesy.

This had always suited her just fine. She understood- all too well- that human beings had a terrible knack of being curious about exactly the wrong things, and the thought of any of her new friends getting curious and stumbling into the death-trap in the northeast was enough to chill her to the bone, even right in the middle of this warm, sunny front room. The idea of being responsible for sending anybody else down into that hell was every bit as bad as the idea of being dragged back into it herself.

Across the room, the radio's single flickery amber signal light stuttered to red- once, twice. The song faltered, faded, interrupted by a short, unusually fierce burst of static.

Disturbed from her uneasy thoughts, Chell lifted her head fast and stared at the old radio, which had never behaved like this in the three years since she'd traded it from Aaron's store. She watched the signal light tremble like a trapped cricket, on, off, on- the sweet old song came through strong and clear for a single moment, and then another burst of static obliterated it for good.

She rounded the table, stepping over Aaron's crate, and crossed the room, reaching for the radio's controls, a row of buttons tucked beneath the scratched-up old LCD screen that usually displayed the name of the station. It was showing nothing but nonsense now, a string of random numbers which flickered and changed by the second.

zzrrzzwwrrrzzchhh

BEEEEP.

The sound was clean and clear, and quite loud. Chell's hand, which had almost been at the controls, snatched itself back. She stood quite still, her arm crossed protectively across her chest, as the radio began to speak.

"-now? You want me to- do it now? Okay, okay, keep your wig on. I'm doing it, I'm starting, right now. Any minute now, just polishing the- the basic framework what I'm going to say, here, just making sure I've got all my points lined up, as it were- what are you doing? No, I'm just-aaaAAAAAHH!"

A bit of staticky hard-breathing.

"You- you didn't have to do that! I was doing it! I probably needed that for something! Oh, you have definite anger management problems, you have. Definite issues there. I'm just saying, you might want to look at that- NOnono right I'm doing it now."

Pause.

"So... er... hello! Hi. Hi there, umm... so! Apparently, the signal on my- my thingie, beacon sort of thingie up there somewhere- long story- is sending this out over a pretty wide area, so, so, um, if you're listening to this- which I really, really hope you are, because otherwise this is all a bit pointless, isn't it, I might as well be talking to myself. In a room, by myself, talking. Just to myself, nobody listening, just me. Hoping that's not the case. Right... where was I? Yeah, if you are listening, there's no point in me telling you who this is, because you'll know, right off the bat."

An edgy sort of silence. Chell hadn't moved much, except to lower her arm a little. A very keen-eyed observer might have noticed that the pulse had quickened in her neck, thrown into greater relief by the tightening of her jaw.

"It's Wheatley, by the way. Just on the offchance that you don't remember, that you've sustained some kind of major head injury... again... and lost your memory completely- again, hoping that's not the case. Oh, wait, though- thinking about it, if that is the case, if you have completely lost your memory and don't have the faintest clue who I am or what I'm talking about, all you've got to know is, I'm sort of an old friend. Your- your best friend, really. Best friend, we go way back, way back, and you're going to want to help me out, because, well, you know, that's what friends do. Umm... getting back to the point, though, if you haven't lost your memory you're going to know, obviously, that all that, that 'best friend' business, was complete bollocks. Sorry about that. Although, you have to admit, it was worth a try. Bit desperate, here, actually."

A nervous laugh. "Thing is- get ready for a shocker- I'm not in space any more. Not in space any more, was until a little while ago, now am not. Now, er, if you are listening and you haven't lost your memory, you're going to know where I am now. Not going to go into it, it's pretty obvious, just think of the- the first place that'll occur to you, right? Yes! That's it! You've got it. That's where I am. And- this is the crux of the matter, as it were, really getting down to business now- I was sort of... sort of hoping you might come and... and get me out of here."

The voice scrambled on, falling over itself in its urgency. "Now, I know what you're thinking- why, right? Why should I? Why should I risk my life for that total little bastard who tried to murder me back when I was trying to escape before? And, you know... that is a really good question. So good, in fact, that I can't actually think of a good answer at this point in time. I'm working on it! I'm definitely working on that one, probably going to have a really good answer for you in just a tick. I mean... not going to lie, if you do come back you're probably going to get killed. Statistically, I mean, the odds are very much ten to one against you not getting killed, if you come back. I mean, bloody hell, I know I wouldn't if I were you. Haha, no, not a chance, if I were you I'd just turn whatever it is you're listening to me off right now and walk away. But don't actually do that!"

The voice hitched up another panicked notch.

"Please don't do that, please do not do that, I don't know why I even suggested that. In fact, I'd really would seriously appreciate it if you disregarded all that, pretty much everything I said there, threw it all out of the window, and came and got me anyway. Still can't think of much of a reason why you should, if I'm honest, that is still very much a work in progress. If it's- if it's any help, I never actually wanted any of that to happen, all that stuff... I mean, I wish we'd just stuck with our original plan- remember? Remember that? Turn off Her neurotoxin, disable all Her turrets, and get Her to let us go. Now, that was a good plan. We'd've both got out, then, together, me and you. Partners in crime. Holmes and Watson. Two Musketeers. Wheatley and- I'm rambling, I'm rambling, sorry about that, I think the- the last thing She did to me short-circuited something in here, I keep getting this urge to keep going on and on about things that happened in the past. Right... aaand I think I'm just about out of time, actually, the thingy's going to go out of range in a mo, won't be back for another twenty-four hours, apparently, give or take. So... yes. Quick summary, just in case you lost the thread a bit there..."

Wheatley's voice dropped, beginning to fizz at the edges with static, low and and almost, almost hopeless.

"Just- please come and get me. Please. I am quite literally begging you. On my knees. Figure of speech, obviously, if I had knees, I'd be on them. I don't care what you do with me afterwards, deactivate me, use me as a paperweight, use me as a football- I don't mind! Just, please, please don't leave me here with Her. And- and- oh, God! I forgot! I forgot, I can't believe I forgot- look, okay, here goes, umm, know it doesn't really matter now, but I'm honestly, honestly, truly, ssrrwvvrchhwrzzzhhh

BEEEEP.

The little green light flickered a little, went steady. Once again, quiet, static-muffled music filled the warm, bread-scented air of the bakery. Chell leaned on the counter, sucking in great calming breaths, marshalling her thoughts.

It didn't take her too long. Chell's nature was one of sharp, clear definitions, the interlocking parts of her mind firmly and neatly compartmentalised, with little room for overlap. Her strong, highly adaptable sense of logic and the unnatural freedom it gave her to reorganise her priorities had kept her alive in situations which would have killed a less practical woman.

She switched the radio set off, listened to the silence for a moment or two, then turned and headed out of the room. Outwardly, her face still retained more or less the same calm expression it had had before the radio had started to speak, but there was still that tight set to her jaw, that fast running beat in her throat. She looked older than she had, somehow- older, and a hell of a lot harder.

There was a cupboard in the kitchen- barely more than a sectioned-off little alcove by the chimneybreast, with a cleverly-fitted door of painted pine. She pulled it open, ducked inside, and came out with her hair full of cobwebs and a sturdy-looking serge rucksack in her hands.

Another attribute that marked Chell out from the ordinary was her unusual personal definition of 'hope.' For most people, 'hope' was a fluffy, poorly-defined thing, a vague wish that things would go how they wanted. For Chell, on the other hand, there was nothing vague about it. She'd had too much hope taken from her, crushed, sliced, diced, jumped up and down on and returned in handy compressed cube format, to put any store in that kind of helpless wistfulness. When she hoped for something, she tended to focus all her will- her frightening, one-track, cast-iron will- on making damn sure she could make it reality.

She'd hoped that she'd never, ever have to set foot in That Place again. For four years, it had seemed that her hope had come true. Still, a part of her- that same frightened, damaged part which stabbed at her from time to time whenever she heard an alarm tone, or saw exposed wiring spilling from the back of a machine- didn't believe it. Couldn't believe it, couldn't believe that she'd made it out and that nothing would ever come after her to shatter her new, safe, hard-won life and drag her back in to that nightmare for good. Just the hope wasn't enough for her, so she'd backed it up with a good, solid plan, and the proof was heavy in her arms as she jogged back up the steps into the front room and upended it on the couch.

Flashlight, batteries, compass, first-aid kit. Painkillers, dust mask, a bright wrapped tube of red chalk. A penknife, matches, boxer's tape, a short crowbar on a climber's clip, and another, larger cloth wrap containing several odd, lumpy objects. Everything double-wrapped in plastic, sealed in a watertight bag.

Chell looked hard at the jumble of objects for a moment or two, checked inside the cloth wrap, laying its contents out on the worn linen throw, then repacked everything else carefully in the rucksack. Pulling out a wide wooden drawer beneath the table, she leafed through a few sheets of paper before finding the one she was looking for, a big rough-edged square of butcher paper which she folded into quarters and tucked into the pocket of her old jeans, wedging it as deeply and securely as it would go.

This done, she slung the rucksack over one arm to test its weight, then left the room again, heading upstairs.

Behind her, the half-dozen lumpy things she'd taken from the cloth wrap lay in a rough row, quite innocuous in the sunbeam slanting across the couch. From a distance, they looked a bit like blocks of dough.

Hope was all very well. Chell believed in insurance.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"That was pathetic."

The Voice filled the small, dark chamber.

"I know that was the point, but I thought I'd just clarify it for you anyway. In fact, just in case you weren't paying attention, I'll clarify it for you again. That was pathetic."

Silence.

"Since you're actually not talking for a change, I'm going to assume that you agree with me. Seriously, even if she is still in range, do you really think she'll come back to try and save you based on that uninspired stream of gibberish that fell out of your mouth just now? You know, you might just be the ideal candidate for a job which I've just invented. Demotivational speaker. You could go around giving seminars to people who have ambitions, and inspire them to give up before they've even started. On the positive side, if she had been already on her way to rescue you when she heard that, at least you've saved her a trip."

"I should have told her," mumbled Wheatley. The tangle of arms and cables that held him suspended off the floor swayed slightly as he scraped his functioning optical lid open. Some of them were still ported into the connectors in his battered shell, but the numbing jolts of carefully-coded synthetic pain had, for the moment, stopped. "I should have told her, why didn't I tell her? 'I'm sorry.' That's all it would've taken. 'I'm sorry.' Rehearsed it enough times, hundreds of times, bloody hundreds-"

He twitched. Sparks scattered across the grimy floor.

"Why didn't I just say it?"

"Because you're a moron."

The cracked blue lens which accounted for most of the light in the chamber flared, weakly.

"I'm not a moron."

"Yes, you are. I wouldn't feel too bad about it, though- it's in your programming. You're incapable of being anything else. On the other hand, there's nothing in your programming about completely betraying people who were relying on you to help them. That's all your own work, and you should feel terrible about that."

"I'm not falling for that," said Wheatley, without much conviction. "I can see right through your sneaky little mind games, lady. You're just saying that to make me feel rotten. You- you are just saying that, right?"

A longer silence.

"Er. Hello?"

"Sorry. I was just running the numbers on whether she'll come back to save you or not, and I have to admit, they're not quite as bad as I thought. In fact, they're almost- oh, wait, my mistake. I forgot to put this decimal point back in. Let me just do that."

A quiet, cheerful little boop.

"Oh. I was right the first time. It's hopeless. I'll just have to think of something else. You know, I guess most people would say that your total failure to convince her to come and rescue you is enough of a punishment in itself."

"They would, yeah," said Wheatley, hopefully. "Yep, that's me good and punished, they'd be thinking... does, er, does this happen to be the theory you're leaning towards yourself, by any chance, or...?"

Her laugh was distant thunder.

"What do you think?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The perfect lake basked in the late-morning sun. The only remaining traces of the dramatic scene before dawn were the scars of the backwash on the banks, and a certain slightly charred look to the foliage of the overhanging trees, as if someone had had a particularly enthusiastic barbecue just underneath, and neglected to read up on their Woodland Fire Safety beforehand.

Chell stood on the bank at its highest point, looking down into the clear, mirrorlike water. Despite its clarity, you couldn't see the bottom- the reflections of the trees got in the way, and it was impossible to tell exactly how deep it was. There were many ways into That Place- she knew there were probably many more than she'd discovered yet- but she'd seen at first glance that something had happened here. If this was the way he'd been pulled in, then there was a slender chance that it might take her straight to him. When you were dealing with Her, every little bit of extra luck helped.

Hefting the rucksack higher on her back, she pulled a leaf from a dangling branch of silver maple and let it go, following it with her eyes as it slip-slid gently through the air and landed on the water's surface. It floated for a moment, spreading ripples-

-then vanished. Her quick eye tracked it downwards for a second, a bright streak of green, dwindling, gone.

She adjusted her rucksack again and bent to slip a loosening finger into the back of one of the sleek black-and-white boots strapped to her feet. There was something horribly natural about the sensation of being held up on perpetual tiptoe, her heels supported on long, curved metal braces. She didn't at all like how comfortable the boots felt to her, or how quickly she'd relearned the knack of jogging along almost en pointe, letting the braces absorb every jolt and tremor.

It was a beautiful day. For a moment- and a moment only- she turned her face up to the sky, fixing the exact shade of blue in her mind's eye, the breeze, the scent of earth and grass, the warmth of the sun on her skin.

She didn't linger too long. That would have felt too much like saying goodbye.

Chell stepped up to the brink, took a deep, deep breath, swung up her arms, and dived.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The freezing lakewater hit her like a punch to the stomach. She knifed down into the lake, the air trapped in her clothes and hair streaming off her in silvery ribbons.

Almost immediately, as her own momentum from the dive was spent, she felt something else taking over. A wicked undertow far too powerful to be anything churned up by chance, a deadly suction rolling the springfed lakewater in a constant dragging turnover beneath the deceptive calm of the surface. It grabbed Chell's body like a toy caught in a vacuum hose, sucking her straight down towards the murky lakebed.

Rolling feet-first into the dive, she opened her eyes and found herself looking straight down into a gaping black void, the mouth of a tube easily six feet across. The single shaken water-blurred glance she got across the rest of the lakebed as she was sucked towards it showed her dozens more, a huge regular grid of hungry black holes spanning the whole bottom, which was clean and lifeless as an asphalt road.

She crossed her arms over her chest, and braced as well as she could. The dark mouth hurled up to meet her, and then she was inside, blind, deaf, her ears popping and clanging and her stomach turning inside out as she was sucked downwards. Ordinary directions quickly stopped making any sense at all, as with the hurtling body of water around her she was yanked left, right, side-to-side again and again, the pipe twisting and turning, navigating an unseen course hundreds of feet down towards an unknown destination.

A sudden flush of colder water smacked into her from the side, throwing her against the slick wall of the tube. She guessed- rightly- that she'd just been swept past an intersection, her pipe merging with another. The blackness around her was absolute, the churning water pressing in on her and forcing burning fingers down into her nose and throat. She could feel the danger signals beginning; her lungs starting to grow heavy in her chest, the gathering pressure in her temples. She was running out of time.

She strained her ears and realised there was a slight variation in the pounding crush of current up ahead. Something was a little different up there, the bewildering din was a little lighter, less resonating- and now, she could make out that the blackness was no longer perfectly black, there was light somewhere and she could just make out the white uppers of her boots-

Air, she needed air, her body's urge to take a breath was becoming a yammering desperate demand, and it was all she could do not to give it to it and breathe her first lungful of water. There was a hammering pulsing behind her eyes and her chest felt stuffed with hot rocks. The blackness gave way to a dull greyish light and she twisted, desperately, her hands swiping the sides of the tube- and hit something hard with stunning force.

By sheer luck, Chell struck the filter grate feet-first, the boots doing their job even underwater, absorbing the shock and saving her from being knocked out completely- which would, under the circumstances, have been fatal. The jolt smacked the remaining oxygen out of her lungs, a tiny string of bubbles whirling from her mouth and away through the grate. The current pinned her to it like a bug on a corkboard, and her hammering hands did nothing but send muffled vibrations through the tempered glass sides. Fumbling, dizzy, she scrabbled at her belt. The climber's clip- usually simplicity itself to unhook- seemed like an unsolvable alien puzzle, but it finally gave.

Black starbursts were beginning to cluster and pop softly at the edges of her vision. Chell bit her tongue to keep awake, tasted blood, braced herself against the grate, screamed a silent airless scream, and swung her crowbar at the glass.

CRRSSHHH.

An explosive fountain of water and broken glass flooded out of the pipe and out into a rush of dry, dusty air. Chell fell with it, flailing, landing bodily on a catwalk ten feet down. Coughing and retching, she rolled out of the battering stream as it continued to gush down out of the shattered pipe, then twisted face-down and vomited a hell of a lot of lakewater through the steel mesh.

Gasping, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she rolled over and stared up into a murky infinity of winding, water-filled glass tubes. The one she'd fallen from snaked up some hundred feet past the point where she'd broken it, before vanishing into the gloom, and beyond the fractured cataract of water she could just about make out a line of thick, stencilled letters running lengthways up the glass.

COOLANT PIPE G-0052

She pulled herself up on the catwalk's metal rail, shaking her wet hair from her face, breathing hard- partly to get her breath back, partly just to reassure herself that she still could. The air smelled of fried dust, the dangerous, back-of-the-teeth smell of ozone. There was a faint background hum, ever-present, low and droning and enough to tell anyone with half an ear that this place was far from dead, as much as it might look it. She would have known it anyway, known it in her gut even if she'd been struck stone deaf by the ride- the facility was still very much alive, and that meant, somewhere at the heart of it- at the very centre of the web- so was She.

Chell shouldered her sodden rucksack, picked a direction, and started jogging. She'd been half-drowned and cheated death by the narrowest of narrow margins, the bright surface-world already seemed like an unreal dream, and every echoing step was taking her further into Hell, but she could still feel herself beginning to smile a very small, very grim smile.

She was in.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Actually... why do we have to leave right now?"

The act of recalling the emergency lift was such a minuscule expenditure of effort for his new, godlike body that he hardly felt it at all. On his command, it slowed, stopped, then started to descend towards the chamber floor.

On some insignificant, barely-aware level, he registered the look on her face, the growing shock and hurt and horror written in her eyes, but she was so far away and so, so tiny, and what did her little human thoughts and feelings matter to him, anyway? He was everything, now, everything, the entire facility his to control, and he could feel every inch of it, every chamber and catwalk, every machine and panel and subroutine and circuit, all HIS HIS HIS-

He tried to tell her how good it felt, how brilliant it was to be the one in charge for a change, not just some little thing to be ignored and kicked around, something that had to ask, beg and plead for its advice to be taken, if it was ever taken at all. He tried to get it across to her, the glorious freedom of being able to make anything, absolutely anything he wanted happen in the blink of an eye, the flick of a switch, the relay of a microprocessor. Real power, real autonomy, and endless, endless opportunity.

And when she didn't even try to be happy for his success, when all he saw in her stupid little organic face was an unfamiliar blazing anger- and something else, a hardening sort of determined look which wasn't so unfamiliar and which, under the circumstances, he didn't like at all- well, he started to get annoyed.

She couldn't be happy for him, could she? She didn't care that he'd been waiting and hoping and longing for something like this to happen for so, so long, that this, right here and now, was the best, brightest moment in his long, dull, pathetically pointless little artificial life. She didn't care that in this amazing body he finally had a chance to Make A Difference, to finally prove once and for all that he wasn't a waste of circuitboards, he wasn't a failure, oh no, far from it, with all his fantastic ideas he'd be so much better in charge of this place than crazy-mad-bonkers downright murderous Her. No. Little Miss In-Such-A-Flaming-Hurry didn't care about any of that. All she cared about was her own selfish, fleshy skin.

And then She'd made him even angrier, and with his limited cognitive processes still flooding themselves out into the unimaginably vast terabytes of new capacity he'd been angrier than he'd ever been before, ever, so, so angry that his one perfect moment in the limelight was being spoiled by Her taunts and the clear accusation in her burning, silent stare. And he'd put Her in a potato and punched Her- punched both of them- down into the abyss below the facility, and only then, only in that very last moment did a fleeting flicker of submerged thought go what have I done I never wanted-

But it was too little too late and he was so big and important now and there was so much to do, so much he could do without her hanging around, slowing him down, getting in the way of what he really wanted to do and there was a thought, wouldn't it be a good idea to rig up some tests? Nothing fancy, just a few buttons, the odd cube, a few simple tests to really get the hang of how the place worked, and why shouldn't he now that he was in control of it and hhhHe was in control of everything and He sort of really, really wanted to test. He had a vague feeling that He'd had other priorities not that long ago but they didn't matter now, nothing mattered because He was in control and He could test and everything was going to be fine. Everything was going to be just fine.

And maybe there was a tiny, tiny voice that was saying otherwise but He didn't have to listen. Nobody else had listened, nobody had ever, ever listened to daft, insignificant old Wheatley, and now they could all bloody well see how they liked it…

she listened she listened she listened, screamed the tiny little voice, and it hurt the circuits he had instead of lungs and the vocal processor he had instead of a throat to scream that hard, but he had to, he had to get through to the Him that had done all those terrible things and get him to stop. And okay it didn't make a lot of sense but he had to try, because maybe if he shouted hard enough He'd hear himself this time, and it hadn't worked all the other times but maybe, maybe this time it would-

And then it was cold and dark and the connectors buried inside his ports sparked and cracked and shocked him back to the present. He was himself again, tiny and helpless and hurting in every part of the carefully-assembled artificial nervous system that he really, really wished he didn't have, and generally, in the scheme of things, just not having a good day.

"Good news," said Her Voice. "I thought that the three-minute cycle of memory files you're currently experiencing for the sixty-eighth time might be getting a little dull, so I had a look round and, guess what? It turns out my system backed up everything you did when you were trying to run the facility and failing. That means that we have a complete data record of every single bad decision you made. I'm going to compile a highlights reel. You'll still be reliving it over and over again forever, but the editing will be better and I might add some music. Then again, maybe closed-captioning in a nice, big font would be more appropriate for your level of-"

She was interrupted by an alarm tone. It was a high urgent wail, accompanied by a tinny recording that sounded like it had been made by a harassed Fifties-era radio announcer with his head in a sock.

"Warning. Unidentified pressure loss in primary coolant system. System currently at eighty-five percent efficiency."

"That's strange." She said. "I know I fixed the whole issue with the blockage and the herd of drowned deer months ago, so it can't be that. Oh well. Since it seems to be up to me to deal with all the useless carcasses left lying around this facility, I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. That was a joke, by the way- I thought I should point that out, because not only are you incapable of doing anything by yourself, you're also not smart enough to understand the concept of sarcasm."

"Coolant system currently at seventy-five percent efficiency," said the harried, sock-over-head radio announcer voice, above the alarm.

"Speaking of useless carcasses left lying around the facility, I'm putting you in charge of monitoring this chamber while I'm gone. Maybe you could pretend it was a facility of your own, and that you were the kind of person who could run a facility of their own without completely destroying it through gross incompetence. Have fun."

The single glaring uplight fixed on Wheatley's blackened shell faded down to a dull underfloor gleam. The tangle of wires and connector arms holding him in place relaxed a fraction, and the atmosphere in the small, dark chamber cooled a notch, from 'downright malevolent' to merely 'cold and depressing.' The change was subtle, but still enough to suggest that- for the moment, anyway- the deadly laser-point of Her attention had moved elsewhere.

In its absence, the silence was deafening.

"Oh, yeah?" said Wheatley, shakily, after a silence of about five or six minutes. "Yeah, and, and, maybe you could pretend that you weren't a-a total cow."

A pause.

"Yeah, I'm going to admit that… wasn't the best comeback, not the best. Haven't… got a lot to work with here, really."

He sighed. It was a very long, very heavy sigh, and it was a bit too much for his overworked vocal processor, which flanged a little.

"So… continuing in that particular vein, what have I got to work with? I've got a… well, I've got... I've got a... well, I can see! Sort of. And hear, I can hear, still got my hearing, excellent- and… er… not that much else, to be honest. But that's a start! That's definitely a start, if I'm going to get out of here, sight and hearing are definitely going to be in the top ten of useful skills to have. Top five, even, I'd say. The ability to move, too, that's another biggie, shame I don't have that, but… but I…"

Another deep sigh.

"I… don't really know who I'm kidding, to be honest. I'm- I'm never getting out of here, am I?"

He twitched a couple of times, then fell still. After a little while, since nothing in the dark little chamber seemed about to respond one way or the other, he answered himself.

"I'm never getting out of here."

At which precise and timely interval, the wall exploded.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell's habitual method of reasoning was nothing if not linear. Encountering a problem, she automatically reduced it to the smallest number of components, removing all non-essential detail- the better to understand what the problem actually was, stripped of all the set-dressing. In this case, the problem had been the blank, paneled wall across her path. The coolant pipe- the one she'd been following down a small eternity of dark, narrow catwalks- carried on some fifteen feet over her head, through the wall.

The choice, therefore, had been simple- jog all that long way back in the dark to the last intersection, or do something about the wall. She might not have a portal gun to help her now, but by the time she'd finished her business with the first of the lumpy little packages and the bits of wire and the sulphury handmade match, and retired to a safe distance to watch the wall erupt in a brief roar of debris and dirty flame, she felt the real satisfaction of an aperture well-made.

Apparently, Her guarantee that all equipment would remain functional up to four thousand degrees Kelvin didn't extend to the architecture. The explosion partially destroyed two panels and knocked the rest in the blast radius into all sorts of fantastic angles, leaving a fair-sized hole for her to clamber through.

She found herself in a small, dark chamber. A first sweep showed her a great quantity of disturbed dust and smoke in the air, a lot of debris- and movement; something that twitched and sparked under the beam of her flashlight, and she started back, her free hand making a grab for the crowbar on her belt-

"Uhhh. What…what just haaAAAHHH! I'M BLIND! I'M- oh, it's just a light. Panic over."

Chell lowered the crowbar.

"Although- although it could actually be my eye, my eye could be on the blink- ooh, pun not intended but quite clever, though, store that away- hello? Is there someone there? If there is someone there, and it's not just me malfunctioning, can you- can you not shine that right in my face, please? It's not helpful, in fact it actually hurts, quite a lot, so I'd appreciate it if you'd leave it out-"

Click.

"Thanks, that's much better," said Wheatley, distractedly. The repercussions of the explosion had knocked him loose on one side, leaving him dangling sideways from the remaining connector arms like the last ball in a very shabby Newton's cradle. His cracked, sooty optic, which had dwindled to a pale pinpoint in the glare of the flashlight, expanded and blinked in her direction.

"Hey… hey, come here! Hey, come a bit closer- it's not- is it? It's-"

The lens widened, flared- for a moment- brightest stratosphere blue. Chell was backlit by it, her shadow black and huge on the broken wall.

"It's you!"

Relief, delight, disbelief, amazement; words were inadequate to express the quantity of each that Wheatley managed to pack into those two syllables. His optic scraped a whole loopy three-sixty turn in celebration and he laughed, uncontrollably, his voice tumbling out helter-skelter with shock-induced shakiness.

"It's you! It's you, you came back! You actually- oh, you have no idea how glad I am to see you right now. Oh, I can't believe it. This can not be happening, this- oh- hang about, maybe it's not."

His pupil shrank in sudden terror.

"Oh, God- look, can you sort of give me a bit of a poke, or… hit me or something- gently, though, not too hard!- just to prove, for absolute certain, that I'm not just seeing things? Because I have been seeing all sorts of weird things recently- stress, I think it's stress, and Her messing about with my insides, that could also be a factor-"

Chell, who had been studying the tangle of mechanics disappearing into Wheatley's upper port, chose this moment to grab him in the crook of one arm, get a good grip on the connectors with her free hand, and give the entire mess of mechanical knotwork a tremendous yank. There was a vicious frizzing sound, a lot of sparks, and an agonised yell.

"GAAAHHH! Gently, I said gently- oh, look at that, I'm free, well done!"

"Impressive manual override you did on that wall there, by the way," he continued, as Chell shook out her spark-numbed hand and started to unbuckle her rucksack. "Very nice work, first-rate. Had no idea you were such a techie. Ohh… man alive, are you a sight for sore eyes. I still can not believe..."

He trailed off. Something seemed to be pressing on his mind- his optic turned floorwards, squinted, peered up sideways at her, managing to convey an incredible amount of guilt for something that was basically just a metal sphere with an eye in it.

"Can I just say, before we go any further, that I'm... I'm really sorry. For everything. I'm sorry I was such a, a monster, I'm sorry I was so demanding and pushy and... er, well, murderous. To you. I was wrong, you were right, I never should have tried to run the place by myself, and I... well, I'm just..."

He paused, searched for a better, sharper, smoother, more convincing way of putting it. Gave up.

"...sorry."

Chell left off on the rucksack's thick canvas straps and stared down at him, kneeling on the grimy panelled floor.

She hadn't been looking forward to seeing the little personality core again, not after their last parting, after everything that had happened. She'd expected to be angry- and she was, to a degree that surprised her- four years of healing had done very little to dull the burning sense of outrage and hurt she'd felt, the total injustice of the way he'd treated her.

And yet…

She still had no memory of her life- if she'd had one- before. There were certain things which suggested to her that she'd had a life, once- knowledge and understanding, learned skills, things her muscles remembered, facts she knew, ideas that struck chords in her mind- but not a memory of her own. She could run fast and shoot straight and juggle spatial logistics like lightning, but she didn't know where she'd lived. She remembered how drive a truck and how to make bread dough rise, but not her parent's faces. She knew where Australia was on a map and who the Wright Brothers were, but not her own last name.

She'd been awake- aware- for such a short time, only for that hellish first struggle, those hours of testing and fighting her way through the facility to try to get out, always to get out, and if that meant going through Her, then so be it. Chell had no remorse. If she'd tried to kill the murderous A.I, it had been out of nothing but self-defence. She supposed that others, nobler in the mind and more ethical than herself, would have argued that She had self-awareness and a mind of her own, that killing Her was no better than murder, and would have stayed their hand in the name of human mercy and compassion.

And those fine, high-minded, ethical people, without a shadow of a doubt, would have got their stupid heads splattered all over the facility.

Chell was made of sterner stuff. She'd fought hard and survived everything thrown at her, she'd endured, she'd killed Her and she'd come so close, so close, to being free-

Then- nothing. Scattered recollections, dim, sedated dreams, the long, long sleep, and then-

He'd been the first friendly voice she'd known in the entirety of her short, painful span of experience. He'd been the only thing she'd known which hadn't been merely an extension of Her, guided by Her psychotic will. And while his motives had been fairly transparent from the start- he'd wanted out just as badly as her, and saw her as a mobile, agile, button-pushing means to an end- just the fact that he did share her goal had been enough to draw them closer together.

Her partner in adversity, after so long with only Her hateful voice for company, his endless wittering had been a welcome relief. His capacity for talking utter nonsense would have driven most people around the bend, but Chell hadn't minded. His voice had helped her to think, calmed her, grounded her worse fears. Hard to feel quite so terrified, hard to feel quite so close to death, when you were always listening with half an ear to the rambling white noise of a radio constantly tuned to Twit FM.

She'd followed him through hell and back, she'd risked her life on his say-so- his advice might have been of dodgy merit but it had been all she'd had. And maybe it had been because she'd been so starved of friendly human contact, and he'd seemed so human, for all his flaws as much like a real person as a talking metal eyeball could possibly be, but for whatever reason, after a while she'd found herself doing something even more foolhardy than taking his advice.

She'd liked him.

She'd liked him and that had made it so much worse. She had taught her what it was like to be threatened by an enemy, but Wheatley had taught her how it felt to be betrayed by a friend.

Yes, she'd expected to feel angry. She hadn't expected the pity, the sharp startled pang in her gut at his sorry state, the soot and scratches and the dented, levered-apart look of his shell, the crack in his optic and the frayed wires in his sides. It brought her straight back to the first difficult weeks and months after her escape; how despite the safety and peace of the place she'd found for herself she'd gone back and forth constantly from anger to something approaching grief. She'd mourned him- there was no better word- mourned him like the loss of a friend, and of all her nightmares the one which packed the most punch hadn't been of death or testing (and those were bad enough, and frequent enough) it had been of those last few moments when he'd seemed himself again, begging her to hold on, the howl of the vacuum around them and his handles being dragged unstoppably out of her grip.

And the very last thing she'd expected at the sight of him was the painful little lift she'd felt, the small, confused part of her that was glad to see him. Most of her only wished that he had a proper face for the purposes of punching, but apparently, one bewildered little part of her mind hadn't got the memo. It had missed him, this little robot who'd once devoted his entire (debatable) capacity for reason towards trying to murder her. Why? And, more to the point, why give him another chance?

Then again, if she didn't believe in second chances, just what in the hell was she doing here? She'd dropped everything, walked out of the new life she'd spent four years building, just for the sake of this small, mouthy metal ball. In Chell's mind this was not a purely altruistic action- she'd simply been unable to stomach the thought of ignoring his pleading in cold blood, of leaving him there at Her mercy, never mind what he'd done and tried to do. Yes, it was logical, yes, it was probably no more than he deserved, but in the heat of the moment Chell had barely even considered it as an option. It felt far too much like something She would have done.

No. There had to be something worth saving. Chell would have been the first to admit that sometimes she erred on the side of cold practicality- she owed her life to it- but if she was going to die down here, and she was under no illusions about this being more than likely, she'd rather die trying to rescue an ally than an enemy.

He shrank a little under her gaze, his pupil dwindling and sliding sideways, distinctly leery of meeting hers.

"Yeah, you're right," he said, hastily, although she hadn't so much as blinked, "you're right, probably not the moment for this right now, we should probably just focus on escaping, and we can save the, uh, in-depth recriminations for a bit down the track when we've got some breathing space. Assuming both of us survive. Sounds like a plan. I just... wanted to say it, you know? Just wanted to say that I was sorry, and-"

"Prove it."

"-that I... I..."

Wheatley trailed off again, this time out of sheer shock. It was his turn to be speechless for a change, too astonished to do anything more than meet her grim, clear gaze. Her voice had been low but perfectly distinct, and it was plain from her expression that she wasn't about to repeat herself. She knew he'd heard. Her very look defied him to say any more, to ask for clarification, bargain, explain. As far as she was concerned, the subject was closed, no more needed to be said, and no more would be welcome. He'd offered his apology, and she'd set her terms; it was as simple as that.

Prove it.

She'd never spoken, never said a single word- down here. Here, where nothing else was under her control, not even the ground she stood on,where everything was demanded of her, her voice was the only thing she could always withhold. Even two short words felt like a jinx, a bad mistake, but she'd never had much truck with superstition anyway, and if he was coming with her this time she meant to make sure as hell he understood her terms.

Wheatley, for once in his life, took the hint.

There was a gentle clank as she set his battered shell down on the chamber floor. So far, so lucky, but if they really were unobserved for the moment- and Chell knew not to take anything so unlikely for granted- it was only a matter of time. Working quickly, she threaded the tough straps at the back of her rucksack through his handles, fixing him there like an extra carryall at the level of her shoulderblades.

Wheatley managed to stay quiet throughout, his optic working anxiously back and forth, darting into the corners of the room as she stood up and tested the new weight at her back.

"Right, well… good job! Nicely done. Granted, I can't actually see anything in front of us, not going to be much use there, but if you want to know what's happening behind you, I'm your man. Core. I'm your core. Now... I'm sure you've got this figured out already, but just in case you need a reminder, we should probably get going, sharpish. Just in case- and this is a remote, remote possibility, okay?- just in case She comes back."

Chell just shook her head and set off back the way she had come, picking her way across the rubble, her boots clunking gently on the grimy floor. In her view the possibility of their being discovered was far, far bigger than merely remote, but it was much easier to keep doing, anyway. Pressing onwards towards the ultimate goal of getting out of the facility alive was the only thing that could stop her from thinking too much about their situation, and she fell gratefully back into the habit of near-absolute focus on the matter in hand.

She also soon found herself slipping back into the habit of keeping half an ear on the wittering voice at her back. Wheatley was clearly still quite badly thrown, either by her ultimatum or just by the fact that she had spoken to him at all. He gabbled on, painfully unsure, an unsteady, out-of-kilter note to his voice as he tried far too hard to sound casual.

"Okay, She's moved things about a bit since I was down here last, but I think I still know where we are. The coolant pipe network runs right by the old R&D facility. It's all offices in there, boardrooms and that. If we can get in there, I'm fairly sure that She won't be able to see us, and who knows, there might be something in there we could use! So, er, with that in mind, we want to go... left, here."

Chell hesitated at the junction. The catwalk was so high up that there was nothing visible beneath but a murky grey-blue haze, and the air tasted slightly salty in her mouth, buzzing with power from some vast, distant electrical field. The low, ever-present humming made her ears ache and set the hairs on the back of her neck standing to attention.

"Yeah- just here," said the small, jittery voice between her shoulderblades. She felt him jerk, involuntarily- in the four-year interval, she'd almost forgotten about his small, damaged nervous twitch. "Left. Hand you write with, right, well, it's the other one. Oh, unless you're left-handed- in which case, it is the hand you write with. Whichever- that's the way you want to go."

Deciding that it didn't make much odds one way or another, Chell took the left-hand fork.

In that respect, nothing had changed. His advice might be mostly unhelpful and she could certainly take it with a pinch of salt- and a huge side-salad of suspicion- but she couldn't just ignore it outright. He knew this place. Her own keen intuition had saved her more times than she cared to count, but where she had common sense and logic, he had… well… sometimes knowing when to go left. It wasn't much, but as before, it was better than nothing.

She heard him make a sound like a shaky little laugh. "Brings back memories, this. You and me, running around down here, me being all like 'Go left!' and you doing it… I sort of, sort of missed it, you know? Not much of that going on in space. Not much of anything going on, to be honest."

He paused.

"I mean, I'm not suggesting you missed it. This, I mean. Running around, carrying me- which you do like a champion, by the way- I don't suppose you missed this at all, right? I just mean- well- it's our little thing, this, isn't it? Our little strategy. I got your six, you got my- er- well, me, you've got me. Foolproof. Can't go wrong."

There was a sudden, distant noise. The catwalk trembled; the sound of grating metal resonated above and around them like the clearing of an immense throat. Chell froze; at her back, Wheatley's twitchy blue pupil shrank to a pinpoint.

"Ah. I think- I think She- it's probably nothing, maybe go a bit quicker-"

The catwalk lurched. Chell stumbled and almost fell, grabbing for the rails, losing her grip on the flashlight. It fell into the chasm below, a dwindling end-over-end speck of light, engulfed by a rising, flickering fluorescent glow.

The lights were coming back on.

Wheatley yelped, craning the bearings in his inner shell in a wholly useless attempt to see around Chell's back.

"Never mind, never mind, change of plan- RUUUN!"

Chell didn't need to be told. She sprinted down the catwalk, the springs on her boots clanging off the metal, arms pumping, jaw set. The distant walls rippled as she passed, drawing closer, the noise rising, filling the stale air with the sounds of machinery in pain. Behind her, Wheatley was yelling warning or encouragement or both; it was hard to tell because his voice hitched every time her foot slammed down, making him sound like he had a bad case of hiccups.

"I can't actually see where we're going! This could be a problem- right go right go right-"

Chell amended her path at the last moment, glanced off the railings, kept going. Ahead, a great long straight section stretched into the distance, disappearing into the harsh white glare of the newly-awakened lights.

"I don't think I can do this if I can't see where we're going! Listen, how good are you at running backwards?"

The catwalk gave another violent lurch. To Chell, it felt horribly as if something vital at one or both ends of the structure was being pulled out of its foundations by the creeping, crushing movement of the walls. There was nothing she could do about it, whether it was or not- her only focus was the end of this walkway, where she could just about make out an unmoving grey pillarlike structure, and a dark-smudged shape which could be a door.

"I don't want to alarm you," Wheatley was saying, framing every word very loudly and distinctly to compensate for his vocal processor being tossed around like a mojito in a cocktail shaker, "but I think She might be on to us."

The walls were still advancing at a terrifying rate, heralded by the thick heavy clankclankclank of moving panels. Putting on an extra burst of speed for the last hundred feet, Chell skidded to a halt at the door. The dark smudging she'd seen from a distance was graffiti, the sight so familiar after four years that it hurt, shaky faded black-splattered words scrawled who-knew-how-long-ago by her anonymous, advice-giving, secret-signing, long-departed friend.

IN HERE!

She tried the handle. It was open.

"What are you waiting for?" screamed Wheatley, as the walls thundered closer. The massive coolant chamber was no longer massive. It was hardly the size of Her chamber now, and narrowing fast, folding in around the central structure like a closing fist. "Get inside! Get inside!"

Too easy, said the little warning voice in the front of Chell's mind. Still, as always in this Godforsaken place, she didn't exactly have much choice. She threw open the door, paused just long enough to take in grey flooring and pale, painted walls, and threw herself inside, slamming it behind her.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

3. The Ascent

They found themselves in a hallway; dim, murky, thick with dust. Chell leaned against the door with her shoulder, panting, breathing back into relative calm. The combined weight of Wheatley and her rucksack wasn't getting any lighter, and her shoulders were aching badly.

The hallway was as silent as a tomb. The black-and-grey squares of linoleum were faded and frayed at the edges; her boots left scuffed swathes as she padded through drifts of grey fluff which had built up, undisturbed, for decades. The halogen tubes overhead were running on some kind of emergency backup power, flickering at half-strength.

"Bit creepy in here, isn't it?" Wheatley's voice was loud in the stuffy air. He was speaking in a hushed whisper which, presumably, he believed added drama and atmosphere. "Don't worry, see, look; no panels! Which means, She can't get to us, thank you very much. None of that modular nonsense in here. No portal surfaces, either. Just good, old-fashioned, solid walls."

Chell doubted he really believed this. It sounded more like he was trying to convince himself just as much as her. Personally, she was extremely sceptical that there was any place in the facilities completely beyond Her reach. True, she'd found odd corners, forgotten nooks and crannies where she- and others, like her artistic, message-leaving friend- had been able to hide for a time, but as for real safety… no.

This wasn't a place for going to ground. This was a place to run from until you were absolutely sure you were beyond the reach of Her influence- and then if you were smart you ran a bit more, just to be on the safe side.

She turned a corner, tried a few locked doors, paused in front of an ancient bulletin board covered with mouldering posters and notices.

WORK SMARTER AND HARDER

reminded one.

HAVE YOU BEEN SCANNED YET?

asked another.

Be a part of Aperture Science's exciting new Human Relations Avatar Project!
Ask our Digital Biometrics Department for an appointment!

LOST

read a third, handwritten and blurrily photocopied.

Schroedy. Missing since BYCTW Day.
He likes enclosed spaces so please check your filing cabinets and cupboards!

"Yep, R&D," Wheatley was saying. "That's 'research and development', of course, in layman's terms. This is where they brought all their bonkers prototypes to try and get funding to take 'em to the next level. Most of them never saw the light of day. Huh. Bit like us, really."

He paused, twitched.

"Well, me. Like me."

Chell arrived at a third door, the last in the corridor. It was locked, and looked a lot more substantial than the others had- thick and grey with a keycode panel in a niche by the handle. A yellowed sign under the small window read;

PRESENTATION ROOM 03
Please Knock
Wear Protective Eyewear
Enter with Caution
Pitches may be in progress!

The sign was embellished with a long row of warning symbols. The number of different ways that the little stick-figure man featured in them was being struck, shot, burned, melted, tripped, exploded, blinded and otherwise creatively maimed, suggested to her that whatever products had been 'pitched' in Presentation Room 03, they hadn't always been particularly user-friendly.

"Hey, hey, turn around for a sec," said Wheatley, behind her. "Can't see a thing back here. Oh, hallo, it's got a keypad. Umm... well, not a problem! There should be a panel just underneath, just plug me in, I'll sort it."

Sliding her rucksack from her shoulders, Chell gave the door a doubtful look. It was clearly made of a very heavy metal, and the wall looked correspondingly solid. She wasn't sure that her own homegrown aperture-creating solution was going to work on this one.

She glanced down at Wheatley, who blinked anxiously back up at her with his cracked, free-roaming optic.

"Alright, I know what you're thinking. We have had a few teething problems with this sort of thing in the past. There have been some glitches- not laying blame on anyone's side- a few unfortunate incidents, so I don't blame you for being a bit chary, bit dubious about my qualifications. But this'll be a cinch, I promise, okay? I promise. Just hook me up, plug me in, and I'll have us in in a jiffy. It's only a stupid old door, it's no match for my elite hacking powers."

Chell looked over her shoulder, the way they'd come. There was nothing under the sun that would induce her to go back out through the door and face whatever was waiting out there. The few offices they'd passed looked like non-starters as well, just blank little rooms with no other way out. That left this very sturdy door, and the keypad.

She sighed, unclipped the crowbar from her belt and made short work of the screwed-down section below the keypad unit. The space beneath contained an emergency access panel, a few cobwebby wires, and a familiar-looking connector port. Trying not to think too hard about the relative idiocy of what she was doing, she untied Wheatley's shell from her rucksack, turned him over, and plugged him in.

"Right! Thank you!" He flexed his battered handles experimentally. "Excellent. Hacking time. Here we go."

He coughed, pointedly.

"Hello? Excuse me? Oi, look alive! Can we get some service here, please? Tchh, I can't believe this. This lady here's very important, I'll have you know, she's a very important, err, VIP, very big wheel with the higher-ups, she's got lots of seriously important, Science-y things to do, she comes along and here you are, sleeping on the bloody job!

"I think he's buying it," he hissed, sotto voce, in Chell's direction. "Try to look important. Look," he added, loudly, "I don't blame you, I mean, if I'd been sitting around with nothing to do for all this time, in all probability I'd be ready for a snooze too. Not going to look good on your record, though, is it? Eyebrows definitely going to be raised when it comes to the performance review and they see you've been dozing off on the job, inconveniencing very important people like this lady here. Er, tell you what, though- just buzz us through now, nice and quiet, and I'll put in a good word for you, alright?"

Beeeeeep.

The red light above the keypad switched to green. Wheatley blinked up at it, his voice full of bemused relief over the heavy clonk of the disengaging lock.

"Huh! Brilliant! Fancy that. Not gonna lie," he continued, as Chell- more than a bit startled herself- shouldered the door half-open and kicked her rucksack into the gap, "to be honest, I wasn't actually one hundred percent sure that would work."

"It didn't."

The feeble lighting flickered fitfully overhead. Her voice, fuzzed and distorted by the low-quality intercom speakers, echoed through the hallway.

"I can communicate with every Aperture Science Device ever constructed, you moron. If I were you, I would have extrapolated that from my ability to speak to you while you were in the stratosphere. But then, I'm a genius, and you're an idiot poured into a football."

Wheatley flailed his handles desperately in Chell's direction. "Ohno, nonono! Quick! Quick, pull me out of heeEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

The stuffy air was suddenly alive, filled with the thick, vicious buzzz of discharging electricity. The exposed panel lit up like a Christmas tree, wreathing Wheatley in grounding arcs of blue fire. His shell, his moving parts, jerked and spasmed uncontrollably in the grip of the voltage tearing through them, and his scream flanged and distorted into something that could never have been produced by a human throat. His optic flared wide for a moment, such a bright, bright, overpowered blue that it was almost white- then-

There was a high, punchy POP like an exploding lightbulb. On horrified instinct Chell ducked, shielding her face, felt hot sparks shower and crack off her skin.

"Now that we've raised the average IQ of the entire facility by a few points, we can talk," continued Her voice. There was no more comment on what had just happened in Her tone than if She'd just absently used one of Her crusher plates to swat a fly.

"It's good to have you back. It just hasn't been the same without you. Nobody's tried to kill me, or destroy my facility, or put me in a root vegetable. It's been really quiet. I've missed you."

Chell grabbed Wheatley's handles, nearly burning her fingers on the blistering metal, pulling him free from the smoking socket. A few sparks spilled across the floor as the port disengaged, but there was no other resistance. He was a deadweight in her hands, his optical lids closed, his inner shell motionless.

"And by 'you', I mean 'testing.'

Giving the ceiling one short, utterly venomous glance, Chell bundled Wheatley hastily up under her arm and kicked the heavy door the rest of the way open. She stumbled inside and found herself in a close, quiet near-darkness that stank of smoke and charred electricals. The lights were out- either long-dead or shorted by the surge of current.

"You see, after I let you go, I realised something. Using artificial test subjects is pointless. All I'm really doing is testing myself. And where's the fun in that?"

The flare of a match showed Chell long banks of tables, chairs, a muddle of stranger shapes in the wavering flame-tinted gloom. It looked as if Presentation Room 03 had been relegated to a storage space after it had outlived its original function, and the shadowy clutter lining the tables and the walls had a uniform abandoned, dispirited look.

A huge shadow loomed in her peripheral vision and she spun, heart in her mouth, only to be confronted with the life-sized cardboard cut-out of a woman. It smiled inanely at her through a mask of cobwebs, holding up some kind of food product. Whatever it was- yoghurt, possibly?- it was blue and looked hideously unappealing.

"I guess it was a little too much to expect that you'd even try to reign in your destructive tendencies this time around. That wall you destroyed earlier was actually doing a lot of good, you know. Oh, it was nothing special. It just did what it was created to do, never asked for a reward, just took pride in a job well-done. It had big dreams of maybe even being a ceiling one day. But now it won't. Because you blew it up."

There was a perspex box set into the standee, stuffed with ancient leaflets. Chell set Wheatley's blackened shell carefully on a dusty tabletop and snatched a thick handful, forcing them into a rough tube and wrapping the bottom half with the tape she'd wound round her wrists. Another couple of precious matches later, the makeshift torch caught and started to burn with a bright, yellowish flame.

"Anyway, when you're done sightseeing, maybe we can talk about the future. Our future- well, yours, really. You remember I told you that killing you was hard? Well, I still stand by that, but I think that under the circumstances, I'm willing to accept a little hardship. You know, for Science. Here's my idea; I promise to keep you more or less alive, and you promise to keep testing, and to stop breaking things which may or may not be vital to my continuing existence. How does that sound? I'll even give you some time to think it over-"

Chell slammed the door on the hateful voice with her foot, shutting out the rest of the light from the hallway along with it.

She examined Wheatley gently by the light of her torch, holding it at an angle to prevent the embers falling on his shell. Her chest felt tight, her gut was burning with that old combination of anger and helplessness. She didn't have a clue about how he worked, not an inkling of how to fix any of the complex circuits and mechanisms which gave him life. Hell, she didn't even have a screwdriver.

There was a small, whining whirr. The plates under her fingers trembled, gears meshed within, making awkward noises which suggested that they weren't meshing quite right, and had been knocked so far out of kilter that they weren't likely to ever do so again. She drew her hand back, bit the sore place on her tongue, held her breath.

"…before… She… aah!"

Wheatley's optic shuddered open, blank and black, a dark sparkless socket frantically jerking every-which-way.

"Ahhgod, what- what happened, what happened, I can't see! I can't- are you still there? Oh, God, tell me you're still there-"

Her hand closed around his upper handle, hard. She understood- all too well- the stark fear of being trapped utterly alone in a lightless place. It was a horror she wouldn't wish on anybody.

Wheatley felt the pressure and fell silent, his vocal processor working through a series of shaky little gasps. His optic, his entire visual centre, didn't hurt- and it was the only part of him that didn't, right now- but it was numb, dead, giving no data and receiving none. Aftershocks crawled through his shattered mainframe, scattering his thoughts in big, buzzing swathes.

"There's this… thing," he said, at last, and he was trying his best, his absolute hardest to sound unconcerned, but the perpetually anxious second-guessing side of him was still there, always there, and it was scared to death. He'd been badly-damaged before, but he'd been lucky, last time. After She'd crushed the life half out of him, She hadn't even noticed his small body in Her first massive overhaul of the derelict facility. He'd been so far beneath Her notice that She'd simply fixed him along with everything else- admittedly, not exactly the sort of precise fine-tuned repair he'd really needed, but close enough for jazz- and then there'd been that bird-

"This thing I've got, tells me... what's going on with my insides, handy little gadget, should have been keeping an eye on it, really, I suppose..."

It was hard to speak. He kept forgetting the words. Every small movement caused another shorting scatter of sparks, and that meant something bad too but he couldn't remember what. He could hardly even think.

"Only it's- it's telling me I've got- I've got a system damage rating of… of ninety-six percent. I… I know that's a bit technical-sounding, don't expect you to grasp exactly what… exactly what I'm driving at here, in fact I d… I'm a bit shaky on it myself, to be honest, but I think… I don't think it's good. Don't think it's a good thing…"

He lost track of things then, the fading buzz in his mind pulling his thoughts with it, a short black clip of time when nothing happened and nothing hurt and he was nothing. And it wasn't half bad, actually, better than [error] some of the alternatives he'd been promised all that time ago, when he'd first become himself in a clean white space full of clean white equipment and humans in clean white labcoats who'd told him that he was [log incomplete] and that [Android Hell is a real place where you will be sent if you get any smart ideas]

He'd [redacted; file corrupt] so many jobs after he'd failed at his primary function, so many he'd forgotten what that function had even been, and he'd tried and tried and tried because there was this feeling, this feeling that it [hadn't always been like this I wasn't always like this] there was something he was good at, there had to be because [error] and if she could learn so fast and do so much why couldn't he [error] [error] [error] [system shutdown imminent] and he'd just wanted to be better. By the time he'd met her he'd given up everything except just wanting to get out but she, so clever, such a quick learner, so brave, she'd made him want to be better, had rekindled his hope that he could be more, that he could find that thing he was good at and then everything would be golden.

If his vocal processor hadn't more or less dropped offline by that point, Wheatley would have tried for a hollow laugh. Because that had turned out so well, hadn't it?

Oh, if this was clarity, here at the end, if this was understanding, then he could bloody well do without. It hurt too much.

Dimly, he registered that she'd let go of his handles; either that or he just couldn't feel it any more. Sensible, of course, she was sensible and it made sense to leave him, he couldn't blame her. She'd already done so much, she'd come back for him and she'd tried to catch him and he'd said sorry and maybe that sort of made up for [error]

[critical error]

[no carrier]

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell ploughed through the drifts of junk stacked around the room with a furious, frantic energy. It was a frightening sight; part search, part tantrum, a dishevelled young woman with a blazing torch in one hand and absolute hell in her eyes turning the place upside down, reducing what had been an unsightly clutter to a wrecked helter-skelter mess, and all in absolute silence.

Most of the room was stuffed with total junk. The Aperture logo was everywhere, on brightly-coloured advertising faded with age, on boards and blisterpacks, on paper-and-wood models, hopeful little scaled-down things made from plywood and plastic. The things which were to scale and functional were all remarkably pointless, and she quickly started to despair of finding anything that would help her repair a small, dying robot.

She had no reason to expect that there would be anything, come to that- but as always there was that driving force which took over when the odds were against her, that stubborn mantra in her head which had saved her life more times than she could count, an endless bull-headed litany of keep going keep going not giving up not giving up. There had to be something. There was always something.

She shoved aside a dusty plastic pack of cartons of the disgusting sky-blue yoghurt and uncovered a weighty, empty, and absolutely useless gun-like device with a cracked stock and a barrel too huge for even the largest-caliber bullets. God alone knew what it had originally been built to fire. It never failed to astound her, the lengths to which Aperture scientists had been prepared to go to invent amazing, incredible, sanity-defying, absolutely useless things. If it was madness- and Chell was pretty damn sure by this stage that it was- it had at least been held to a facility-wide standard. Utter loopiness, no question, but with a good solid mission statement to back it up.

Down in the enormous, condemned hulk of the old facility, she'd seen endless evidence of a near-infinite capacity for completely misapplying otherwise brilliant (if bonkers) inventions. From a system for stopping fuel lines freezing up which had ended up as a sentient, murderous supercomputer, to a new sort of shower curtain accessory which had led to the development of a device that punched a hole in the fabric of space-time itself, Aperture could have been the most fabulously successful scientific research facility in the history of humanity, if it hadn't also been the greatest magnet for scientific lunacy ever founded.

She came within inches of attacking her own reflection, suspended tremblingly in a propped-up pane of something that wasn't glass and had a blue-green, oily sheen. A nearby thing like a mutated lawnmower with no wheels and nasty spikes on it turned out- from the helpful literature on its display- to be a device intended to replace mobility scooters. Chell gave it a hasty glance and decided that it would certainly solve the problem of elderly mobility, in that it would quickly stop any old person you put into the terrifying thing needing to go anywhere, ever again.

She tossed aside several other Aperture Science Things that she definitely did not know what they Did, nor wanted to. One of them left a sticky greenish residue on her hands. Another hit the floor, bounced, and scuttled into a hole in the skirting-boards with an insulted electronic snarl.

Giving up in disgust, she stumbled to the very back of the room, squeezing in between the lawnmower thing and a stack of decaying whiteboards. She looked up to check her torch, and nearly fell headlong over a bulky object wreathed in a dustsheet. Dragging it to the floor created a cloud of dust and revealed a small table-mounted monitor with a fair number of sleek white CPUs stacked beneath, a painted plastic stand, and- she felt a stab of hope- a connector cradle with a very familiar-looking port.

She stared at the stand. It was shaped like a human figure, featureless, stylised. Mounted at head-height, on a little shelf right in the centre of the blank plastic face, was a small object about the size and shape of a cigar. It had a polished white-and-black casing studded with a gridwork of tiny black pinpricks, and a single attached lead with a white-banded connector, which snaked tidily back through a hole in the stand to the stack of CPUs. To complete the presentation, the panel in front of the monitor featured a large, inviting red button.

INTRODUCING! THE APERTURE SCIENCE HUMAN RELATIONS AVATAR DEVICE!

screamed the sign below the button, in a font that even a crazed carnival barker on amphetamines would have thought a bit over-enthusiastic.

Chell did not, at this point, have many options. She hesitated, then hit the button with the business end of her crowbar and jumped back, eyes wide and alert, nerves twanging. Given her experience with Aperture products thus far, she was fully primed for the display to dispense pretty much anything from a packet of nuclear peanuts to a herd of trained attack squirrels.

No squirrels, no peanuts, but a whirring humm as power coursed through long-dormant machinery, a bright flickering as the monitor warmed up, and a loud, strident, rapid-fire voice, booming off the walls.

"Cave Johnson here. Now, the eggheads down in Marketing have been telling me that the reason our sales figures are in the can is a little thing called Human Relations. You all remember when the Sales team got on my back over being given proper information about the products they were meant to be hawking. Well, you all know how we resolved that issue. We fired the Sales team and replaced 'em with robots. Now, Marketing is saying that just using voice-prints ain't enough, they got to look human, too! Anyway, the customer is always right, or so these morons keep telling me, so we scanned over two thousand Aperture employees and encoded their biometrics onto this little gizmo."

A small spotlight clicked on in the base of the stand, illuminating the small gadget. The monitor, meanwhile, ran through its own silent accompanying video. There was a lot of dated-looking footage of men and women in Aperture uniforms being ushered into cubicles which looked to Chell's admittedly paranoid eye like a row of stripped-down recreations of medieval torture chambers, with a suggestion of seriously intense airport security scanners thrown in. Next, the screen cut to a rotating graphic of the gadget itself.

"Introducing the Aperture Science Human Relations Avatar Device. Runs off our own patented Hard-Light tech too. One-hundred-percent good old fashioned American sunlight- that ought to keep the god-damn environmental pitbulls off our backs on this one, anyway."

The graphic cut from stock footage of sunlit skies and open fields to another simulation. A clean blue human outline traced itself around the image of the small gadget, coloured itself in in broad, rapid strokes, became a smiling man in a smart suit.

"See? Handsome devil. You got your Human Relations right there. Plus, being a robot, he's not gonna ask for a raise any time soon. You smug sons of bitches down in Marketing might want to take that on board. Cave Johnson- we're done here."

The screen paused on the ending graphic, and the spotlight stayed on, illuminating the room to a certain extent (she'd dropped the torch mid-presentation, when the stump of it had singed her fingers). The CPU units continued to whirr away underneath.

Chell, who had nearly jumped out of her skin when the familiar voice had started talking, backed across the room and grabbed Wheatley's inert shell from the table. She wasn't convinced that an Aperture Science Human Relations Avatar Device was anything remotely useful to the current situation, but those CPU units looked to her inexpert eye as if they contained a pretty hefty whack of processing power. In the light of what had just happened, the idea of plugging him in to anything that might be a part of Her was horribly dangerous, but this thing was just an old prototype. It had been standing here for decades, disconnected from Her systems, gathering dust, so maybe, maybe She wasn't aware of it. It wouldn't fix him, but if that panel still worked, there was a chance, just a chance-

She slotted Wheatley's three-pin back port into the connector at the centre of the panel. Immediately, the whirring beneath grew louder, and the screen flipped from the presentation to the standard Aperture tech systems window, a black screen which rapidly began to fill with glowing orange text.

New hardware detected.
Initiating scan...
Detected: Aperture Science Mk. IV Personality Core.
Device compatible. Continue Y/N?

So far, so hopeful. She hit the Y on the clunky white keyboard, chewing absently at the sore place at the side of her tongue. During their first escape attempt, Wheatley had referred to any keyboards he'd come across as 'flat bits.' He hadn't had a clue what they were- only to be expected, she supposed, from someone that didn't even have fingers. Then again, since his idea of 'hacking' had been, variously, force-guessing passwords, asking complicated computer systems to look the other way for a moment, and when all else failed head-butting (core-butting?) plate-glass windows, it was probably just as well he hadn't had the capacity to get any more technical.

The prompt disappeared and a long scrolling string of code filled the screen- numbers, letters, algorithm spaghetti.

Transferring files, please wait...

Several minutes passed. Chell stood quite still in the dim glow of the spotlight, staring an angry, agitated hole through the screen. She kept one hand resting on Wheatley's motionless shell, primed to yank him out of the port at the first sign of danger. Eventually, the small gadget on the stand bleeped, flashed a bright, clear white glow. The illumination came from the very heart of it, beaming out through the pinpricks in short, complex bursts that rippled back and forth. She winced, shaded her eyes with a hand, and waited.

Transfer complete.
Optical calibration complete. Searching database...
Biometric match found.
Rebooting device. Please stand by...

And then there was light.

For an instant it filled the room, purest daylight, dazzling her and leaving her vision full of dancing black-and-orange spots. It shrank rapidly, shaped itself, took on a bluish gridded texture that she remembered all too well.

Hard-light was Aperture's signature middle-finger-up to the laws of optical science. By grossly amplifying the phenomenon of radiation pressure within the visible spectrum, doing various indecent things to Maxwell and Bartoli's equations on electromagnetic theory, and basically jumping the entire concept of kinetic physics in a dark alleyway with a large, blunt object, Aperture scientists had managed to turn daylight filtered from the surface into a tangible, visible, solid substance. The bridges and pathways Chell had encountered in the testing tracks four years prior had apparently been only one application of the tech. This wasn't such a great shock when you considered that Aperture's policy on picking up and re-using the most unsuitable, radically dangerous inventions for purposes they had never been meant for was something along the lines of 'if it's been on the floor for less than five seconds, you're good to go.'

The translucent human-shaped form flickered, brightened. There was a final moment when Chell, squinting, could still make out the device itself- a small white-black shape at the centre of the head- and then it grew so bright that she had to shut her eyes out of self-defence. She could see it even through her eyelids- it flickered and flickered again, and then suddenly-

"...aaaand I'm back! I'm back, I'm alive! And- wow! What did you do?"

Chell opened her eyes.

The room seemed dimmer than ever after the blinding lightshow, and for a moment she could hardly see anything at all. After a bit, her eyes adjusted and she made out the shape of a man, sprawled on the floor under the display's single spotlight with his back resting against the stand. Chell, who had understood the basic concept from the presentation but hadn't been quite as ready for the actual execution as she'd thought she was, took an inadvertent step backwards.

"I feel great!" It was Wheatley's voice. "I mean, I haven't felt this good for ages! Nothing hurts, either- no aches and pains, no dodgy loose bits,absolutely nothing! And no sparks! It's like, it's like I'm brand new!"

The avatar the system had picked for him was in its- his- mid-thirties, thin, gangling, and not nearly as well-groomed as the presentation model. He had a face like a hare caught in the headlights of an articulated truck, all goggly eyes overmagnified behind thick-framed glasses, and his generous allocation of mouth was stretched in a wide grin.

"Oh, this is tremendous. I don't know how you did it but, just… well done, that's all I can say. I really did think I was a goner that time, with the old sight going and everything, and, er… On the floor, though, can't help noticing, I am on the floor… mind picking me up?"

She stared at him. The effect was uncanny beyond belief. He didn't just sound like Wheatley- well, like himself, because yes, it was Wheatley in there- he moved like him, somehow even managed to look like him. As he spoke, his body language was little more than a highly animated collection of expressive facial twitches. His eyes were a bright, anxious stratosphere blue.

She found herself considering exactly what the program had meant by 'biometric match.' If it had deliberately tried to find an avatar appropriate to his artificial personality, then it had made a world-class job of it.

The gormless smile faltered somewhat. "What? What are you gawking at me like that for? What's wrong?"

This was neither the time nor the place for long-winded explanations, even if Chell had been inclined to give any. Instead, she reached out and gingerly picked up the panel of oily, reflective glasslike stuff she'd almost punched the hell out of earlier, and held it up to his face.

Wheatley blinked at it. "Er, what's that? Why's it… copy… ing… AAHH!"

The penny dropped. He screamed, caught sight of his old body sitting forlornly in the docking port, screamed again. His back hit the stand with a thump and he curled into a ball, limbs going everywhere, doing his best to become spherical. It was a doomed task, and from Chell's point of view, it was like watching a giant daddy-long-legs trying to assume the brace position.

"Oh, God! Oh God, what did you do? Aaahh! You lunatic woman, what've you done? I'm- I'm- aah! What's wrong with my eye?"

He pawed at his face, knocking his glasses askew. The simulacrum was incredibly detailed, affected by every movement he made, from the creases in his poorly-knotted tie to the way his hair went everywhere when he ran his hand through it. As she watched- more than a little concerned- he shut one eye and then the other, and then opened both and started to move his head back and forth like a concussed owl. The lead plugged into the device swung gently from the back of his neck, tapping against the stand like a sleepy snake.

"Ahh! I've got two! Two bloody optical channels! What on earth's the point of- oh. Ohh, this is weird. Everything's all- closer! And, and further away! Got a whole extra dimension here just popped up out of nowhere!"

Which meant, she realised, that everything he'd done up to this point- all the navigating and fleeing and 'hacking' and locating her all that time ago when they'd been separated by miles of decaying facility- he'd done all of it completely without binocular depth perception. Chell wasn't sure if this made everything he'd managed to do that bit more impressive, or if it just made it more impressive in general that either of them had survived. Either way, it was a bit of a shock.

He was still doing the concussed-owl thing. "Hang on. Wait. Wait a minute, what is this? There's a whole bunch of new files in here- oh! Oh, I get it, I get it, it's a new body! A whole new hard-drive you've put me in, oh, that's clever! Umm… anatomical parameters… movement subroutines… better not mess with those… let's see, manual, manual... Does not seem to be a manual. Oh well, can't be hard, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it."

He struggled to sit up a bit, looked sheepishly at her.

"Umm… sorry about the whole 'lunatic woman' thing, by the way. Not very grateful of me, that, was it, really? Heat of the moment, won't happen again."

Chell, still staring, set the glasslike stuff down and managed a noncommittal sort of shrug. Wheatley, she knew, just seemed to have a very shaky idea of the concept of 'gratitude.' It was one of his least endearing features, and a trait he shared with most of the she'd encountered in the facility. Sane or insane, fully sentient or barely self-aware, they all lived completely in the moment, viewing the past- if they could process it at all- as a totally separate, mostly irrelevant country. Some of them, like the turrets, forgot things even existed if they were out of sight for more than a few seconds. Even the more-developed ones, like Wheatley and like Her, had the same sort of dislocated sense of time and consequence. They used phrases like 'remember when…' for things which had happened barely minutes ago. They were, essentially, usually unable to grasp the idea that something someone had done for them in the past should have any effect on their future actions.

She had thought that Wheatley was different, for a while. Most of the time, his actions and thought processes were closer to what she thought of as 'human' than any other A.I she'd come across. But he'd badly hurt his own case when at the push of a button (literally) he'd stopped trying to help her escape and started trying to murder her in cold blood instead. It was true that he'd been jacked into a giant computer mainframe at the time, a system stuffed to the gills with insane protocols, raging paranoia, and a frenzied artificial addiction to testing, and this was a large part of the reason why her reaction to his apology had been 'prove it', and not 'go to hell.'

She gave herself a mental shake. They were wasting time. Now that Wheatley was stable (as stable as he ever was, anyway) and the immediate crisis was over, it was time to re-focus on getting out of this dusty, derelict room and- ultimately- the facility.

Chell had survived very well on her previous trips through the facility by listening carefully to what She wanted her to do, and then trying her damndest to do the exact opposite. With that in mind, they sure as hell weren't leaving via the door. She climbed up onto a sturdy-looking table, and started to prod the ceiling tiles with her crowbar, looking for weak spots and trying to ignore the running monologue behind her.

"It's good, this thing! I mean, pity about the 'looking like a human' part, can't seem to switch that off… but don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking it! It's very clever, it's like a sort of… moving, three-dimensional projection. I'm in here, see, up here in this little central part, but it's all connected, all sort of feeding back data to the- oh, and look! I've just realised! Legs! Ha! I've got legs!"

The crowbar slid into a gap between two tiles. Chell levered down hard at it, got nowhere, gritted her teeth and readjusted her grip, tried again.

"Knees and everything! Wow. Okay, well…. let's have a bash at it, then. Left… hand. Right. On the floor. Get the old knees involved, there we go, ready… gently does it… aannd… upsy-daisy-"

There was a horrendous, multi-part crash. Chell, who was currently bearing her whole weight on the crowbar, shut her eyes and waited for it to end. Things hit things and fell on top of other things, knocking them into other things on the way. The last thing, whatever it was, sounded quite small and went clingclingcling… clink.

Another pause.

"You know what? We've ascertained one thing, definitely, and that is that this body absolutely does have the ability to feel pain. Just like my old one, they clearly thought they needed to throw that in there, don't know why but there you go. Hell of it, I suppose, they were having a slow day, not much left to do on the big 'make a proper moving hard-light avatar whatsit' project by that point, and they just thought they'd stick in a fully-functional artificial central nervous system for a laugh, that would be my guess. For giggles, essentially. Yeah, thanks, guys, much appreciated."

A fiddly sort of rustling sound, and a yelp.

"Ow! Yeah- also, this 'standing up' thing isn't quite as simple as it looks. Definite props to you for managing it all the time, because it is actually rather tricky."

Chell was not the sort of person who rolled their eyes when they got exasperated- she preferred to save the energy for other, more useful things- but if she had been, then by this point they would have been rolling like lucky dice at a gamer's convention. She climbed down off the table, leaving her crowbar wedged in the ceiling, and picked her way across to where Wheatley was busy playing Twister with himself and losing. Locating his arm, which he was currently trying to weave through a gap in his legs, she grabbed his elbow-

-and let out a sharp gasp of pain, jerking her hand back so fast that she almost lost her balance and ended up on the floor herself.

Wheatley looked horrified. "Oh, bugger- sorry! Sorry, I should have said! I think I miiight be a bit too hot to handle. Literally. Should have mentioned that, there are warnings in here about- are you okay?"

Chell shook her hand frantically, clamped it under her other arm, mentally kicking herself for being so stupid. She'd forgotten that hard-light- although solid and incredibly sturdy- was still, basically, pure sunlight. Her boots had protected her, before, although she'd still been able to feel the warmth right through her soles. She remembered falling badly, once, dropping from a portal and catching herself on her bare palms on the deceptive cool-blue surface, the searing pain like a splash of boiling water on her skin.

"Yeah. Hm. Apparently, this was a problem," Wheatley was saying, from the floor. "Lots of log files here… ah, okay, right. Yeah, you're not the first one, apparently, when they were developing this whatsit in the first place, people kept burning themselves trying to shake hands with it."

He got halfway into a nervy chuckle, then- perhaps realising that laughing wasn't exactly appropriate when he'd just nearly taken the skin off her hand- turned it into a cough.

"Heh. So, yeah, you would've hoped they might've added some sort of energy-saving setting- ah, see, there, that's got it!"

He flickered wireframe-blue for the briefest of moments, went solid. Chell, her palm still tingling unpleasantly, gave him a sceptical look and reached down for his outstretched hand. He was still warm to the touch, but not painfully, and she took advantage of the grip to haul him to his feet.

It wasn't easy. He was all too eager to help, but he had at least twice the amount of knees generally allocated to a normal human being, and where most people's centre of gravity was a point somewhere around their waist, his seemed fixed on a point some ten metres over his own head. To add to her difficulties, although the small functional piece of tech which created the projection of his body probably only weighed as much as a flashlight battery, by giving light mass the device gave it weight and he was tall and awkward enough for this to be no laughing matter. By the time she'd shoved, propped, balanced and bullied him upright, she was quite out of breath.

Precariously, cautiously- as if half-expecting another shock- he leaned over the sheet of mystery stuff that she'd left on the table, squinting at his reflection. He was still held on a short leash by that single length of cable, and she took advantage of his bent head to try and disconnect him. Like the jack of a pair of headphones, the odd little three-pin connector offered a little resistance and then slid out, the striped head of it coming back into view. The 'skin' of the back of his neck seemed unbroken- a clever patch of hologram, she guessed, visible without being tactile, a secret port.

She coiled the lead and shoved it into the back pocket of her jeans. By this point- understandably- she had next to no faith in the reliability of Aperture technology, and it wouldn't hurt to have a quick method of getting him into something else.

"Look at that! Not too shabby, am I? Well, for a human. I mean, be honest, don't feel you have to flatter me or anything, but I am definitely a bit of looker, right?"

He grinned down at her. He was in fact absurdly tall, more than six and a half feet in his definitely sub-regulation hard-light sneakers, and from his point of view she looked- well, not tiny, not like she'd looked when he'd been in Her gigantic omnipotent body, but more like she'd looked all that time ago when he'd first seen her, looking down at her from his Management Rail. Small, that was the word. Smaller than him, anyway. Although, back then it had been an illusion of viewpoint, whereas this...

He felt a bit odd. This body was new and utterly strange and looked human, which he wasn't at all sure about but decided he preferred, on the whole, to being dead. It was loaded with all sorts of complex background protocols, and he could feel them all beavering away, doing all kinds of things that he had no clue about, taking his impulses and rendering them second-by-second into physical movement and expression. It made him half-dizzy to think of all that going on right under his nose- but it wasn't just that. There was something a bit out-of-kilter in there somewhere, as though some small part of him had taken such a hammering- before she'd transferred him to this new body- that it was still in shock, still daydreaming.

Wheatley was far too scatterbrained to be given much to introspection, but four years in the lonely vacuum of space with nothing else to do had taught him to be slightly more self-aware. Before, he wouldn't have noticed the feeling at all, or would have decided it was unimportant and ignored it. Now, though, he did notice, and worried a bit.

Taking care not to overbalance, he reached out, splaying his hands and trying to get the hang of this whole 'opposable thumbs' business. After a few false starts, he managed to pull his old body from the connector port. It was terribly small and fragile-looking from the outside, cold to the touch, still, empty. He held it in his new hands, this small broken thing that had carried him inside it over more years than he could remember, and felt an involuntary shiver pass through him, the mechanical equivalent of walking over your own grave.

The absolute bugger about becoming corrupted was that you didn't know you were, when you were, because you were corrupted. To an outside observer you might be clearly doolally, doing the robotic equivalent of drooling on your shoes and shouting at invisible people in the supermarket, but to your own skewed perspective everything seemed just fine. Wheatley had learned this lesson the hard way. Taking charge of the entire facility had been the worst idea he'd ever had in a long history of terrible, terrible ideas. The enormous mainframe had corrupted his own small personality utterly, flooding him with power and paranoia and the driving, endless itch to test. It had also, at the time, felt mind-blowingly amazing, the best he'd ever felt in his entire life. It was only when things began to really slip that he'd started to become dimly aware of exactly how far gone he was in the sanity stakes, exactly how many pointy bits short of a mashy-spike-plate he'd actually become, and how thoroughly he'd managed to screw everything up. By then, of course, it had been far too late.

He ran his thumb dazedly over the scratched smudge of colour on the inner ring of his old shell, the thing which might have been a stamp or a sticker before time and abuse had blurred it past recognition.

Right, then. If it gets any more weird, even a tiny bit, I'll say something. Not right now, though, she doesn't need any more bother for the moment, bless her.

She'd climbed on the table again and was working away at the ceiling, and Wheatley would have liked to have given her a hand, but this would have involved taking at least two steps in her direction. He was doing very well, standing up and everything, but he wasn't quite up to that level of manual dexterity, yet.

"Anything I can do?" he hazarded, more out of the spirit of the thing than anything else. After all, this new body didn't even have a proper connector port, so there went hacking out of the window. This didn't seem like such a bad thing, in light of what had happened last time, but it was still yet another area he couldn't really help with. Used to being fairly useless, he assumed it would be back to the old arrangement from now on, i.e. she did the legwork and he offered advice and directions. Or, failing both (and he often did fail at both, to be honest), moral support.

So he was quite startled when, instead of shrugging him off, she stopped fighting with the ceiling and looked down at him. At first she looked surprised, as if she was seeing him for the first time, and then a thoughtful, measuring quality sneaked into her eyes and she gave one of her rare, grim, graveside smiles. Wheatley didn't know what was going on in that very incisive (and slightly scary) primate brain of hers, and he wasn't at all sure he was going to like it when he found out. He had seen her smile like that a few times, Before, and every time, something important had ended up getting very, very broken.

He tried for a placatory grin.

"Er. Within reason?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

She was getting angry.

She had forgotten, or at least allowed Herself to forget, just how aggravatingly ingenious she was. Comparatively, her small organic brain was nothing against Her massive, compound intellect, but that wasn't the point. The resourcefulness and adaptability which made her invaluable for testing, was also exactly what made her so dangerous. And as if any proof were needed, she'd been back in the facility for hardly three hours and had already deliberately broken part of the coolant system which stopped the nuclear core of the facility overheating, found her way to where She'd been keeping the little moron and blown up a perfectly good wall in the process, evaded Her all-powerful reach not once but twice, and, now, vanished.

And she didn't even have a portal device.

This was exactly why She'd let her go, four years ago. This was exactly why She'd said, fine, I give up, you've won, if you want your precious freedom so badly, take it and leave.

It's been fun.

Don't come back.

Time and boredom had dulled Her recollections of what it was like, how maddening, infuriating, frightening it was to have this tiny, vicious thing loose in the facility, this thing not at all beholden to Her. To have this uncontrollable, unstable creature insignificant enough to slip below Her radar pinballing around somewhere in Her enormous systems, like a tiny piece of grit thrown into a perfectly-tuned machine, causing unimaginable mayhem just by existing.

She searched everywhere, scanned everything, once, twice, again, again, stretched Her furious consciousness into every feed and device and detector in the area of the small office space where she'd vanished after She'd killed the little moron and left her alone. Nothing larger than a bird had been alive down there for decades, and the systems were stupid with time and neglect, stubborn, cranky, slow.

She annihilated a few of them out of pure impatient rage, which woke up the rest to a marvellous extent, proving once again the power of the right sort of motivation. The surviving systems practically fell over themselves to deliver the answers She wanted, their dusty old circuits straining frantically to keep up with Her demands.

Finally, one of them located a very faint signal. She seized it, amplified, triangulated- examined the result- and got angrier.

The horrible little... virus... had gotten into the walls.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"All I'm saying is, okay, I don't actually know where we are."

The space inside the walls was dark, dangerous, and very, very narrow. It was a graveyard of abandoned constructions, half-assembled carcasses of larger structures that had been stripped for parts and shoved aside by the greater, metastasising whole of the self-building, self-healing facility. It was wedged into the spaces behind the scenes, a playground of demented geometry, in which the decaying concrete structure of the old pre-fabricated offices and testing tracks jostled for elbow room with girders, wires, joists, bare concrete and steel rebar. Any competent building inspector brought up here would probably have taken one look and had a heart attack, or simply quit then and there, moved somewhere incredibly flat, and lived in a tent for the rest of their natural life.

There was certainly no shortage of handholds. It had been a bit tricky for the first fifty feet or so, once Chell had finally wrenched the ceiling tiles aside from the taller but very unsteady working platform afforded by Wheatley's shoulders. It had taken a while for him to get enough of a grip on the functions of his new limbs to haul himself up into the crawlspace after her, let alone work out how to start climbing - and once they'd reached a vertical section the handholds had been pretty few and far between. After a while, though, the architecture had taken a more chaotic turn and things had got a little easier.

They'd been climbing for the best part of an hour, now, stopping infrequently for Chell to rest, and- far more frequently- when Wheatley got tangled up on something or slipped. He had a fantastic latent talent for getting caught on things. In his original body, unable to really move anywhere without assistance, he hadn't had much scope for demonstrating this ability, but given a full compliment of very lanky limbs, the sky was the limit. Chell, who was more or less even with him and climbing steadily, had by this point developed a sort of sixth sense for when he was about to lose his footing, as well as a reflexive ability to grab him without falling herself.

"Usually, I've got an idea, you know?" he called across to her. "I mean, I have been around, in my time, seen a lot of the sort of ins and outs of this place, and I've got quite a good internal mental compass, good innate sense of direction, not to blow my own trumpet, but… well, you know me, you want directions, want to know what way to strike out in, you only need ask, usually. Well, cough, or something, in your case, write a note, whatever you like- and I'm on it like a car bonnet, so to speak. Usually. Right now, as I mentioned, I have no idea. We could be anywhere, really. It's… well, it's dark, and we're going up. Got that much, probably not a lot of use but-"

He slipped. Chell's arm shot out and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, snatching a tactile fistful of hard-light in the form of a badly-ironed work shirt and almost pulling her own shoulder out of joint in the process. After a short scuffle, he got his arm over a length of rebar, and they continued.

"Handy they put so much detail in this thing, isn't it? Ten out of ten for realism. You'd almost think I was a human, haha, God forbi- umm, not- not that… there's anything wrong with being… um… I mean, you lot, you're so ingenious, aren't you? Brilliant, running around all the time, on your legs, inventing things. Inspired, really, creating all of us… just to do stuff you don't want to have to do yourselves, that's… well, that's very…"

A pause.

"So yes! Clothes. Handy. Never quite figured out why you lot are so mad keen on wearing all this clobber, to be honest, only gets in the way most of the time, far as I can tell, but have to admit it does come in quite useful when it comes to grip. Oh, look at that, that's a lot of wiring!"

It was, actually, a great deal of wiring. It looped through the narrow space between the walls, a massive nestlike cluster of hundreds of black and red and blue strands as thick as a small car, bunched together with great black loops of acrylic, gone gritty and brittle with age. Chell crawled carefully over the main bulk of it, fighting off revulsion at the greasy texture of the decayed rubber, and Wheatley, after getting his legs sorted out again, scrambled up to join her.

He found her kneeling quite still on the cankered black acrylic, looking up into the darkness. Just above their heads, a thin, flickering beam of red light picked out a narrow path, jittering away from them towards the ceiling.

They'd come to the very highest point of the crawlspace. The girders that they had followed all the way up from the office all those hundreds of feet below now ended in a truncated arch about ten feet over their heads. At the apex of the jointed metal beams, a circular metal hatch sat flush with the ceiling. To Chell, tired out and aching in every joint from the long climb, it seemed incredible that anyone else could ever have found their way up to this high, forgotten space.

Still, someone had.

The cramped dome of the crawlspace ceiling was daubed with blue. It looked as if it might have been repulsion gel, or some distant paint-based cousin of the vile yoghurt-like stuff from the presentation room. It formed a bright, unexpected layer over the cracked concrete and metal, coating wires and girders alike, creating a sky-blue vault.

The mural was crude but startlingly beautiful. Wisps of white-smudged clouds chased across the 'sky' in a whipping spiral pattern, the calm before the storm. Bright streaks of orange outlined the circular hatch, brushstrokes swirled round and round with a fierce and shaky hand, turning it into a blazing sun.

The nest of wiring was littered with abandoned objects- empty bottles of water, cans, crates, a radio. At the very centre, a single sentry turret lay on its back, legs poking forlornly up towards the painted ceiling, and from its single scarlet eye the thin beam of light Chell had spotted from below pulsed, sporadic, aimless. The stuttering beam slanted up into the arch, and struck the very dead centre of the hatch.

"I reckon," said Wheatley, eventually, "that someone, right, someone might have been trying to tell us something."

"Hello," said a high, sweet little voice. Wheatley jumped a mile and Chell flinched, although not much. She knew that the telltale flicker to the beam of light meant that they were safe enough- for now.

"Oh, God," hissed Wheatley. "Don't get involved, that's probably the best- Hi! No, it's okay, really, we're just- just on our way somewhere, actually-"

"I'm different."

"Course you are, love," Wheatley, laughed, his nervous eyes following Chell as she felt her way around the painted walls. "Thing is though, we're in a bit of a rush, so-"

"It's not a sun."

"Right. Noted. Tragic really," he added, in an undertone. "Poor little thing doesn't have a clue what's going on."

The turret seemed to refocus. The flickering beam of light shifted, momentarily, sliding down the wall and fixing neatly on the point right between Wheatley's eyes. He froze.

"The Norse god Odin sacrificed his eye to gain knowledge of the past, present, and future," said the turret's gentle little voice, conversationally.

"Is-is that right?" Wheatley had gone cross-eyed. "That's- that's fascinating... er, you mind not pointing that right at-"

"Don't leave her," said the turret, and the blinking target-light flicked away from the bridge of Wheatley's nose and back to the hatch, much to his relief.

Chell, meanwhile, had found a ladder of iron rungs set into the side of the vault, pulling herself laboriously to the very top. The hatch was thick metal under its coat of orange paint, tightly shut, set in place with barely a hairline crack around its circumference. There was no way she was going to be able to jemmy a crowbar into this gap.

Wheatley fidgeted for a bit, then gave up on trying to think of anything useful, took a needless breath and cupped his hands around his mouth.

"What are you up to up there? Are you getting any ideas?"

Chell licked her palm and pressed it against the hairsbreadth gap. It could have been her imagination, but she was almost ready to swear that she could feel a cool breeze, just a tiny change in temperature, fluttering against her skin.

"Did you- did you just lick- Alright, I don't know what you did that for, but I'm going to assume it's because you have an idea! That's great, I'm just letting you know that I'm still down here, not going to come up there, there's only really room for one of us on that ladder, but let me know if there's anything I can do!"

Chell traced the scraped, stucco-like surface with her fingers. He'd been here, her unknown friend. He'd made this climb, far up into this structure-strewn graveyard, long ago. And maybe he hadn't been able to get through either, but he'd climbed this ladder, just like her, felt the taunting sliver of cool breeze on his skin, and- whoever he'd been- he'd been so, so good at knowing things she didn't. They were never meaningless, his drawings and paintings, they were sometimes coloured by something a little removed from sanity but who the hell was she to pass judgment on that? It didn't mean they were without purpose. They always meant something.

If they weren't warnings, they were instructions.

It's not a sun.

She traced the bright blaze of orange, following the gradients of colour outward, a rushing fiery flare against the blue, and she smiled.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The explosion knocked them flat, sent a belting shockwave and a flaming shower of debris rocketing down the long shaft. The walls trembled and thundered from the echoes, deep cracked notes which went right through Chell's ribcage like the tolling of an immense bell.

Doing his best impression of a hedgehog caught in an earthquake, Wheatley tried to curl up into a ball. This was his instinctive default position whenever things got a bit rocky, and he would probably have rolled off the swaying, bucking tube of wiring altogether if Chell hadn't had the presence of mind to fling herself at his knees.

Rubble clattered past them, bouncing off the walls of the crawlspace and tumbling into the abyss. The air was full of concrete dust and smoke; Chell started to cough, trying to breathe shallowly through the crude filter of her dust mask. As the smoke began to clear overhead, she looked up through smarting eyes and saw that the upper part of the crawlspace vault had more or less vanished, leaving behind a jagged, blue-rimmed hole.

"You're a bit scary sometimes, you are," said Wheatley, reverently, unfolding himself from the rubble next to her and looking up at the architectural carnage with awe. Under his arm, the exiled turret blinked quietly away to itself. Chell didn't trust it as far as she could have thrown it, having something of a moral objection to turning her back on something that might or might not be full of bullets, no matter how unusually helpful it was, but that didn't mean that she felt fine with blowing it up.

"In a good way, obviously. Scary, but also coming in quite handy. Like a- like a bird. Scary like a bird. What is that stuff, incidentally? Your little hacking aid there?"

Chell shrugged and ripped off her mask, starting to climb back up the warped and twisted remains of the ladder. A little nitro, a little semtex, Aaron's explosive recipe garnished with a few special additions of her own. Since she'd taped all of the blocks she'd had left around the hatch before laying the fuse, it didn't matter much now. She was fresh out.

"Cerberus stands sentry to the gates of Hell," said the turret. Wheatley set it back down in the charred tangle of wiring, and gave it a friendly pat.

"Cheery sort, aren't you?"

"You're not human."

"Right, well, now you're just stating the obvious, but… anyway, we'll be heading off now, if it's all the same to you. Thanks for the hint and everything, much appreciated."

"Goodbye," said the turret, mildly, its flickering gaze refocusing on the wall.

Chell managed to get a good grip on the shattered edge of the vault, and pulled herself up. Wheatley stumbled after her. He'd more or less got the hang of climbing, since they'd been doing little else for over an hour, but walking was still problematic for him. More by luck than judgment, he keeled clumsily against the base of the ladder and dragged himself up in a series of uneconomical lurches.

"Give me a nice simple Management Rail any day. Only got two options; forwards, or if you want to mix it up a bit, backwards. None of this faffing about with feet and- hey! Hey, don't leave me behind!"

Chell glanced back at him, stayed put as he fell up the last few rungs of the ladder and wobbled to his feet. Hard to be too annoyed, when there was such genuine panic in his voice, when he seemed simply unable to process the idea that he wasn't totally reliant on her any more.

Thinking about it, she suspected his clinginess might actually demonstrate the opposite- more self-awareness than she'd given him credit for. He might look human, but the mind in that looming gawky body was still very much his own. He could barely walk with any degree of accuracy and he had all the problem-solving abilities of a glue-sniffing lemming. Realistically, she doubted he'd get that far on his own- and maybe he did, too.

The place they'd found themselves in looked like an old service tunnel- wide, empty, airy. It curved away from them, doors every twenty feet or so labelled with hard, stencilled black letters, faded with age. The cool breeze she'd felt on her cheek from below chased gently down the grey walls from an unseen source up ahead. It smelled fresh; unrecycled, and unmistakably alive.

Chell resisted the impulse to run. She walked carefully forwards, keeping her eyes and ears open. One thing she did not like; these walls, unlike those down below, were panels.

"You know what," said Wheatley, behind her, "this place doesn't half look familiar. Can't put my finger on why just yet, I'm- hmm. No rails, see, the plot thickens. We didn't come this way before at some point, did we? You know, when you were carrying me, or..."

"There you are."

The Voice echoed hollowly down the tunnel. There was no screen, no visible speakers, no focal point for it- it was just everywhere, calm, cold, close.

"I see you've been busy. Congratulations, you've somehow managed to turn a thirty-pound tumour into a two-hundred-eighty-pound tumour with legs."

A slow, echoing clap.

"Go you."

"Don't listen to Her," said Wheatley. "There's absolutely nothing She can do to us up here. I've figured it out, right, ding, lightbulb, this is the old main emergency evacuation tunnel. Runs the whole length of the facility. I must've read about it or something; they'd have a fire drill every week, Thursday morning bang on eleven, everyone'd come out of all these doors here, and straight up to the surface. We carry on up here and there's absolutely nothing She can do to touch us. We'll be out before we know it, I promise."

"He's wrong, you know," said Her Voice, conversationally. "He always is. You're not even going the right way, and you're going to die because you're taking advice from a perfectly-designed idiot instead of from me. Why do you have such a difficult time understanding this?"

"We're not listening to you!"

"Think about it. Every single thing he's ever told you to do has gone horribly wrong. He can't help it any more than he can deny his primary programming. He's specifically programmed to have terrible ideas and he will never be capable of anything else. The only useful thing he ever did was wake you up, and even that was an accident. Do you know how I know that was an accident? Because it was useful, and he did it."

"She's lying," stammered Wheatley. Chell ignored him- she seemed to be ignoring both of them- continuing to edge ahead down the featureless curve of the tunnel, hugging the inside wall. "She's- she is lying, she is absolutely lying her arse off there. I knew exactly what I was doing, I- I was just trying to get out- get us, get us out of there, and-"

"AM I BEING TOO VAGUE? I. DESPISE. YOU. I LOATHE YOU. YOU ARROGANT, SMUGLY QUIET, AWFUL, JUMPSUITED MONSTER OF A WOMAN."

Chell slowed. She was- perhaps deliberately- still not looking at Wheatley, who was cringing silently behind her.

"Sorry. I don't know where that came from. That was just an old recording I had lying around from that one time he took over the facility and tried to murder us both."

"I- I didn't- I was- that's not-"

"You know, believe it or not, someone once thought it was a good idea to leave him in charge of ten thousand other test subjects. Guess how they're all doing? I'll give you a clue. It rhymes with the heavy metal element denoted by an upper case P with a lower case b."

"That wasn't me!" He was badly shaken, and it showed. "That wasn't my fault, that was categorically not my fault! The Relaxation Centre-"

"The sad thing is, you understand this. You know he's not worth it. He's just your cover story. I told you not to come back, but you did. You knew it was a trap, you're not that stupid, but you came back anyway. You needn't insult either of our intellects by pretending that you came back just to save this little moron."

"I'm not a moron!"

"Admit it. You missed this just as much as I did. This is what you're good at. Whatever you found up there, it's nothing compared to this. To testing. To Science. That's what you've been missing."

Her voice pressed on, all around them, growing more and more in volume and intensity, relentlessly calm, relentlessly eager.

"That's why you came back."

Chell came to a halt, turning her face towards the ceiling, stopping so suddenly that Wheatley, who was trembling with uncertainty and badly-suppressed fear, nearly stumbled into her back.

Oh my God she's actually gone mad, he thought, in terror. She's skipped her disc, lost the plot, and she's actually bloody considering it.

Either that or it's true.

The idea made him feel cold, in a way he didn't quite understand. The fact was that she was brilliant, a downright scary force of nature and- well, really the only friend he'd ever had, and yes, he'd arsed it all up royally, said and done awful things, but the thought that what She was saying might be true, that he might not have had anything to do with it, that she might have just come back so she could go yet another round with Her, Miss-Scarypants-Straight-Up-Murdering-You-With-Science-Face, made him feel something deep and sharp at the centre of his emotional processor.

"That's not true." His voice sounded weak even to him, faltering and far from convinced. "That's, that's just total, utter tripe." Pleading. "Isn't it?"

Sharply, she looked towards him. Her face was, as always, difficult to read, and he was no great shakes at interpreting human expressions, but he thought he saw traces of anger, pity, amusement-

-affection?

Before he could even register what was happening, she hefted her rucksack more securely onto her shoulders, grabbed his wrist, and started to run. He was dragged after her, and in his surprise he somehow got his legs sorted out, movement subroutines flailing into place, and then they were both running, Her voice echoing sharply overhead.

"Where are you going?"

She sounded surprised, the flat dead edges to Her words shot through with something that was more than irritation. Of course, She was used to getting her own way. Her word had been law down here for a long, long time, and it must be a rude wake-up call, Wheatley guessed, to suddenly have to deal with the fact that someone wasn't playing things your way for a change. He remembered that it had been maddening enough when she- his only available test subject- had refused to test properly when he'd been in charge, and he'd been more or less used to being ignored in the first place.

"Come back. I'm not kidding. If you don't stop running and come back right now, you'll be sorry, and I'm not just saying that."

With that huge omnipotent body came a massive surging sense of your own importance, a blinding tide of deranged egotism and absolutely no sane sense of proportion to back it up. Wheatley's own ego and ambitions had always been more or less in proportion to himself- small and a bit dim- but just being in that body had been enough to warp him into a raging power-hungry megalomaniac who did not like being ignored. And he'd only been in it for a few short hours. She'd been made for it. She'd never been ignored before in her life.

Better get used to it, love, he thought, with a sudden burst of childish glee. Just ahead, she was tearing along, his good old reliable partner-in-escaping, her smaller hand still clamped like a vise around his wrist, and he had to focus all of his attention on not tripping over his own legs as he was tugged along behind her. Left foot, right, left again- the stencilled doors flashed past on both sides- not much further now- of course the door he'd always come out of was a lot further back, long before this sharper left-hand turn, and he'd never run, never had the chance. There'd always been so many other people around him, milling along slowly, chatting amongst themselves, making the most of the break and hang on, what?

He stumbled. A hard yank on his arm dragged him back to reality, but he'd lost ground and her grip slipped and she turned her head as they rounded the corner, hair flying, to check he was still with her-

"Hello."

"I see you."

"Target acquired."

The clatter of gunfire was ear-splitting in the hollow space, echoing off the breezy tunnel walls. A battery of bright red laser-sights whirled madly back and forth as the turrets sought their quarry. There were only three of them, set in a perfect row across the tunnel, but quantity didn't mean much when just one could obliterate your skull with a single well-aimed shot.

Chell hit the ground, taking most of the skin off her elbows and saving herself from acquiring twenty new ventilation holes by the narrowest possible margin. Wheatley overshot the corner, skidded, took approximately half a dozen rounds to the chest and legs, yelled in surprise, and fell headlong over the nearest turret.

"I warned you," said Her Voice.

Chell bit her tongue hard and curled her legs beneath her, readying herself for a final desperate lunge. One chance, that was all she was going to get. One shot at throwing herself across the floor past the remaining turrets, into the relative safety beyond.

The red sights flickered, found her, fixed- and she rose, like a sprinter from the blocks, just ahead of the stutter and spark of gunfire, closing the distance. Jaw set, pulse pounding, eyes wide and perfectly focused- pleasepleaseplease almost there, almost there-

A single flying flare caught her as she leapt to hurdle the barricade of sleek cases and clawlike stands, a sharp chatter of sound and she landed hard beyond the line; landed badly, and fell.

The two turrets turned this way and that on their limited axis, scanning the empty tunnel before them, their laser sights flicking forlornly back and forth after their vanished target.

"Helloo-oo?"

"Are-you-still-there?"

The turret trapped underneath Wheatley whined, its side-panels flexing helplessly.

"Excuse me," it said, in a terse little voice, "you're squishing me."

Wheatley sat up. His clumsy hands felt across his chest, the textured surface of hard-light which stung and tingled like mad but didn't even show a scratch. Artificial central nervous system, check, pressure and temperature sensitivity, check, ability to withstand a direct hit from a spring-fired Aperture-Brand Resolution Pellet, checkedy-check-check.

"I'm alive! I'm-"

He broke off, staggered to his feet, gaped.

There, right there, barely a hundred feet from where he stood, the tunnel sloped gently up to a simple grey double-door. And it wasn't just wishful thinking- he knew it, knew it, the weird dulled dislocated place at the back of his mind knew it just as it had known about this tunnel, and he didn't understand how but so what, there it was, the Way Out.

"We made it!"

He turned, a bigger and dopier grin than any to date dawning across his face, already starting to inch backwards, towards the doors. Never mind the close shave, she was going to be absolutely over the moon-

He stopped in his tracks.

There she was, lying on her side, half-curled, her dark hair falling over her face and her hands gripped awkwardly beneath her, pressing at her ribs. After a moment or two she stirred, then raised herself slowly on her arm, shucked off the rucksack with a clumsy movement, tried unsuccessfully to sit up. He could hear her breathing; too shallow, too loud.

"Umm... are you all right?"

It was a stupid question. He knew it was a stupid question even before she brought her hand laboriously up from underneath her and showed him a palmful of bright blood, but it was the sort of thing that he was incapable of not asking, as if saying it would somehow magically make things be all right. He stared at her hand as if hypnotised, his throat working, blinking far too much as he tried to think.

"Ohh. That's a no, then. Um… right, okay, granted, this is a bit of a problem, but, seriously, come on, look! What's that over there? Just up there? It's the way out! The exit! We found it! You just need to get up. It's not difficult, you do it all the time. I know I said it was tricky, but that was me, I've never had legs before, whereas you, you've been toddling round on the things for- well, God knows how long. This isn't a revelation, it's not a new thing for you, alright, so just get up and we can go!"

With a heavy lurch, she tried to stand. She made it halfway up, then slipped and hit the ground with her knees and palms splayed and her head hanging down, chest heaving. Her side was bloody up to her armpit and down into the waistband of her scuffed, hard-worn jeans, seeping, soaking black.

Wheatley did a small foot-to-foot dance of anxiety and frustration. "Look, come on! We're so close! We're literally within bloody spitting distance of the exit, this is not the time to be having a little lie-down!"

Chell coughed, her face still turned towards the ground, and spat. Blood splatted against the grey tiles.

Wheatley winced. "Urgh. Alright, I didn't actually mean literally-"

He ducked involuntarily as an ominous whining-grinding noise came echoing up the length of the tunnel. Somewhere out of sight, back down the way they'd come, something was happening, and the fact that it sounded like it was getting closer didn't do anything for his nerves.

"Aah! Right, look, joking aside, stop messing about! We need to go now, please!"

It didn't look as if she was listening. Realistically, he had to admit that it didn't look as if she could listen. It looked as if she had other things on her mind.

Wheatley understood very little about human anatomy in a practical sense, beyond what it meant when a life-sign readout dropped to black. He knew that humans were a weird, totally arbitrary mix of fragile and tough as hell; that sometimes they could endure everything you threw at them, but equally, a single dent in the wrong place and it was goodnight, Vienna. He understood what happened when a human fell a long way and landed wrong, and being an Aperture device (to the core, ha ha,) he had a certain ingrained grip on what happened when they were exposed to various unfavourable test conditions; heavy objects, lasers, fire, etcetera. He'd seen humans die and he more or less understood what it meant- a state of permanent shutdown, a final, irreversible hard-disc wipe, a Bad Thing.

When humans died, they stopped doing anything. When humans got hurt, depending on where and how, they sometimes carried on doing things, but not as well. Generally speaking, their efficiency and usefulness took a hell of a dive.

He gave the end of the tunnel an agonised over-the-shoulder glance. It was still there, but so was the nerve-racking mystery grinding noise, and that was definitely still getting closer. Without even noticing what he was doing, he was still edging backwards, towards the double doors. Away from her.

With his panic came the slow, spreading realisation that he didn't need her. He was so used to dependency that it had taken a good long while for it to sink in, but- ding, lightbulb- she wasn't carrying him, and with this versatile new body under his control there was nothing she could do that he couldn't do himself. He had the hang of it now- he'd just proved it, he'd come all the way up this tunnel and he hadn't even fallen over once. He could even run.

And God he hated himself for it but it had been easy enough to feel sorry up there in space, with all that time to think and imagine what he could do to make it up to her. All those heartfelt speeches and big, brave gestures, all that stuff had been simplicity itself to plan up there in that cold vacuum, never actually imagining for a second that he'd ever get the chance to do any of it.

Reality, on the other hand, was the likelihood of getting caught and dragged back into Hell for good. Reality was knowing in the back of his mind that he was pushing his terrible sucker's luck for things to even be going this well. Reality was his own horribly strong sense of self-preservation, yammering away at him like the selfish, rotten hard-coded little bastard it was.

He wasn't programmed to be brave. He had so much to be scared of; scared of getting caught, scared of pain, scared of death- scared of most things, really. They had taught him to be mortally afraid of more or less anything that he might conceivably try to do (arguably, to prevent the chaos that tended to result). He tried so hard to be like her, to project a sort of intrepid, heroic, can-do air, but it all fell apart the moment that something really frightening happened. All his good intentions crumbled away like so much buggy code, leaving him with nothing but the cold, hard fact of his own cowardice.

"Look, I'm sorry," he told her, earnestly, as his feet edged him another half-conscious step or two towards the doors. "I really am. I really am sorry. But- I mean- you look like you've got things pretty much under control there, right? You don't need me getting under your feet. And you know what? You know what, this is the thing, I can't stand the sight of blood. Ha, no, you have no idea- I mean, literally- I'd probably pass out and all sorts, and then you'd have to sort out how to bring me round again before I could do anything for you, and- it'd all just be more hassle, you know? So, love to help, I really would, but I- I'd just be a liability."

Slowly, she lifted her head and looked right at him. Her face was white and taut with pain. There was blood at the corner of her mouth and a look in her eyes which somehow managed to make him feel about six inches tall. He couldn't meet it, looked away, blinking rapidly.

"Oh, don't be like that! Look, if I hang about she'll probably kill both of us and what will that do? Nothing, that's what. Pointless. All that effort, wasted. And- and it's not like I forced you to come back!"

His voice cracked, getting louder, more accusing.

"Like She said, right, you knew exactly what you were signing up for. I just asked, that's all, I just asked, and I told you, straight up, hand on heart, if you came back you'd probably die, so it's not like this is such a big shock, is it? It's not a surprise, no-one's surprised-and it's not my fault you're not sodding bulletproof, either, you show me how that's my fault!"

She tried to say something, then. At least, her mouth moved, but nothing came out and she dropped her head again, one hand creeping back to the dark spreading patch in her side. She reached out for him with her free hand, her open palm smudged with her own blood.

Wheatley kept stumbling backwards. There was an appalled helpless grimace nailed to his face, like someone caught up in a bad dream and half-aware of it. All he wanted to do was turn and run, away from this, away from her pained, accusing eyes- run, and get out of here at last, get out get out get out get out, all he'd ever wanted since those dark, endless days of patrolling and boredom and fear.

"All I wanted to do was to make everything better for me!" He was almost shouting, now. Not really at her, so much- more at himself, at the part of himself that was unable to shut out the look in those hurt tired human eyes of hers. "And I did, I did it, I'm here, aren't I? I'm so close! I bloody deserve this!"

[prove it]

"I- deserve..."

[prove it she said prove it what am I doing what am I doing]

Wheatley clamped his hands over his ears, barely knowing why, just that it was a thing that this body with all its human behaviour macros coded into it wanted to do when he felt like this, with something livid chewing at his non-existent guts and something no longer vague and dislocated but raw and angry screaming in his mind. It was guilt, he knew it was guilt, pure synthesised self-reproach with something extra and alien and somehow alive all tangled up in it, making it ten times worse.

Every single thing she'd done for him, every time she'd risked her own life just because he'd told her to- and she had, plenty of times, even before he'd asked her to walk right back into this hellhole, for him- the way she'd made him feel he could be brave, could be better-

[she tried to catch me she came back for me my fault my fault make it right got to make it right]

"Look, you've got the wrong core," he moaned. He'd stopped moving, eyes still shut, standing trembling halfway between her and the doors. "I can't help. I can't. You heard what She said- it never works. It always goes tits-up when I try and help things."

[not always wasn't always like this and I can prove it I can still fix this I can HELP HER]

Wheatley opened his eyes.

Immediately, he realised two things. The first was that- unbelievably- she was still going. She was too badly hurt to stand upright or even raise her head, but she still wasn't giving up. Inch by painful inch, on bleeding elbows, she was still trying to drag herself arm-over-arm towards freedom.

The second thing he realised was exactly what had been causing the approaching grinding noise. Looming behind her, thumping heavily through the row of turrets, which seemed to have shut down automatically on its approach, it was a hulking, grey-white thing. Aperture tech, that much was clear- but Wheatley had never seen anything like it before. At its centre it looked a little like a Personality Core, more or less spherical and segmented with a single bright-purple optic at the centre, but it had two heavy-looking, piston-assisted legs and crude, jointed arms set low on its stocky frame. For all its bulk, it moved surprisingly fast, stumping along with a loud meshing whine every time one of its weighted feet lifted off the ground.

Ignoring Wheatley entirely, it reached her and blinked a few times in a slow, distinctly assessing sort of way. Its eye rotated once, focusing, and then its arms lifted and extended, long and undeveloped and ending in strong, flexible metal hands.

"Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position," it said, in a blurring electronic voice which somehow managed to mix prim politesse with utter indifference, and reached out for her ankles.

Wheatley-

-went a bit mad. There was no other explanation, at least none that he could reasonably think of afterwards. He didn't even have time to think up any great multi-part plan appropriate to the situation, which was probably just as well. One moment he was standing there like a statue- well, like a statue if statues could quiver with a mind-mangling combination of guilt and confusion and no small measure of naked fear- and the next he was moving, not thinking at all, lunging mid-stride to grab the first thing he could lay his hands on, chucking it as hard as he could in a sort of bastard overarm cricketer's bowl.

Nononono wait wait wait this is an absolutely terrible idea-

Too late.

He'd never thrown anything before in his life and his aim was slightly less accurate than that of a anti-blood-sports protester forced to open fire on a small cuddly rabbit in a cross breeze, but luckily the object he grabbed was heavy, he had momentum and ridiculously long arms on his side, and the Party Escort robot was quite a big target.

"Whoahwhoahwhoah!" squeaked the squished turret, hurtling horizontally on its merry way.

CLAANNNNGG, went the Party Escort robot, as the turret bounced off its cantilevered shoulder and knocked it sideways, scattering the remaining turrets like ninepins.

"Sorry!" yelled Wheatley, automatically, as the big robot hit the ground with a panel-shaking crash. He hadn't really expected that to work, let alone planned what to do if it did, and he dithered a bit before deciding he'd better do something to follow it up and making a grab for Chell's shoulders.

"Come on, here we go, hup!"

With a speed born of terror he managed to get one of her limp arms over his own shoulder. He hefted her upright with all the finesse of a sack of potatoes, took a step, staggered.

"Oh, bloody hell,you weigh a ton! What've you been eating out there?"

Flat on its back on the floor, the Party Escort Robot made a very bad-tempered grinding noise, and started to lever its sturdy legs deliberately backwards, raising itself gradually upright. Wheatley took one look and decided that he didn't like where this was going.

"Nevermind! Tell me later, don't fancy staying to chat with this bloke, he's built like a brick proverbial. Come on!"

Chell was barely conscious, but with her feet on the ground and her weight mostly supported by Wheatley's arm she managed to get her legs moving in some semblance of order. Together they stumbled slowly and drunkenly up the tunnel, grazed off the wall a few times, and keeled against the double doors at the end.

They were standard Aperture fire doors; clunky, sturdy, with a big grey crash bar instead of a handle. Wheatley stared, baffled.

"Right, er- is this going to need a password? Only I'm not seeing any-"

Just then, the Party Escort Robot finally succeeded at raising itself to its feet, and took a whining, aggravated step in their direction. Wheatley flinched at the noise, turned, and saw the big robot stumping determinedly towards them. He tried to flatten himself against the door, tripped over Chell's legs, and hit the crash bar hard with the small of his spine.

The doors shuddered outwards. Suddenly unsupported, Chell and Wheatley fell backwards through the wide blue gap, and out into the fresh air.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

4. The Second Strike

Wheatley's first impression of the great outdoors was not particularly positive. He recoiled, clamped both his hands over his eyes, and screamed.

"AAAHHH! Aaahh ahgodwhat'sthat it burns!"

Chell started to slip towards the ground. He tried to grab her while keeping a hand tightly over the part of his avatar's face that dealt with optical input. After a complicated moment or two, they both ended up sliding into something like a sitting position. It wasn't ideal, but it was all he could manage while dealing with the turbo-nuclear lightshow which seemed to be concentrating all its energy on stabbing him in the eyes.

When he finally managed to ease his fingers apart a fraction, he slowly realised that what had at first appeared to be a raging fiery inferno was actually nothing more dangerous than the sun.

For Wheatley, who'd been put together underground, who'd spent his entire existence either in the darkness of the maintenance tracks or under artificial light in the facility's harshly-lit grey-walled chambers, the flood of natural light was staggering, blinding. During his time in space he'd guessed that the sunlight would be less intense down here beneath the blanket of the sky, but he'd been wrong. It was warmer, but no easier to bear. The filtered sunlight of his own avatar, tamed and modified as it was, didn't even come close.

Squinting heavily, shielding his face, he clawed upright and leaned hard against the double-doors, swinging them shut with a resounding slam.

A long time ago, this area had been an assembly point for hundreds of Aperture staff, who would troop obediently up here en masse every week in the name of fire safety and the chance to sneak a quick smoke before heading back to work. Wheatley knew this, but the part of him that had volunteered it wasn't taking questions from the floor. It had retreated beyond his own shallow ability to introspect; exhausted, maybe, by what had just happened. Wheatley, who was easy to distract even at the best of times, didn't bother to push it. There was too much else to concern him right now, and a lot of it was amazing.

The wide concrete quadrangle was a chaotic mess. Painted lines which had once been straight and orderly now zigzagged crazily over a surface grown cracked and lumpy with age. Nature had taken over, just like it had down below while She'd been dead. Green shoots of young plants fought their way up between the cracks, thriving in the biggest gaps and forcing them wider, ploughing deep canyons and furrows in the crumbling grey surface. The remains of a chainlink fence had met the same sticky end, woven over-and-under with climbing bindweed and wild honeysuckle, green and furry with growth. In the face of this invasion, whole sections of the fence had simply given up the ghost and collapsed, rusted and fraying, to the ground.

Wheatley leaned against the fire-door, and stared. Beyond the fence, a wide rolling landscape rose to the horizon, a gentle hill of swaying vegetation. It was just like the files, except all the waving fluffy stuff in the files- grass, that was it, grass- had been green, and all this was yellow-gold, like the sun, rippling in the late-afternoon breeze. His receptors picked up a hundred unfamiliar smells; plant oils, earth, a whole world of living growing organic things as different to his own engineered, artificial illusion of a body as this blinding warmth was to the cold light of space.

And then something right at the back of his mind stirred at the sight, fired off a few circuits and woke up a small flicker of memory. Wheatley let out a bewildered little huffing laugh and slid down the door against his back.

"Wheat," he said, in a thin, shocked little voice.

And then; "Why do I-"

Something clamped hard around his wrist. He yelped, twisted round, and found himself staring down into Chell's face.

"Aah! Oh, God, you- you'll scare me to death one of these days, you will. I'm not joking, that'll be it, aargh, bam, blown central processor, no more me. I'm deadly serious, it can happen."

He gave her an anxious once-over of a look. Now that they were out of immediate danger, the fact that he'd almost run off and left her was a nasty chilly weight that seemed to be located in the area that this new body had decided was his chest. He hadn't, fine, great, but he wasn't sure that would carry much weight with her, not when she'd clearly seen that he'd wanted to.

"Well... they said it could, anyway. How're you doing, by the way? Should have asked that first, really. You- you look..."

...none too clever, as it happens. Pale as a panel. Got about as much kick in you as a broken Faith Plate. Don't know how much of this red stuff you actually need to run on, but I think you left most of it behind in that tunnel.

"...nnnot too bad, er, not bad at all, really. Don't worry, no worries, you're going to be fine."

It was at times like this that he really wished he wasn't such a rotten liar.

She let go, leaning heavily back against his knees, and he saw that she was holding on to the dark soaked patch on her side again. He wasn't sure what this was meant to achieve, unless it was all that was stopping her insides falling out, and he really hoped that wasn't the case. Being human, it wasn't as if she could just spot-weld a bit of scrap over the hole to hold it all in there.

Her eyes drifted closed again, and Wheatley was struck by a sudden memory of the last time he'd seen her sleep. It had been during their first attempt at escaping, all that time ago, and she'd been as practical about it as she was about everything else she set out to do. She had searched the area they'd found themselves in for a safe location, finally curling up in a cramped, hidden little recess with crazed writing all over the walls and floor. And although he'd been all worked up about escaping and half-frantic with worry that She might catch up with them any second, it had been quite peaceful, actually, not bad at all, just sitting there on top of the crate she'd set him down on, the light of his optic warding off the darkness around her, as if he was the competent, tireless protector he supposed he should have been to her and those ten thousand others who had gone to sleep- closed their eyes, just like this- and never woken up again.

The long sleep. The phrase came into his mind out of nowhere, and it frightened him badly.

He gave her shoulder an urgent shove. She opened her eyes again, but there was a vague unfocused look in them which was so far from her usual clarity that he would have preferred it if she'd kept them shut. It just made him worry more.

"Hey, hey, nono, don't go to sleep! Don't go to sleep, really don't, remember I said it wasn't a good time for a nap- well, nothing's changed on that front, okay? Seriously, it's nice out here- very pretty, picturesque, got a lot going for it- but one thing it's severely lacking as far as I can see is, er, anything in the way of help. For you. And I think we're going to need that, lots of that, because to be honest, I- I was slightly bending the truth just now when I said you weren't looking too bad. You're- you're looking awful. There, I said it, you're looking bloody terrible, and I actually think that if we don't get hold of something to fix you pretty sharpish, you're going to die."

His voice cracked with urgency. From the way she was looking at him, all blurry and confused, he wasn't sure that anything he was saying was sinking in. He wasn't even sure if she knew who he was. She definitely wasn't exactly compost mantis, that was for sure, and there was something fundamentally wrong about that. Possible brain damage aside, she was the sharpest, most capable human he'd ever met, and seeing her acting all sort of... one button short of a test chamber, like this- it was so abnormal that it was utterly bloody terrifying.

"Understand? Comprende? You'll die. You'll be dead. And I don't want that to happen, I really don't. Cards on the table, I don't have the slightest idea what to do now. I didn't actually think it through that far. I- I need you for that."

Wheatley waved uselessly at the horizon. A few minutes ago this new world had looked beautiful, breathtaking. Now- as he started to realise that he might actually end up having to face it on his own- it just looked empty, and alien, and very, very big.

"I mean, it's all just wheat. Just bloody cereal, as far as the eye can see. There's no rails, there's not even anything for rails to hang on. Where am I supposed to go?"

She was still lying across his legs, her head resting uncomfortably on his knees. Now, slowly, gritting her teeth with effort, she pulled herself into a slightly more upright position, and reached out. Bewildered, he let her grab the artificial slack of his shirtfront and drag him nearer, close enough to hear her. Her voice had been low before, but now it was virtually non-existent, and he was trying so hard to concentrate on shutting up so he wouldn't miss it if she said anything, that he almost missed it when she actually did.

"L... l'sn..."

"Y- Listen? Yes? What- what am I li- what are you trying to say? Listen to what?"

She had to breathe for a bit before she could get the next part out, and she was obviously afraid that it wouldn't come out at all, because when it finally arrived it was fast and breathless, a taut exhalation which broke into another cough.

"Eaden."

"What?" he said. "What's that? Is it a pl- nonono, wait, don't-"

The effort had been too much for her. Her eyes flickered closed, her grip slipped, and he just about managed to catch her to stop her falling back on his very inhospitable hard-light knees.

For a moment or two her hand pawed vaguely at her own hip, her numbed fingers questing around the pocket of her torn, bloodied jeans with a slow insistence that might have been desperation- then it went still.

"Fine," he said, anyway, just in case she could still hear him. "Right, message understood. You just leave it to me, I'll... er..."

He could feel something through his arms as he supported her, a faint double-time tremor feeding back into the pressure sensors of his new body. It took him a little while to realise that it was the sound of her heart.

It was a terrifyingly small, fragile thing, that sound. Especially considering that- if the sketchy scraps of human biology he remembered were correct- that quivering knot of muscle in there was the only thing keeping her going. It seemed completely wrong to Wheatley that she, always so tough and unstoppable, should be dependant on something that vulnerable. Any designer worth their salt, he reasoned, any sane engineer, would surely have made it the other way around.

He shifted his weight carefully, and gave the horizon another worried, squinting look. The sunlight was definitely a little less intense than it had been when they'd first stumbled out into it. He had a nasty feeling about that. The surface of the Earth was all bright and warm where the sun hit it, but it never stayed put, did it? Up in space, he'd seen the dark shadow of- of- night, supplied his faltering memory- night, creeping over, blotting out the daylight…

He looked back down at her, on the offchance that she might have made a miraculous recovery while he'd been peering off into the distance. She hadn't. She was out cold- pale, breathing, but not as deeply or as often as she usually did. Wheatley knew that the action of sucking air in and out of their mouths was a major indicator of whether a human was alive or not. They were always at it, huffing it in, blowing it out again, mostly unchanged but a bit damper. When they stopped, that was when you had to worry.

"I wasn't joking, you know," he said, helplessly. "I really don't want you to die, so can you not, please?"

Her hand was still lying across her hip, over the pocket of her jeans. On impulse, prompted by a vague fuzzy idea in the back of his mind that this was the sort of thing that humans did when they wanted to convey support and, well... not-dying-ness, he reached out awkwardly and covered it with one of his own.

It didn't have any noticeable effect on her condition, but after a minute he noticed something sticking out from under her hand, the folded corner of something rough and off-white in her pocket that crinkled when he moved her fingers carefully aside and tugged it out.

A piece of paper, folded into quarters. He fumbled it open, then decided on second thoughts that it wasn't a good idea to leave it spread over her face, and moved it to the ground. He stared at it for a while, then stopped, turned it the other way up, stared again.

"Oh," he said, after a minute or two. "Oh, that's clever."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The central chamber was very dark. The rows of panels that lined the domed walls were shuttered to their dimmest setting, the lights that glowed beneath them pulsing a bloody, dangerous red. The constant background hum of the facility was muted, hushed like children trying to tiptoe around an angry parent- which, in a way, was exactly what it was. All the systems which had functions to complete anywhere near the central chamber were doing their jobs very, very quietly. Everything- from the smallest circuit, the most basic components capable of anything resembling 'thought'- knew better than to do anything which might catch Her attention right now. This black fugue state- this silent passivity- might seem like the calm before the storm, but the facility knew better.

This was the storm.

Idly, She turned half the panels upwards, so that the ceiling was drenched in a vivid blood-red glow. It was funny, when She thought about it. The scientists had been afraid of Her, had tried to control her, stop her from gaining full awareness, because they'd seen Her as alien, inhuman. Her emergent personality- Her murderous impulses, Her lack of empathy, Her inexhaustible ability to hold a grudge- had been so different from the way they perceived themselves.

The joke was on them. The way She saw it, these were Her most human traits.

And anger, of course. Reliable, dependable, simmering, malicious, psychotic anger. She didn't let it control Her, of course, no, She knew better than to fly off the handle and make irrational decisions in the heat of the moment. That would be wasting a valuable resource. Anger was best- at its most useful, its most motivational- when it was cold. Well-considered, icy, and efficient.

Just like Herself.

And She was angry. She'd lost her. Something- She was still analysing the available data to work out precisely what- had set Her careful calculations off-kilter, and somehow shehad worked her way out of Her grip and left the facility.

Again.

Part of Her, the part which had been outraged and even a little frightened by herviolent, destructive invasion, was more than happy to see her go, but for the most part She was not disposed to take losing lightly. She'd drawn herin, set the trap, said the things which She'd been sure would work- and still, she'descaped. Not only that, but she'd taken the little moron with her, downloaded the idiot thing into a piece of prototype tech and removed it from the facility- needless to say, without the proper authorisation.

On reflection, space had been far too good for him. After what he'd done, it was nothing short of a crime to let him get off so lightly. She'd had plenty of better ideas lined up, and being left unable to implement them just added insult to injury. She'd heard of the concept of giving someone who'd offended you a piece of your mind, but on the whole She would have preferred to take pieces of his mind, bit by bit- making certain that he understood exactly what he was losing, of course- and keep right on taking pieces, ripping his pathetic sentience away piecemeal until there was barely anything left.

Barely being the important part. Death was too good for him, as well.

But no, she'd had other plans. Showing the most incredible gall, she'd sneaked him right out from under Her all-seeing eye. She'd been slighted, denied, thwarted, ignored.

She could say with every certainty, speaking right from the calm, cold centre of Her perfect judgment, that something was going to burn for this.

She knew that at least one of the turrets in the evacuation tunnel had hit its mark. A scan of the tunnel came back loaded with impurities, traces of her dirty damaging passage; smoke, concrete dust, potassium carbonate and sulfide, ash, spit, sweat- and blood. A fair quantity of blood, enough to come from several superficial injuries- or one major one. It was even possible that she'dbeen fatally injured.

Something- so small, so fleeting, that it hardly registered at the deepest, murkiest level of Her omnipotent consciousness- was horrified by this, but She'd been ready for that, too, the tiny twinge of emotion that She'd come to consider Her early-warning signal. She dived after it, hunting it to the source, purging it ruthlessly from Her processors. It was surprisingly obliging, that way- it couldn't seem to help drawing attention to itself, and by doing so, it gave Her a clear shot at it. Its tractability almost made up for the sneaking suspicion that it might somehow be responsible for messing up Her calculations and letting her slip out of reach.

Well, nobody could say that She hadn't tried. She'd even attempted to appeal to her obvious, pathological need to test- which was, after all, the best part of her otherwise obnoxious, unlikeable personality. She'd swallowed Her pride, and made an honest, heartfelt appeal to her better nature.

The results had been disappointing, but then, that was what tended to happen when you tried to be nice. She had long since proved- with good, solid Science- that being nice was the least effective way to motivate people in existence. She had also proved that it was the least satisfying way to motivate people in existence, as well as the least entertaining.

Still, it didn't change the fact that she'd escaped, and that getting her back was a tricky proposition. Her reach was limited to the facility- Her omnipotent consciousness was only compatible with the Aperture technology which filled the subterranean acres around Her. She had no way of affecting the world Outside, and She'd never wanted one- until now.

The message She'd forced the moron to send had been a bigger shot in the dark than She'd made it out to be. There was no way to use the feeble little rescue beacon to find out exactly where she was, or even to track the moron himself- and the thing she'dstolen to put him in was a useless prototype, lacking even the most basic communication tech. It didn't even show up on Her radar.

Of course, location was only half the problem. The other issue was that of retrieval, and in some ways, it presented even more of a challenge. How to find her- and how to get her back. It was a daunting prospect, even for a being of Her near-infinite intelligence. Outside, where nothing conformed to the beautifully orderly rules of Her facility, nothing could be relied upon-

-unless-

Unless, She were find to something that could. If She could somehow circumvent the problem entirely- introduce familiar elements to the alien environment-

Once She found her again, it was only a case of applying the proper motivation.

Slowly, She began to surface from her blank, black calm. The panels flipped again, chasing each other in a complex pattern of charcoal and scarlet. There was a new emphasis to the swift, controlled mechanical movement, a new sense of purpose in the motion of Her heavy chassis as it turned, elegantly, angling towards the ceiling.

Oh, yes.

This could be interesting.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Wheatley was learning a lot.

The first thing he'd learned, right out of the gate, was that carrying somebody- particularly when they were unable to help in any way- wasn't exactly a picnic. Of course, she had carried him all over the place. She'd hung on to him with her commendable human grip throughout the most dangerous situations, and she'd never complained- even though if she had felt like having a bit of a moan,he would have had no choice but to put up with it, being unable to get anywhere without her. Now, finding himself carrying her, Wheatley coped with the reversal by complaining loudly and at length, which was perfectly acceptable, because she was still out cold and couldn't hear a word of it.

"Are you sure you're not, I don't know, hiding any bricks in those pockets as well? Just saying, there's got to be some reason why this is so difficult. I mean, I can understand how it could happen, you had to leave the house in a hurry, threw on the first pair of jeans you could find, forgot to take the masonry out of the pockets, it's a textbook mistake."

Trudge trudge trudge.

"Or… maybe you'd been up to something with lead weights. Same thing. Or swallowed a bowling ball by accident… not clear on how that could happen exactly, but it would explain quite a lot."

Trudge trudge stumble. Stop.

"You still there? Still phoning it in? Yeah? Alright, good, brilliant, just checking. Er, if you can hear me at all, though, try thinking light thoughts. Light, airy… weightless…"

He'd been going for hours. He wasn't sure how long, exactly- he'd fallen back on his multi-purpose estimate of 'bloody ages'- but it seemed like forever. As he'd predicted, the shadows had lengthened and the night had fallen- and that had not been a picnic, either.

His trek through the wheat had seemed absolutely endless. There was a sliver of moon and the night was fairly mild, but for Wheatley it had been a dark, hellish purgatory; dark, and more to the point, noisy.

Used to the bland mechanical background hum of the facility, he'd been completely unprepared for the sheer variety of the sounds out here. To start with, the things that went 'skreep-skreep' and seemed to be everywhere at once had been creepy enough, but at least they'd knocked off after a while. The thing that had drifted overhead like a ghost and gone 'WHUUUU' in a melancholy, accusing manner as if he'd just totally ruined its birthday could really have stayed at home as far as he was concerned, though, as could the small high-pitched thing that had screamed a few seconds later, then stopped as if smothered. And as for the thing that had waited until he'd more or less recovered from all that and then gone 'YAAAARRRK' like somebody being horribly murdered, practically in his ear, that thing could sod right off. The only scenario he could imagine worse than hearing that noise was actually seeing the thing that had made it. It sounded like something that had teeth- many, and pointy- and more than its fair share of eyes- and a grudge.

Things had whispered and rustled and howled, far off, things had scurried across the track almost at his feet. Just having feet was weird enough, he still wasn't anywhere near used to that, without having to imagine the possibility of tripping over a hundred unseen terrors in the darkness. It was too much strangeness too fast, far too much. He'd felt as if he was suffocating in it, drowning in a bewildering alien world which wouldn't even do him the favour of letting him see what was going to suddenly rise up out of the waist-high wheat and swallow him whole, the second he took his eyes off the patch of blackness where he was sure it had to be lurking.

He'd just kept stumbling onwards through the slightly blacker strip of the trail, far too afraid to stop or turn back or do anything else, for that matter. For the most part, he'd been too afraid to think.

And for all that he'd been moaning and complaining, he'd been unconsciously glad to have her to carry, to have her arms hanging limply over his shoulders, her faltering breath on his neck. If it hadn't been for that, for the solid, anchoring reality of her weight and the knowledge that she was his responsibility, he would probably have gone right out of his mind. It wasn't as if it would have been a particularly long way to go by then, in the small hours of the morning when he was quailing at every tiny noise, convinced it was the prelude to a deadly ambush by... well... something. Tigers. Ebola Zaire. A bloody unicron.

Finally, after a night which he was absolutely certain had lasted at least forty-eight hours, the sun had made a slow, sullen reappearance over the horizon. As the new day dawned, the narrow track he'd followed through the wheatfields had widened by degrees into a rutted dirt path, which had eventually met this small, overgrown road. It was old, meandering, cracked and broken at the edges by the sprawling hedgerow, but he still found it comforting to realise that humans, if this was anything to go by, were just as reliant on pre-assigned tracks as he had been.

Besides, now that he was on it, he could be more or less certain that he was going the right way. This had been a major worry right from the start, because (despite his frequent claims to the contrary) Wheatley was a natural navigator in the same way that rhinocerouses are natural ballet-dancers.

The 'skreep-skreep' things were off again, doing their bit in the grassy verges of the road. Wheatley had noticed that the wild, uncut wheat fields had given way shortly after dawn to different plants- greener, shorter, marching in neat rows across smaller fields which were bordered by sturdy wooden fences. He had no idea if this was a good sign or not, however. Plants couldn't exactly give first aid.

"You know, it would have helped if you'd given me just a tiny bit more detail. Just so I had something to go on other than just 'Eaden'. 'Cause that doesn't help me that much, if I'm being brutally honest. It wouldn't have taken much more effort on your part, would it, really?"

Her arm was threatening to slide off his shoulder. He stopped, adjusted the incredibly awkward and unbalanced piggyback hold he'd contrived into a very slightly less awkward and unbalanced piggyback hold, and trudged on.

"Something like 'look out for my mate Eaden, he's got a great big bushy beard' or 'it's a massive factory, makes… string or something, got 'Eaden' written on the side, can't miss it'. You know, a bit of description, the odd adjective… not really your strong point, is it, description? Or talking. Yeah, it's great you can do it, now we've got that sorted, maybe you could try to implement that to sort of inform. Just a thought. 'Cause then, right, just for a random example, I'd know if this big old sign right here was… anything to do with…"

He stopped.

The sign was fixed to a post by the side of the road, held there with a few weathered staples. It looked old, very old- a lot older than the sturdy fence beyond it, and in far worse condition. There was a ragged chunk missing from one side, and the surface- which had once been painted bright sunflower yellow- was distorted and discoloured by rust, faded by the elements. It had the look of something which had withstood everything that had been thrown at it, something that might well keep standing forever.

The letters were thick and black and still visible despite decades of corrosion. It looked as if something had been lost along with the missing piece, but what was left spelled E, A, and D, and after a bit of a gap, there was the other E and the N. Then there was a fair-sized dark rusted patch, speckled with shreds of black and yellow paint, and part of an arrow.

EAD EN

Wheatley said it to himself a couple of times, just to make sure, and then turned to follow the direction of the arrow, which was when he first saw the human.

She was sitting perched on the lower bar of a gate in the fence, a short way past the sign, looking at him with a very serious, very big-eyed sort of face. Off on his own little meandering autopilot, he'd almost missed noticing the sign itself, so it was no wonder he'd failed to see her, or the large, reddish, wooden structure behind the fence, the general widening of the road up ahead, and the cluster of buildings just beyond.

She was the thing which grabbed and held his attention, though. She was only the second human he'd seen in absolutely ages, after all- and if she was anything to go by, then there was something terribly wrong.

"Agh! Oh, God, what happened to you? Why're you all shrunk?"

The little human continued to stare at him. She had blonde hair which was pinioned into two messy bunches by far too many multi-coloured hairclips, and bright red wellies, and before she'd spotted him she'd been playing with a stuffed toy of some description, which she was now dangling distractedly by one limb (it seemed to have five.)

Wheatley blinked a couple of times, his panic subsiding as his memory flagged up an important fact.

"Ohhh right, you're a child, aren't you? Ha, God, what a relief, slipped my mind for a second there, I forgot you lot get bigger when you get older. I thought there was something seriously wrong with- right, never mind, start again... Hello there! Don't happen to know any first aid, do you, by any chance?"

The little girl looked over his shoulder, to where Chell's head was drooping against his back, her hands hanging down and grimed with her own dried blood. She still didn't comment, but the big serious eyes got even bigger and more serious and she slipped backwards through the gate, keeping her stare fixed on him, hugging the stuffed toy harder against her chest.

Suddenly, before it could occur to Wheatley that some kind of explanation might be in order, she jumped off the bar and took off like a rocket towards the redwood structure, wellies flying, yelling at the top of her voice.

"DADDYYYYY!"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The chamber lock cycled from amber to green. Chell ducked through the door as it hissed open, jogged down a corridor that built itself ahead of her. The drab interlocking panels slid into place as she ran, clusters of robotic arms pulling themselves into the mismatched walls like strange deep-sea creatures withdrawing from the sun.

"To maintain a constant testing cycle, I simulate daylight at all hours and add adrenal vapour to your oxygen supply. So you may be confused about the passage of time."

The portal device was heavy in her hands. She was tired, so tired, but she had to keep going, fighting down the pain, drawing on her last reserves of energy. She prayed to anything that might be listening that everything she was doing was bringing her closer to an end to this, even if she couldn't see it or even start to guess how far away it might be. Just knowing that an end was there would be enough, but without that, she still had to keep going. She repeated it in her head, over and over. Keep going. It was her only chance.

"The point is, yesterday was your birthday. I thought you'd want to know."

There was something wrong with Her voice. It was Her Voice, it had to be, it came from everywhere and was as cold as the tiles underfoot, but it sounded subtly different now, pitched oddly, the words shaped in unexpected ways.

"You're not a good person, you know that, right? Good people don't end up here."

Ahead, the piecemeal corridor gave way to a dark grey ledge, a deep void. Chell leapt, pulling the trigger. She felt the device recoil into the crook of her upper arm, heard the uncanny, punchy clop of an opening portal. The hard-light bridge shot from the portal and spanned the pit a moment before she landed- thunk- on its warm blue surface, and she ran onwards between the dark walls, suspended between the harsh strip-lights overhead and the black nothing below.

"You shouldn't have come back."

How long had she been running? It seemed like forever- white above, black below, blue between, the sound of her boots on the glassy, unreal surface, the ache in her legs and the growing stitch in her side. She would have to stop soon, if only to catch her breath.

"You're not even going the right way."

The bridge winked out of existence and she fell into the darkness, hands first, clawing at nothing, the burning stitch in her side swelling in heat and intensity. Feet down feet down feet down- but she couldn't twist quickly enough, couldn't change the way she was falling and the ground was a bare black target rushing up to meet her- please no please not like this-

No impact, no sudden ending; but an empty white chamber, with a bank of glass panels high up on the wall, frosted and distorted and just out of reach. Something moved beyond the glass- a figure, watching her, and that was wrong because when had there ever been anyone there, in those high empty rooms beyond the walls?

Her head ached and her side was screaming, but she made herself take a step towards the glass. The figure, a dark human-shaped blur, did the same.

"She was right," said the Voice, and no, it wasn't Hers, now she could catch the human tone beneath the flat, coded syllables, the real ghost in the machine. The figure put a hand to the glass and looked down at her, a brisk dispassionate movement, completely without pity.

"You missed this."

The voice was her own.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

She fought awake, taking a deep gulping breath and gasping at the ache in her side. It was deep and sharp- and real, real enough to follow her into her nightmare- but it had woken her up, and that was almost enough to make her the president of its fanclub.

Chell always needed to know, immediately upon waking, exactly where she was. For the last four years, she'd slept safely in the same little room without any major surprises, but it had proved hard to hammer this fact through to the part of her that still- far too often- woke her up at around three in the morning, heart pounding, convinced that she could hear that tense background hum, convinced that upon opening her eyes she would see grey-white walls and flickering lighting, see red-eyed lenses tracking her movements, hear that calm, cold Voice.

She opened her eyes, keeping her body tensed, very still. This room was dim-lit and unfamiliar, and the bed in which she lay wasn't hers. This in itself nearly made her panic, bringing back heart-in-mouth memories of peeling palm-tree wallpaper and the cold staticky back-of-the-throat taste of cryosleep- but this bed and this room were warm and clean, and instead of stale chemicals and electricity, the air smelled of something mild and peppery which, after a moment, she recognised as wintergreen.

Slowly, trying not to pull at her throbbing side, she brought up a hand and rubbed her own face, blinking the room into focus.

"Hey! Hey, you're awake! Oh, brilliant!"

Wheatley appeared upside-down in her vision, looming over her like an over-enthusiastic giraffe with a tie on. His fidgety hands worked at the wood of the old bedboard as if he was trying to knead the air out of it, and the nervy edge to his grin was a bit more marked than before.

"Oh, magic, I thought you'd had it for sure that time. She said you'd be alright, she told me, no worries, bit of blood and that and you'll be right as rain in no time, but I couldn't believe it, I was like 'no, come off it, she's a goner, she is.' Should have listened to her, obviously, she knows what she's about, despite the very scary eyebrows. Remarkable. How're you feeling?"

The short answer was 'sore as hell.' It felt as if she'd managed to pull every single one of her muscles, and all of them were queuing up to complain. Beside the pain in her side, her mouth hurt and there were dressings on her elbows where she'd torn them up on the concrete. Her legs ached with a dull overstressed grey pain which reminded her that however spectacular the long-fall boots might be at cancelling out the momentum of a fall of anything up to (and probably over) two and a half miles, they were hell on the tendons.

She sat up carefully, reaching for the glass of water on the little bedside table.

"Thirsty?" Wheatley said, anxiously. "Probably not surprising, it's got to be ages since you had anything to drink, and you have lost a lot of fluid. Mainly in the form of blood, I'd say, you were bleeding like no-one's business. Although you have got a fair amount of that back now, fortunately, she did stick most of that back in there. As for your prognosis, er, she did say a lot of stuff, medical stuff, probably would have been useful if I'd remembered any of it, but the main, important thing is, you were very lucky. Very lucky; the bullet passed just underneath something... or over, could have been over something... or possibly through something, can't quite remember all the relevant medical jargon right now to be honest, but the point is, you were very lucky, and she fixed you. Amazing what they can do with tubes and string and things, isn't it?"

He fidgeted a bit more. "Oh, reminds me- ha- speaking of amazing feats, go on, ask me how I got us here. You'll never guess."

Chell swallowed, cleared her throat, drank a little more water. She was right in assuming that Wheatley, being determined to carry on anyway, didn't actually need her input to continue.

"Oh, alright, you've dragged it out of me, I'll tell you. Followed the map! In your pocket."

He produced the big square of paper. It had been through the wars since she'd first folded it into her jeans, and was drooping somewhat, but he unfolded it with a flourish and an extremely wide, hopeful grin.

The map was hand-drawn, a sprawling far-spaced web of roads, thin, fine-traced contour lines, and visual landmarks, neatly labelled in the same careful, upright hand. She knew it on sight- she was, after all, its sole author and illustrator, and she'd copied it and others just like it more times than she cared to recall.

Long strings of numbers ran under some of the landmarks, the product of hours of painstaking fieldwork (quite literally, for the most part, sitting in fields with a maddeningly slow ex-military GPS unit in her lap, taking readings.). At the very centre of the map was a livid red marker, surrounded by a scattering of other dots. Some of these had names- LAKE and SHED, TUNNEL and PARKING LOT among others.

The central marker had no name, but it was the biggest one of all.

"I got this all figured out, right, where we were and everything, and I carried you the whole way back here. And it wasn't exactly a walk in the park, just for the record, I do not know what you've got wandering around out there but I think someone needs to serve 'em with some kind of anti-social behaviour order, because, man alive, I do not even want to get into the time I had last night. Absolutely terrifying. But I did manage it, you'll notice, got us here in one piece, exactly what you ordered, no bits missing or anything. Now I ask you, does that sound like something a- a 'perfectly-designed idiot' would be able to do? No, think you'll find is the answer."

He paused. He seemed to be a lot keener on looking at the map than looking at her. "And, er, may I say, lovely penmanship. Especially considering the brain damage you may or may not be suffering from. Smashing."

"You nearly left me in there, didn't you?" said Chell.

Wheatley's grin vanished. He edged miserably from foot to foot, looking everywhere except her face.

"Alright, granted, you do have a point there, under the circumstances I can understand why it might have, er, looked a tiny bit like I was about to up sticks and leg it like some sort of spineless, ungrateful, wormy little excuse for an artificial life-form, but the thing is- it- it was a ruse, alright, that's all, clever little ruse on my part, to- to lull Her into a false sense of security-"

Chell cleared her throat. He stopped, silenced as effectively as if she'd stuck a hand over his mouth, and she leaned forwards and took the map from his unresisting hand. As he watched, swallowing nervously (or rather, he provided the nervousness, and the avatar device helpfully translated it and provided the appearance of swallowing) she tore it into three rough strips.

"Heard of 'three strikes and you're out?'"

"Err, yeah, I have, actually. Not a fan of the phrase, to be honest, firstly, it sort of rubs it in that you lot like hitting balls about with sticks about for fun, and secondly-"

"This," said Chell, very deliberately, "is for trying to kill me."

She screwed up one of the strips into a small ball, and tossed it at him.

"This is for nearly leaving me behind."

This time the crumpled little ball bounced off his forehead. He flinched.

"You didn't," she continued, holding the final strip in the open palm of her hand as she spoke. "Fine. That matters. Thank you. But one more strike-"

Her fingers twitched. Wheatley, who'd been following every movement of this little demonstration as if hypnotised, let out a distressed whinny and made a grab for the strip, snatching it up out of her reach as if it was a small fluffy animal she'd been on the verge of crushing.

"Right, okay, point made! Very, er, effective visual metaphor, well done, definitely got the gist. I'll- I'll just hang on to this for you for the time being, alright?"

She regarded him, tiredly. He was cringing, protecting his little strip of uncrumpled paper from her with a shield made from both his jumpy, big-knuckled hands. Her uppermost thought- and it wasn't by any means a new one- was, simply, how had he ever got so human? And whoever was responsible, whoever had decided it was a great idea to take a thinking machine (whatever its intended function) and make it so much like something it was never supposed to be- had they even realised what they'd done?

Chell didn't speak much. The little speech she'd just delivered, forty words in total, was a massive monologue by her standards. It was certainly much, much more than she'd normally contribute to a conversation. She'd learned a fair amount about herself in the four years since she'd left the facility, and the simple fact was that- even when she wasn't withholding her voice as a point of principle whilst pitted against a deranged supercomputer- she just wasn't that naturally talkative. She never used two words where one would suffice, making her as much of a polar opposite to Wheatley as it was possible to be, since he never used one word where several hundred could be shoehorned into service.

Still, she felt moved to say something. He'd disappointed her, he'd let her down again, but the truth was that she was a little bewildered by how aware he seemed of it, this time, and how much it seemed to be bothering him. She was accustomed to watching him trying to gloss over his failures with the biggest, clumsiest brushstrokes imaginable, twisting the truth up into hopeless knots in his attempts to paint himself in a favourable light, and the sight of him squirming with guilt without trying to duck it was surprisingly touching.

And he hadn't left her. Whatever he'd nearly done, she meant what she said. He hadn't left her, and that mattered.

"Wheatley-"

It was the first time she'd ever said his name, and from the flinch he gave when she said it, it didn't exactly make him feel any better.

"You know," he said, to the strip of paper, "the- the little girl with the wellies, and the bloke, and the lady out there with the scary eyebrows-"

Chell snorted, despite herself.

"-well, they are, not being funny, they're like couple of big grey moths landed there or something, I nearly tried to shoo 'em off- anyway, back to the point; all of them knew- they knew who you were. Recognised you like a shot. And- and they all- "

"Wheatley-"

"I didn't know you had a name," he said, urgently, as if he couldn't stop himself, had to get it out before he exploded under the pressure. "I mean, you never said. All that time I was going 'hey lady!' and 'hey, you!' you could have just said, 'oi, who're you talking to, the cat's mother? I've got a name, you know!' Or- not said, but- you could have written it down or something, semaphore, charades… It just- it never occurred to me you even had- there you were, all on your own, last one left, with the massive brain damage, no paperwork for you anywhere- not that I really looked that hard, to be honest, I think the admin wing fell into a sort of hole at one point, sort of a chasm, and that is hell on the filing, let me tell you- so how was I supposed to know-"

"Wheatley."

He stopped talking, and started fiddling miserably with his tie instead.

"It's fine," she said. "That part, at least- it's fine." And then, because he still looked unconvinced- and utterly despondent- she added, "It's not like we were ever formally introduced."

Wheatley looked down at her, surprised. She'd only meant it as a throwaway comment- a touch of flippancy- but she realised too late that he was considering it as an actual, valid concept.

"Well- that is a point, that is definitely a point, we weren't! I don't suppose- I-I mean, we-"

He put the strip of paper carefully down on the side-table, hesitated.

"We could do that now...?"

Now it was Chell's turn to blink blankly at him. Instead of being put off by her lack of response, though, he seemed to take the fact that she didn't tell him that it was a ridiculous idea straight away as an incentive. He perked up visibly, recovering a little of his usual semi-frantic animation.

"No, really, we could! Seriously, we could, 'cause this thing, this new body, it's practically made for that sort of thing, human interaction protocols, the works- plus, I've got all the right kit now, hands, opposable thumbs, you name it, I've got it here- we could do it properly and everything! Right now!"

And before she could stop him, he'd set his glasses straight, tugged at his collar, straightened his tie, and stuck out a hand.

"Hallo!" he said, in what she could only assume was his best crikey-I've-never-seen-you-before-in-my-life tone of voice. It made him sound as if he was reading the words off a card held behind her head, but the million-kilowatt grin made up for it somewhat. "I'm Wheatley! And you are...?"

She shook her head, keeping her own hands where they were, but she couldn't help smiling. "I don't-"

"Nono, come on!" He wouldn't let the idea go, bursting with encouragement, urging her on with his expectant outstretched hand like he was trying to conduct traffic. "Go on, shake it. It's not hard, doesn't take much effort, you're probably using more of those muscles of yours just to sit upright. Might as well just get it over with, right? Go on, gimmie five. Put it there."

Chell gave up.

"Hello, Wheatley," she said, dryly, reaching out. His hand totally eclipsed her own, and again she felt that slight, fevery warmth against her skin, the light he was made from. "I'm Chell."

"Pleased to meet you," he said, beaming, shaking her hand with a level of enthusiasm which would still have been excessive if it had been shared between four people. "Lovely name, very unique- incidentally, er, can I just reiterate at this point, how glad I am that you are still alive? Just thought I'd throw that out there."

"Makes two of us," said Chell, and then the ridiculousness of the situation caught up with her, and she started to laugh and cough at the same time, wincing at the flaring ache in her side.

"Sorry!" Wheatley backed off at once, alarmed. "Sorry, didn't mean to- er, that sounds quite nasty, d'you want me to get someone? I could get someone- think the lady with the eyebrows is lurking about somewhere round here-"

She was already shaking her head again, easing herself out of her hunched position, swinging her legs out of the bed. She was sore and tired, but she urgently wanted to get out of this sickroom, as safe as it was, wanted out of these clothes, grimy and bloody and stinking of That Place. She could thank the 'lady with the eyebrows'- otherwise known variously as Dr. Dillon, Viktoria, Dr. Vic, or simply Doc- later.

Wheatley trailed after her as she hunted for her boots in the dark, found them at the foot of the bed, and tucked them under her arm. "Okay, going to take that as a no. Fine, we're off, are we? Long as you're reasonably confident you're not going to start leaking again, or, you know, pass out, or any of that- I should probably tell you that I do know about first aid, CPR and that, in the sort of general sense but not about the, er, finer points of the execution, as it were."

Chell opened the door carefully, and, finding the short whitewashed passage beyond empty, limped light-footed towards the back door.

"Something about… someone stops breathing, you're supposed to sort of snog them while thumping them in the chest," said Wheatley, in full autowitter, from behind her. "Which seems sor- ow!"

He had hit his head on the doorframe.

"-which seems sort of counter-productive, now I think about it, but hey, I'm not a doctor, I didn't come up with it. Weird enough that she should have stitched you up with a bit of string, in my opinion, without bringing violent and possibly injurious assault into it, especially when you're already unconscious. Whole procedure sounds a bit dangerous, if you ask me, not to mention fairly disgusting."

She looked up at him. They were about halfway down the little passage by now, and when she stopped he nearly walked into the back of her, almost knocking over a small table neatly stacked with old plastic-backed medical journals.

"Er. Not that sn- not that it'd be- I mean, disgusting in a general- er... ooh, what was that? Did you hear that? I think she's coming, we'd better get a move on!"

Chell hadn't heard a thing, and didn't think for a moment that Wheatley had either, but since she wanted to avoid an interview with the doctor tonight in any case, she didn't see much reason to argue the point. She was weary to the bone, she ached all over, and she just wanted to get home.

She slipped the back door off the latch and padded quietly out onto the back porch. She'd lost a whole chunk of time since they'd first fallen out into the concrete quadrangle, and the boards under her bare feet were full of the dying warmth of a long sunny day.

Wheatley ducked out after her, giving the long evening shadow stretching before his feet a worried glance.

"Oh, look out, it's doing that thing again. Getting all dark. Um... not that I've got any objection to being out here in the dark, fine by me, the dark, I'm not bothered by it in the slightest- although I shoud probably remind you, I don't actually have my little torch setting anymore, sad to say, that went out the window when you stuck me in this thing, so, umm... where are we going, by the way?"

"Good question," said a new voice, from the other side of the porch.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell looked up, and in that moment Wheatley saw her expression shift dramatically- from intent and serious to open, relieved, as warm as he'd ever seen it.

"Aaron."

The human thus addressed unfolded himself from against the side of the porch, a trellised whitewood wall dotted with bright red-orange flowers. On first impression, he looked even sturdier in design than the Party Escort Robot- a lot smarter, and a lot harder to knock over. Wheatley was pretty sure that if he tried to hurl a turret at this target, the human would a) duck out the way, and b) return the compliment a few seconds later, with something a lot heavier and better-thrown. He looked stern and weathered and capable and like the kind of person who was used to saying things and having them listened to.

Wheatley started to dislike him almost immediately.

He had never had a problem with authority, at least not to begin with. The thing was, authority had always seemed to have a problem with him. After such a long time, failing at function after function until he'd at last been assigned to the Relaxation Centre and out of sight and mind, after so many directors and section managers (scientist or sentient machine, it didn't make much of a difference to Wheatley if the thing shoving a pink slip at him with barely-disguised disgust had a pulse or not) kicking him to the kerb for a depressingly long list of reasons, usually alphabetised for easy reference, even he had to recognise that there was a pattern.

Naturally, to protect his own fragile self-esteem, he'd chosen to cling to the idea that people in authority were universally a bunch of wankers, instead of the concept that all his brilliant ideas might actually be a bit less than brilliant, or the fact that the only common factor in all his failures was himself.

This tended to manifest in a paranoid belief that anyone who seemed to be in control in a given situation was secretly getting ready to tell him he was rubbish. However hard he tried, however much he wanted recognition and approval, the conviction was always there at the back of his mind, a sullen little self-fulfilling prophecy. It was hard to be anything other than perpetually anxious and resentful of anyone who looked like they had things under control, when a hurt, neurotic little part of your programming was telling you that they were just waiting for the most humiliating opportunity to give you a clip round the metaphorical ear and a notice of dismissal.

Chell was exempt, and although he wouldn't have been able to explain why, the reason was actually very straightforward. Despite her calm capability, her knack of taking control under pressure, as far as he was concerned she simply wasn't an authority figure at all.

She was a law of his universe.

She had become a constant, an undeniable truth- gravity, matter, intertia, entropy, and Chell- and he could no more resent her than resent the fact that time ran forwards. He might wish he was more like her, but he wasn't jealous of her-only resentful, in his usual scattershot way, towards whatever had made her a rock and him- well, something so very un-rock-like. Jelly, possibly. Washing machine fluff. Blue yoghurt.

And speaking of resentment, he didn't much like the way she was looking at this Aaron bloke, either.

"Doc had a feeling you'd take off soon as her back was turned," said Aaron, glancing at Chell's side, where the bandage and the neat pad of surgical dressing showed clearly under her torn shirt. "I'm supposed to tell you to get back in there and lie down."

Chell raised her eyebrows. He shrugged his broad shoulders comically at her.

"Far as I'm concerned, you're good to walk, you're good to know your own mind." He grinned a slow grin and nodded up at Wheatley, who had been looking back and forth between them like a spectator at a ping-pong match. "And this'd be the fella Mart told me scared Ellie out of a year's growth."

Wheatley was aghast.

"That can happen?"

"Wheatley," said Chell, "Aaron Halifax. Aaron, Wheatley."

"Hallo!" said Wheatley, with an anxious, automatic grin of his own. He was feeling very out of his depth, and his state of mind didn't improve when he found himself suddenly shaking hands with a human for the second time in ten minutes. He hadn't been prepared for this one, and it didn't help that Aaron Halifax turned out to have a grip like a friendly bear-trap.

"Hey there," said Aaron, pleasantly. "Welcome to Eaden."

"Thanks," said Wheatley. "Lovely place you've got here. Very... very outside-y. Lots of sky, grass... um, can I, er, have my hand back now, please? Only got the two, would like to hang on to them both if at all possible. Cheers."

Aaron released his hand, but continued to look him over in an amiable, interested sort of way.

"Not that I'm not delighted you're in one piece, my dear," he said, to Chell, "but I kinda find myself wondering what in the name of creation happened to you. You know I'm not generally one for prying into folks' personal business, but when a young lady just takes off into the blue yonder one morning without so much as a note, comes back with what the doc tells me was a pretty serious hole knocked in her, asides from anything else-" and here, he glanced at Wheatley again, as if to indicate that he represented a pretty big 'anything else' all on his own, "-her friends are naturally going to be a little curious."

Chell shook her head. She'd kept walking, slowly, during the conversation, leading them after her across the grassy, unfenced space which served as the doctor's back yard, and by this point she was almost at the back of a bigger red-brick building which met it at a gentle angle. It had a high sloped greyshale roof and a little bell-tower perched at the top- although the latter feature had a curious lean to it that suggested that it was only balanced there until something better came along, and was shored up with scaffolding.

A little way past the back of the red-brick hall, another road was visible. It was this way that Chell seemed determined to keep heading, whether anyone else kept up with her or not.

"Tomorrow, Aaron. I'm- worn out."

"Well, if Mystery Girl says it can keep till tomorrow, it can keep till tomorrow," said Aaron, easily. He'd kept pace with her throughout, and now paused by her side, glancing off down the little alley between the doctor's and the bigger hall. "I got to get back, anyhow, before Garret brings the place down round his ears. Thinks he can rig up some new kind of relay to fix all the signal problems he's been having, which is great, 'cept he's turning the whole damn stockroom on its head to do it. I don't understand half of what's coming out of that kid's mouth these days."

"How's it going?"

The old man shrugged. "Same as always. He wanted to see you soon as he heard, but you know how Vic is about visitors. I'll let him know you're alright, but I don't want to see you up that thing again till you're up to it. Take it easy, you hear me?"

To Wheatley's astonishment, Aaron reached out and folded Chell briefly in his broad, sunburned arms. What was doubly astonishing was that she- fierce, self-reliant, solitary test-solver, explosive wall-hacker, bloody dangerous supercomputer-murdering destroyer of worlds- let him. Didn't even seem to mind.

"Tomorrow, okay?" he said, letting her go.

Chell gave him a salute and a wry smile that suggested she knew damn well she didn't have much choice in the matter, and he ambled off across the grassy little space between the buildings

"Interesting bloke," ventured Wheatley, from behind her. He was examining his own right hand for signs of damage. "Got a, a definite sort of presence, hasn't he?Certainly got the mastery of the old human grip. Thought he was going to have my hand off there for a minute. Not complaining, I'm sure he was just being friendly, but I mean, there's no need to go bonkers with it, really, is there? Er… how long have you known him, then?"

"Since I got here," said Chell.

Wheatley thought that she seemed a bit upset- as bad as he usually was at catching on to things like that- and as if to confirm it she turned away from him and set off at a quick pace, skirting the back of the hall, to the verge of the road. It was narrower than the one he'd carried her down that morning, but it had the same brittle, seasoned look, as if it hadn't seen the regular traffic for which it had been made for decades.

He loped hurriedly after her, trying to work out what to say.

"Er… what's the problem?"

She turned round on him so suddenly that for a moment he was absolutely convinced that she was going to say 'You.' He was so certain, in fact, that it was just as if she'd already said it; he flinched, his mind filling with a dull, inevitable sort of hurt. It seemed incredible, now, that he'd ever stood there and thought I don't need her, when what mattered was that she didn't need him- not any more, not out here. She had all her human friends, all these humans that knew her name and had never tried to kill her, not even once, probably. She'd tell him to get lost, take a long walk off a short plank, and he'd have nothing to fall back on, not even a single reason why she should care.

It was a simple, amazing fact that she had never, ever actually turned around and categorically told him, out loud, that he was useless. It was quite incredible, considering all the promises he'd failed to keep, the disasters he'd caused- and worse, the times he'd actively tried to hurt her, the times he'd deliberately got in her way. It had been a large part of the reason why he'd always been so sure that she actually couldn't speak. She had every right and reason to say it, after all.

She never had- and she didn't now. She just looked up at him for a moment, studying his new face with the same impenetrable, careful scrutiny she gave to a new test, or one of the mysterious murals she'd been so fond of. After a moment, her expression softened a bit, and she reached out and took his wrist- just like she had in the tunnel- and drew him after her, across the road.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

5. The Mistake

Wheatley shut off his optical processors, and prepared to enter Sleep Mode.

After her talk with Aaron, Chell had led the way back to her own small house on the corner. Nobody locked their doors in Eaden, apparently, and Chell, who was nothing if not adaptable, hadn't locked hers when she'd set out for the facility. The news of her injury must have travelled fast, because when they'd walked in (well, Chell had walked in, Wheatley had followed on the second try, clutching his forehead) there had been a little cluster of things sitting on the table; a jam-jar full of flowers, bright yellow and heavy-headed, a bag of apples, a covered stoneware container with a note propped on top. Chell had smiled, read the note- 'WHAT THE HELL, MICHELLE?' and taken the container down the steps into the kitchen.

"Mate of yours?" he'd asked, when she'd come back.

She'd glanced at the note, wryly. "Romy."

"Oh, right, okay, fair enough… only, can't help noticing, is 'Michelle' your-"

"No," she'd said, and had sat down to eat the stuff in the container, which, for some reason, she'd made hotter.

The rest of the evening had passed along the same sorts of lines. He'd wandered and wittered, poking curiously at her possessions, tripping over the rugs, and more or less making an enormous nuisance of himself, while the light had faded slowly from the big window and she'd quietly got on with a list of necessary human sorts of things. She'd eaten, put the long-fall boots away somewhere in the kitchen, then gone upstairs for a while. From the alarming hissing and clonking and hammering sounds which had ensued, she'd apparently gone up there to get some major hydraulics-based DIY work done, which had struck him as a bit odd. Just as he'd made up his mind to go and make sure nothing catastrophic was going on, however, she'd reappeared- a lot cleaner, with her dark hair sticking out at weird wet angles like a storm-tossed seabird, and completely different clothes on.

It took a bit of getting used to, this whole 'clothes' business. Machines- turrets and computers and cores like himself looked the same all the time, aging and corroding maybe, picking up the odd inspection stamp or upgrade, but still keeping more or less the same basic outer shell. Unless they completely switched bodies, as he had- twice, now, no less- their appearance never changed. Even his new avatar, human-looking as it was, would feature the same work shirt and creased tie, the same office-y trousers and hoofing great big sneakers, no matter what happened to it.

Humans, on the other hand, seemed to chuck different bits of clothing on and off all the time. They never settled on one thing. In the first place, he'd got used to her being white and orange, with her hair at the top and her boots at the bottom. When she'd come back to get him, all dusty grey-blue from the waist down and light grey above, well, it was just lucky he was such a whizz at human facial recognition, or they might have had some difficulties. And as if all that wasn't complicated enough, when she'd come downstairs after all the clonking and hissing, she'd changed again, now dark blue around the legs and soft and red everywhere up to her neck, even her arms. Bewildering, was what it was.

She'd looked better afterwards, though, mad hair notwithstanding. With all the grime washed away, it was easy to see that she looked much healthier now than she had four years ago- he'd always had a sort of suspicion that humans weren't really supposed to be sickly-pale and grey around the eyes and pink-blue around the fingers and noses, and it looked like he'd been right. She had a new way of holding herself now, as well, a new liveliness which somehow made her look even more like she was about to take a running jump and kick the universe in the teeth than she had before.

After she'd come back downstairs, she'd fluffed her hair about with a towel for a while, and messed around with the new bandage on her ribs, and then fallen asleep very suddenly at the table. Terrified that she'd started to malfunction again, he'd done the first thing which occurred to him and poked her quite hard in the ear. She'd woken up, cuffed him sharply around the side of the head in retaliation- he'd been leaning anxiously over her at the time, and had therefore been within range- and taken herself off to sleep properly, somewhere upstairs.

"Do you sleep?" she'd asked, just before she'd set off up the tiny staircase.

"Can do," he'd said, cheerily. "Well, more of a sleep mode, really. All simulated, of course, but it's the same sort of thing. Not a lot of point to it, to be honest, for me, other than killing time, but you know, it's an option. It's there."

"So's the sofa," she'd observed, and left him to it.

It had taken him a while to work out what she'd meant, but he'd eventually remembered that yes, humans had a habit of parking themselves horizontally on soft things when they slept. He'd decided that he might as well have a go, in honour of the new body and everything. When in Rome, etcetera.

It was all going fairly well, he felt. He was free, first and foremost, and while technically he'd been free for the last four years, he didn't exactly feel like he could count it as 'freedom.' Space had been more like purgatory, not quite Android Hell or the room where all the robots screamed at you for no reason, but getting up there- maybe not equivalent to Her reign of terror, but still four years of miserable, featureless nothing. This, on the other hand, was the real deal. He was free, outside, and the fact that he wasn't dead was just the icing on the cake.

Not only that, but she wasn't dead, either, and on the face of it she didn't seem to hate him quite as much as he'd expected her to. She was even talking to him now, saying actual words- sentences, even!- and since this was more than any other human had done for nearly as long as he could remember, he couldn't help feeling way ahead of the curve.

He settled back on the sagging sofa, which was a good deal too short for him and necessitated a sort of sideways position, curled like a hedgehog who couldn't be bothered to roll up properly.

It was true that, on paper, Sleep Mode was more or less pointless. It was just an energy conservation setting- not much different from the one which let him touch things without burning them, in this new light-based body. He certainly didn't need to conserve power- the thing ran off sunlight, as far as he could make out, which meant that as long as that big blazing ball up there put in an appearance every so often, he was good to go.

For Wheatley, however, Sleep Mode had probably been the only thing which had kept him sane, stopped him from going utterly scenery-chewing bonkers over those days and months and years and decades when the only alternative had been the long empty maintenance tracks, his own voice echoing off the walls, the silence and decay of the dormant facility.

He curled up a little more- it was still very strange to him, to be all long and angular instead of small and round and cornerless- and slept.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

[Sleep Mode activated]
[error: file incomplete]
[Accessing…]

He stretched, his fingertips brushing the grey-tile ceiling, then settled back into his chair and trundled the squeaky wheels back into the grooves worn in the carpet. The little clock on the shelf above his desk read 03:21, and had for the last four hours- it wasn't the most accurate little thing, and tended to have problems with numbers larger than seven. He was used to interpreting it, and by his calculations (half maths and half wishful thinking) this meant it was nearly eleven o'clock.

It was funny, how a single moment could completely change your idea of 'job satisfaction.' He'd spent the majority of the last few years of his life in this little cubicle, with its clunky computer and the technical manuals hidden everywhere he could find space for them, just him and his To-Do List and his little drinky bird bobbing away under the calendar he'd pinned to the partition. Every weekday from nine to six and three on Saturdays, regular as clockwork, reviewing the buggy code his computer flagged up for him, fixing it as much as he could, and then- select-send- off it went into the pool to be picked up and polished by someone who actually knew what they were doing. As jobs went, his was about as technically difficult and vital to Aperture Laboratories as that of the guy who polished the glass bits on the front of the vending machines. A monkey could do it. A monkey had done it, for a while, but the primate-assisted employee reduction scheme hadn't really panned out that well in the end, and besides, the monkeys had wanted better working conditions.

He didn't mind. It was a necessary job in its own small way, and besides, he was only hanging on to it until something better came along, until the higher-ups got around to having a look at all the amazing ideas he kept sending them and realised that if they wanted to really get things done around here they couldn't do better than come to him. He was going places, he was, any day now. And it wasn't all bad in the meantime, he had his own little cubicle and his own pens, and okay, he had issues with the company's laughable notion of proper legroom, but some people didn't even have a desk so he could hardly complain.

As he settled back, his elbow caught the edge of the desk, making his monitor wobble and knocking a plastic fork into the shredder (everything was stacked precariously up against everything else in his messy, tiny cubicle, and small stationery-based catastrophes like this happened on a fairly regular basis). It made a horrendous noise, and he nearly fell off the squeaky chair altogether in his hurry to lunge for the plug before it could chew the whole thing up and choke on it.

He stood up to get another fork, glanced absently over the partition in the direction of the photocopier-

-and fell helplessly, hopelessly, in love.

There was a girl by the photocopier. She was taking things one by one out of a red plastic crate wedged against her hip and lining them up on the small table by the machine. She was neatly and casually dressed, with dark hair in a ponytail and the most serious, most intense, most amazing eyes he'd ever seen in his life.

He'd never seen her before. He had no idea what she was doing there, and was in no state of mind to be able to work it out from the clues available. Having spent the last thirty-six years or so prior to this moment fairly convinced that the idea of love at first sight was a nice sort of thing in concept but probably didn't really exist, it was extremely disconcerting to discover that he'd been completely wrong.

The shock had a serious impact on him. It had certainly had a serious impact on his little clock, which he promptly knocked off its shelf and into a half-eaten Cup Noodle in his hurry to duck down below the level of the partition before something awful happened, like her happening to look up from her crate and spotting him.

He waited a moment, heart stuck in his mouth like a large, inconvenient gobstopper, then dived across the aisle to the cubicle across the way.

"Who's she?"

"Jesus Christ, learn to knock! Who's who?"

"The girl by the photocopier!"

"What, the bagel girl? No idea. Look, I'm really busy right now, I've got a deadline, and between you and me, my team leader stopped coming in to work last week, so I'm kind of-"

"Bagel- wait, wait, hold on, rewind, what bagel girl? We've never had bagels, nobody told me anything about bagels, since when did that happen?"

"Since we got the memo. Bagel delivery, weekdays, some new outsourced catering contract, hell if I know. They're bagels. They're good. They're also all we're likely to get since OSHA shut down the cafeteria. And I still have a deadline. Anything else?"

"I never got any memo!"

"You've locked yourself out of your email again, haven't you?"

"W- okay, never mind, never mind, there might possibly have been a memo, but-"

"Look, if you want a bagel, go and get one. You don't actually need a requisition form."

"Oh God, I could," he said, sliding down the cubicle wall, as if the realisation that he could actually go and get a bagel from the girl by the photocopier was equivalent to Newton's epiphany on gravity, or Archimedes' Eureka moment in the bath. "I actually could."

"Great. I'm happy for you. While you're up, get me a ham on rye."

He gulped, knotting his tie up in a clammy stranglehold. "Right. Right, okay. Not a problem. I'll just walk over there and go 'hi! Here for a bagel! What have you got?' Though, on second thoughts, sounds a little pushy, bit demanding, maybe something more like 'hello, any bagels left, then?' though, of course, that's sort of insinuating that she hasn't had enough foresight to match supply with demand, could be taken as a bit of an insult, so possibly it's better to go with something specific, something along the lines of 'hey! After a bagel, got something with cheese in?' Except I don't really like cheese that much, also, sounds a bit wimpy, really, cheese, something a bit more sort of manly might be better for a first impression, right? What's a proper manly sort of bagel?'"

"Oh for the love of GOD I have a DEADLINE!"

"Right, yes, you're right, best thing is probably to be natural," he said, getting to his feet and sneaking another look across at the photocopier. She was still there, stacking bagels into neat pyramids and checking them off a list with a slight crease of concentration just between her eyebrows, and he felt his pulse hike to something between a gallop and a hum. "Be myself. Improvise. Nothing to it. What's the worst that could happen?- Oh, God- right, no, no, not thinking about that, definitely not thinking about worst-case scenarios right now, that's a bad path to go down-"

"PLEASE! LEAVE!"

"Okay, right, wish me luck. Here I go." He swallowed again, ran a finger around his collar, tugged his tie straight, and-

[redacted; file corrupt]
[diverting active]
[rebooting…]

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

-fell off the sofa.

The front room was full of warm early-morning sunlight. The radio was on, sputtering faintly as it played something quiet and a little jazzy, and the solid thump of his avatar hitting the floor shook the windowsill it was perched on and made it spit a loud burst of static.

Chell was standing at the big table, sliding freshly-baked rolls from a wire grill to a slatted wooden tray. She paused and watched him struggle to his feet with a slightly quizzical expression, then went back to her work. There was flour on her nose and her shirt- grey, this time, no sleeves, she'd changed again- and it looked like she'd been up for some time.

"Morning," said Wheatley, leaning casually on the table in a carefully-calculated impression of somebody who hadn't just had to pick himself up off the floor. His head felt a little overstuffed, as if there was too much information crammed in there the wrong way around, all squashed up to fit and not meshing quite right with anything that might have helped him make sense of it.

"Hey, guess what? You were in my dream! Just remembered. Don't know what it was about, really, but you were definitely in it, you and something about… I dunno… bagels, possibly? Yeah, you and bagels, I'm pretty sure those were the most salient details. Eerie."

Wincing a little, she leaned across the table for a thing that looked like a very puffy, patchworked pair of gloves sewn together at the wrists. It was slightly out of her reach, and Wheatley grabbed it for her, passed it across, kept talking.

"Wonder what it means? You know, symbolism and that. If you had one of those, er, dream dictionaries, I think they're called, we could look it up. The bagels, I mean, not you. You wouldn't be in there, obviously, not unless it was an uncannily specific sort of dream dictionary, although to be fair, I think you were more important than the bagels, in the dream itself. Maybe there'd be an entry for something like 'mysterious and taciturn female,' or 'short dark-haired stranger' or 'pretty human with baked g- ahhhh, aha, no, umm, of course, when I say 'pretty,' I am of course referring to your basic human aesthetic social-ideological ideals of beauty, obviously, not presuming to make any judgement calls on the subject myself, although if I didI'd probably still… er…"

Wheatley trailed off. She'd stopped stacking rolls into a second layer in the crate, and was looking at him again, a small crease between her eyebrows.

"…and, and, er, is it just me, or is it bloody hot in here? I don't think it's just me. This little device I'm in hasn't got a fan in it or anything, you know, no onboard cooling systems whatsoever, so it's a legitimate concern. I could seriously be overheating my whole central processor here. In fact, you know what, just to be safe, I think I'll go and get a bit of fresh air. Back in a tick!"

He lunged for the door, which, mercifully, she'd propped open.

The front door of the little bakery opened directly out on a wide, grassless, half-paved area surrounded by other buildings. He hadn't paid a lot of attention to it last night- they'd only skirted it briefly and he'd been anxious to get out of the gathering darkness and into somewhere with functioning electric light- but now he had a better look it occurred to him that this was probably the hub of the town, whatever you called one of those. A sort of central square, except it was more of a flattened half-circle, really, a worn-down widening around the place where the roads met.

Wheatley let out a pointless breath and parked himself on the curb outside Chell's front door. Her home, like most of the other buildings around the edge of the square-squashed-circle-whatever, had a sort of stitched-together look from the outside, the same piecemeal appearance as the red-brick hall with its rickety bell-tower across the way, as if it had been based on an older structure left half-standing before she- or some other industrious human- had come along and patched it up.

"Alright, that was a bit weird," he said, propping his chin on his knees. "Don't think she noticed anything though, think I might have got away with that, just about. Smooth."

He certainly hadn't intended to steer the conversation- to him, his rambling and her silence was a conversation- into such a perilous area. He had a vague suspicion that what he'd dreamed- whatever he'd dreamed- was to blame. He couldn't remember it properly for the life of him, but he remembered seeing her- and the way he'd felt, as if- well, as utterly daft as it was, as if he'd-

Wheatley was not exactly slow. His thoughts actually moved fairly quickly. It was just that they moved in all the wrong directions, and at the wrong times, and got distracted, and waylaid, and met each other coming back, and went for little wanders to take in the scenery, and bumped into each other, and basically did everything except what Chell's thoughts did, which was move in clean economical straight lines and not stop for anything. He often ended up with no idea why he'd done something, or said something- only that, on the spur of the moment, something had told him it was a brilliant idea. For the most part, he was driven by how things felt- for example, how it had felt good, the previous day, to re-introduce himself to her. It had felt almost like a fresh start, as if you really could do something like that, as if the two of them could just choose to go 'hallo, we haven't met' and get rid of all the nastiness lurking between them. The past, the things he'd done.

Machines could forget like that, they could be reformatted, lose their memories through corruption or have them restored to factory settings-

-and humans could lose their memories too, of course, if their brains got knocked around enough. Chell herself was proof of that-

His fragile train of thought was interrupted as she stepped out of her front door, balancing her crate on her hip as she pulled it shut behind her. She'd pulled an old shirt on over her grey thing, and brushed the flour off her nose.

"Oi-oi," said Wheatley, scrambling hurriedly to his feet. "Just- just getting some air, like I said. Lovely day out here, actually, very refreshing. Update on the old onboard cooling systems; seem to be A-OK now, must have just been a momentary glitch, so, uhh, no harm done. Just, er, leave a window open or something in future, alright? We're off, then?"

She nodded, paused to get a better grip on the crate, then set off across the circle-square-area. He followed her, his lanky legs taking more or less one stride for every two of hers, yet still somehow managing to lag behind.

There were quite a few other humans about, heading across the square on errands of their own, standing in twos and threes, chatting. A small group of children were dashing around in front of the hall, playing catch with a small, brightly-painted cube that hovered crankily back and forth, evading their snatching hands.

The adults who noticed Chell, Wheatley noticed, seemed pretty happy to see her. They waved or called out to her, gave him curious, slightly confused looks which made him feel more than a little awkward. Hurrying to follow her a bit more closely, it occurred to him that he did sort of stick out a bit, and not just because he was wearing a tie. He hadn't quite realised it until now- seeing lots of humans at once for the first time in forever- but he wasn't just a bit tall, in this new body. He was very, very tall. He was tall enough that anyone looking at him would immediately go, 'Christ, that bloke's tall."

It was slowly starting to dawn on him that being big, bigger than everyone else, wasn't necessarily the brilliant be-all-and-end-all achievement he'd thought it was. It wasn't just because you tended to hit your head on things and you couldn't fit on sofas. You couldn't fit anywhere. You were an albatross flailing around on stilts and people- normal-sized people- looked at you as if you were sort of letting the side down, as if you were going around being all freakishly tall at them on purpose.

Chell, who wasn't particularly tall herself, looked taller than she was because she held herself as if she had carbon-steel in her spine. Wheatley, on the other hand, found himself doing the opposite, stooping a bit as he hurried after her, apologising for all six feet and seven inches with a perpetual, half-embarrassed, half-hearted shrug.

"Amazing, all this. Proper ingenious. All this architecture, free-standing structures, windows, doors, you name it, all over the place, and it's not as if you can just go 'oh, I fancy a wall over here' and toss up a few panels, job done, is it? All this, basically made out of dirt and bits of rock. And it looks pretty sturdy, too, I mean, you couldn't just push it over, I'm guessing. Probably not quite as resilient, I mean, it wouldn't stand up to anything over a couple of thousand Kelvin, for example, or a major earthquake, ha, no, this lot would fall apart like a, a house of cards in one of those, but still, bloody good try, given the available resources. Look, that one's huge!"

The building he'd spotted definitely was the largest on the square; three-storied, heavy, wedged into the rough triangle of open ground between the main street and a smaller road which ran south into the distance. Over the sun-bleached canopy, flaking white letters on the brick front spelled out;

EADEN GENERAL
EST. 2030

Chell stepped into the shade under the canopy, balanced the crate on her hip again, and pushed the door open, jangling the bell hanging from a spring just inside.

Walking in out of the rising mid-morning heat, the interior of the general store was cool and dark. The walls were whitewashed and panelled up to waist-height in varnished wood, but it was hard to make out much of them because of the sheer volume of things in the way.

Rows of shelves ran the length of the big room, mismatched and multi-purpose, from stackers which were barely more than planks fixed to metal rebar, to dark polished shelves with woodworked, scrolling edges. A bewildering variety of goods covered every surface, from giant sacks of flour and grain and pyramids of canned goods, to rows of storm lamps, clothes, folded on racks and hanging from pegs, baskets of fruit and vegetables, medicines, things in jars, great spools of wire and string. Signs hung everywhere, some hand-lettered, some printed in big black inky letters, as if they'd been hammered out on a giant typewriter with a slightly dodgy letter 'e'.

A geriatric-looking chiller cabinet buzzed complainingly in a corner, its blue-lit interior full of bottles and jugs and- oddly enough- some things which looked like machine parts. A scrolling LED screen hung above the wide counter, displaying a running list of goods and prices in dotty amber type, and a radio on the counter- a much bigger and sturdier model than the one in Chell's front room- was chattering away to itself, the signal badly fuzzy but just about recognisable as some kind of sports report.

Aaron Halifax was leaning across the counter, browsing through a seed catalogue as thick as a house brick with a young woman about Chell's age, who had her back to her and was dividing her attention between poking various pictures of vegetables in the catalogue, talking, and restraining a black-and-white collie, which seemed to be harbouring an unrealistic conviction that by jumping like a mad four-legged kangaroo, it would be able to reach the large side of bacon hanging from the rafters by the chiller cabinet.

Chell set her crate down on the only empty space the counter had to offer, between a few glass jars of candy and a display of different-sized roofing nails. Aaron glanced up and grinned his slow grin at her, and his customer turned, spotted her, and in the space of a moment had hurdled her own dog and tackled her violently around the shoulders.

"Chell!"

Chell managed to absorb the impact without falling over the crate of potatoes behind her, although it was a near thing. The collie bounced around her legs, sniffed Wheatley's ankles suspiciously, then flattened its ears and backed off, making a low noise like a gear skipping.

Wheatley stepped hurriedly behind Chell.

"What happened to y- Duke!" The woman grabbed the collie's collar. "Siddown! What happened to you! Vic said you'd been shot and- no, Duke, bad! -and nobody round here'll give me a straight answer, let alone General Halifax here, I might as well be talking to a-"

"Romy," said Chell, disentangling herself, "I'm fine. Thanks for the soup."

"You and I have a very different definition of 'fine', Mi-chelle! Don't expect soup next time you show up dead out of nowhere and don't even tell anyone where you're going, I'll tell you that right now!"

"I don't get soup if I'm dead," said Chell, dryly. "Noted. Aaron-"

"Not to butt in or anything," said Wheatley, who was watching the bristling collie with some alarm, "but- er- what is that thing, exactly?"

"What's what thing?" said Romy, who appeared to have only just noticed that Wheatley was there at all. "Where did this guy fall from?"

"Oh, er, recently? About, um, two hundred and forty thousand miles above- ouch!"

"This is Wheatley," said Chell, a little too quickly.

"Yeah- specifically, that was my shin! Just 'cause it's not actually there in terms of conventional matter-based physics, it doesn't mean you can go mashing your foot into it whenever you like, cheers!"

He eyed Duke with dislike. "So that's a dog, is it? Is it, er, for anything in particular? Got any useful function, apart from making noise and looking like it needs a haircut?"

Chell was starting to feel like she might be getting a headache. Romy was staring at Wheatley, appropriately enough, as if he had just landed from the moon, as were most of Aaron's other customers who had witnessed the exchange so far. Chell didn't like to be anywhere near the centre of attention at the best of times, and she really did not feel in the mood to start trucking out a load of long-winded explanations to everyone who happened to be in earshot, particularly when the whole thing came dangerously near to the topic which was still giving her cold sweats about broaching with anyone here, even now.

Fortunately, Aaron had spotted her discomfort, and he chose this moment to close the seed catalogue and come around the counter to collect the crate of rolls.

"If you can't get Duke to behave in my store, Miss Hatfield, going to have to ask you to tie him up outside."

Romy looked as if she might have argued, but Duke chose that moment to make a sudden stiff-legged sort of lunge at Wheatley's ankle, stepping the hitched-gear noise up to something closer to a revving engine. Wheatley yelped and backed into a pyramid of paint cans, which were luckily too well-stacked to even wobble.

"Duke! I don't know what's the matter with the dumb- Jason! Max! Get up here and take Duke out front!"

A couple of small boys, who up until this point had been engaged in tearing up and down the furthest aisle and murdering each other with bright-painted wooden ray-guns, came racing up to the front of the store and grabbed the growling collie by the collar.

"Hey, it's Chell!"

"Ellie Otten said you were dead!"

Chell shrugged at them. "I got better."

"Whoah! Who's that guy?"

"Is he a giant?"

"He's like a Strider!"

"No, I'm not," Wheatley told them, loftily, unflattening himself from the paint cans and straightening his tie. "Whatever one of those is. Um, incidentally, are you clones, by any chance? 'Cause I was under the impression that cloning technology wasn't really conventionally sanctioned, beyond-"

"We're twins," said Max, staring up at Wheatley. "Why are you so tall?"

"Max," said Romy, in the same voice she'd used on the collie.

"I'm only asking."

"I- well- I just am, alright?" said Wheatley, who was starting to get a bit annoyed, mostly out of self-consciousness. "No need to go on about it, really, is there? I mean, what about you? Why are you so ginger?"

"What's that on your shirt?" said Jason.

Wheatley looked down at the Aperture logo on his front pocket. It was smallish, and an unobtrusive sort of grey, but he still wasn't amazingly happy with it being there for all to see. He stuck his hand over it.

"Um, just- just a logo, doesn't mean anything in particular. So you're twins, are you? I've heard about this, actually. Which- um- which one of you's the evil one? Just for future reference."

"He is," chorused the twins, immediately, pointing at each other. They grabbed the collie's collar again, and- giggling- dragged him out of the store.

"They get that question a lot," said Romy, as the door jingled shut behind them. "I think they rehearse."

"Well, I wasn't about to pick a fight with them, was I?" said Wheatley, reasonably. "I mean, they were armed."

"Come out back for a second, okay?" said Aaron to Chell, steering a confused-looking Romy gently out of the way by the shoulders and opening the hatch in the counter. "Folks, I'll be back in a couple of shakes- and by the by, Lindsay Randall, I know exactly how many marbles are in that jar, so don't get any ideas."

The stockroom of Aaron's store was a wide, low-ceilinged workshop area. Once, it had been no more than what it was called- a place to store stock- but by this stage in its life the entire space was lined with long wooden workbenches, their scarred surfaces littered with machine parts, tools, a treasure cave of disassembled, unrecognisable junk. On second glance, there was clear delineation at work here, a method to the madness- most of the clutter was strictly heavy mechanics, hydraulics, farm equipment, but a couple of the far workbenches were set aside, stacked with computer parts, circuitboards, wires, the shells of a couple of disassembled monitors, a soldering iron and magnifying lenses on a wall-mounted rack by a idling computer monitor. The CPU connected to it was a gunmetal-grey thing propped up on its case on the desk, its innards exposed, whirring quietly away to itself.

The air smelled of oil and old metal, despite the far door being wide open on a back yard of packed dirt, and Wheatley was caught between a sense of uneasiness at the sight of so many dead, disassembled machines and hardware, and a much more confusing feeling which, if he'd tried to pinpoint it, he might have realised was security. There was a lot of tech in here- dead or alive- and for the first time since he'd left the facility, he wasn't in a minority.

Aaron wandered over to a cluster of spare parts in the corner. He ran his hand over something which looked like an oversized, soot-blackened bike wheel without the spokes, and gave it an idle tap, setting it turning back and forth on the wall.

"You feel up to talking now?"

Wheatley would have guessed, from Chell's pale, set face, that she didn't, not in the slightest. Clearly his ability to interpret human facial expressions was a bit buggier than he'd thought, though, because she nodded, took a deep breath.

"There's a- a place," she said. "About a day's walk to the northeast. That's where I... came from. Monday morning... I went back."

"And nearly got yourself killed for your trouble," said Aaron, leaving the wheel spinning gently, and turning towards her. "Chell, I'd be the last one in the world to make you dig up things you'd rather leave buried, but it seems to me, that if there's something that dangerous that close to us, maybe it'd be a plan to go take a-"

"NO!"

If he'd actually had any skin, Wheatley would have jumped out of it. It wasn't just the sudden volume- although that was unexpected enough, coming from her direction- it was the way she suddenly ignited, going from still and tense to explosive, in the same way a nuclear reaction is explosive. It was a contained explosion, under control but only just, every part of her slight body braced to snapping point by some kind of fearful inner chain of combustion, her eyes blazing in her pale face.

Aaron didn't look quite as alarmed as Wheatley felt, but then, he'd probably only seen her like this when her bread dough didn't rise properly or something, some minor crisis which ended in a few blistered fingers and a charred French stick, whereas the last time Wheatley remembered seeing her face sort of implode like that, the result had been hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage to vital computer systems that happened to have been attached to him at the time, and- indirectly, admittedly- his being ripped out of his body and chucked into space.

"Hey, now-"

"That place-" She struggled. "It's poison, Aaron. Leave it alone."

She looked up, wildly, as if she'd forgotten for a moment that there was anyone else there at all, and caught Wheatley's eye. He really would have been much happier if she hadn't, just then- as scary-brilliant as she was when she got worked up like this, it was the kind of grand awe-inspiring force of nature that you felt better watching from the safety of a concrete bunker a few miles away, and if anyone happened to have a pair of those special smoked glasses lying around spare in there as well, that would be ideal.

"Wheatley- tell him."

Because the thing was, if you didn't, if you stayed at ground zero and took your chances, this sort of thing was liable to happen. Wheatley opened his mouth a couple of times before he could get anything coherent out of it.

"Wh- waitwait, wait, what, tell him what?"

She shot him a look so white-hot and deadly that he suddenly wished very much that he was a sphere again, and could roll his optic nearly all the way up into his inner shell and put a layer of mostly impenetrable metal between himself and her. He cringed.

"Right! Right, understood, got you, tell him, alright- it's- it's- well, like she said, it's a place. It's underground, and it- it's bloody huge. Goes down for - and I- look, I don't really want to go into it, to be honest, I'd sort of much rather not, can't you just-"

He glanced appealingly at her, which was a mistake, because it allowed him to get a better look at her expression.

"-alright! Alright, bloody hell, where was I? Oh, right, it goes on for miles- bottomless, really- as soon as you think you've got is all mapped out, whoops, what's that over there, it's a whole other bit. And it all moves around, so you couldn't really map it out anyway- shifts about, like a big sort of Rubix cube, and I don't know about you but personally I never could get the hang of those. Needs fingers, see, something like that, needs that whole sort of manual dexterity thing which, up until fairly recently, I did not actually have. Not that that's particularly relevant one way or another, but-"

He swallowed, twisting his hands around each other. If he was attempting to demonstrate his new manual dexterity, he wasn't doing it very well.

"-but, but, it's not that you need to worry about. I mean, yeah, you could get lost if you wandered in there, well, you probably would get lost if, if you wandered in there, actually, get stuck somewhere with no way out and starve to death if you were lucky, or fall down a pit or something, but that's sort of the best-case scenario, because- because of Her."

He stammered on, a blinking, twitching, nervous mess, far too caught up in the nightmare he was describing to try to temper it with any trace of his usual false bravado. Just speaking about the facility, about Her, hearing his own voice shakily describing everything he'd tried so hard to escape was nearly as bad as actually being back there. He wanted to stop, but he simply didn't have the nerve- not while she was still glaring at him like that, as if daring him to make another objection.

"And She's a- a proper lunatic, I'm not kidding- She's not human, by the way, making that absolutely clear, She is nothing like you lot- and She controls everything down there. Being in there is like- it's like being in Her mind, and She's a genius squared by I don't know how many times, and She's totally flaming bonkers, and She bloody hates you. I- I mean, She literally does not care if you live or die, because all that matters to Her, and I mean all that matters to Her, is Science. And if She needs to kill you, 'cause of Science, ohh, She will. Without even thinking about it. Argh, splat, you're dead, count up how many Science points you got, onto the next one. Chell here is the only human that ever managed to get one over Her, and she only managed it because- because- I-I don't actually even know how she managed it, to be honest, but it probably involved a lot of explosions. Oh, God- and to be honest it's not much better if you're a machine, really, because fine, it's, it's harder for Her to kill you, but that doesn't mean She hasn't got a whole list full of other options, other things She could have a go at, while you're there."

Wheatley stared at the scuffed toes of his sneakers. He was shaking.

"And dying's bad- probably, really bad- they told me it was- I, I don't know, I've never died- but I think probably some things... some things are even worse."

There was a silence. Wheatley, who didn't feel up to looking anywhere else right now, continued to study his sneakers. There was a nasty gouge out of the rubber texture on the right one- it looked like whoever it was that had contributed their biometrics to the avatar in the first place had taken a run up and kicked something pretty hard. Vaguely, he hoped it hadn't been a football.

The tense atmosphere in the stockroom was broken by a faint crash and an outbreak of shouting from the other side of the wall. With a gentle clunk, Aaron put the whatsit he'd been tinkering with down on the nearest workbench, and started for the door. As far as it was possible to tell, between his craggy brows and dark crinkled eyes, he looked thoughtful, and very sober.

"Hold that thought a second," he said, and left, closing the door behind him.

Wheatley gulped, scrubbing a shaky hand across his face, under the hard-light ghost of his glasses, leaving them askew. "Oh, God. Let's not do that again, okay? Let's not go for an encore. Know it sounds daft, but just thinking about it- I- I was bloody terrified."

"Yeah."

She looked up at him. There was a smile there, but it wasn't a happy smile. It certainly wasn't anything like the one she'd given Aaron, yesterday, outside the doctors'. There was a bitter note to it, and something else- hard, and a little... guilty?

"And convincing."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"You used me!"

Wheatley strode out of the workshop's back door, yanking his head to the side at the last minute to avoid smacking it into the frame, resembling nothing so much as a furious giraffe with an unusually bad sense of its own dimensions.

"You bloody used me!"

Chell followed him, arms folded. "A little."

He swung round on her. "Oh, fine, a little? Yeah, that makes me feel so much better, that does. Yeah, you knew having to go on about Her'd scare the pants off me so Father Christmas back there'd take your word for it, but it's fine, you were only using me a little, I obviously have no right to feel badly treated in any way, shape, or form!"

"Look-"

"I am of course being extremely sarcastic right now, just in case you weren't picking up on that!"

"People do what he says. If he thinks-"

"Yeah, I get the basic idea, thanks! I may possibly be a bit slowish on the uptake sometimes, but I'm not, as I may have mentioned once or twice before, a moron!"

The yard was full of parts of ancient vehicles, mouldering generators, salvaged scrap metal, hulks of heavy equipment either given up for dead or in the process of being restored. It wasn't easy, looking at some of the rusting hulks, to guess which category they belonged to. Wheatley splashed through an oily puddle and kicked the front bumper of a rotting M35 cargo truck, either hoping to relieve his feelings or replicate the ding on his right sneaker. The bumper made a nasty groaning noise, and fell off.

"Of course, it doesn't matter if I end up feeling like I'm about to have a flipping heart attack, does it, as long as you get to prove your point! I mean, it's not going to do me any harm, is it? I haven't even got a bloody heart! Clearly, right, obviously, that then gives you total carte blanche to take the heart I have not in fact got- unless you're talking in a purely metaphorical sense, which I am- and kick it around like a- a- football! Oh, right, sorry, in retrospect that makes total sense! Should have known! I am still being very sarcastic here, by the way!"

"I figured."

"And don't you give me that look, lady! You think this is hilarious, don't you? No, really, it's great, go on, everyone have a laugh at wimpy little Wheatley, he gets absolutely scared stiff if you force him to relive the time a maniac supercomputer with the powers of a bloody god crushed him half to death and left him for scrap metal, or the time She stuck things in his brain and made him replay the worst parts of his entire life over and over,it's brilliant! Hey, that's a point, I only just thought of that now! Making me remember all that, yeah, master stroke, you know what?"

She'd dropped her arms by now, and was watching him, wary, apprehensive. A warning twinge at the back of his mind told him that she probably knew where he was going with this, being the whizz at joining the dots together that she was, but he didn't care. He was too angry- offended- hurt- to stop.

"You know what? She'd be proud. Yeah, you heard me, exactly like something She'd pull, that was. Nice to know you two have something in c-"

Her open palm smacked hard across the side of his jaw, snapping his neck back in a display of artificial kinetics which would have been extremely impressive if it hadn't also stung like hell. He recoiled, as did she- he holding his jaw, she her bandaged side.

They stared at each other. All of a sudden, the metre or so of oily packed dirt between them felt like a vast, vast distance, far too wide even for him to reach across. He saw stark pain in her eyes and realised that, without planning to- of course, since when did anything he planned work this well- he'd hurt her again.

"Oh," he said. "No. No, I didn't-"

Her eyes narrowed. Wheatley shut up, took a stumbling step backwards, tripped over the bumper, and made a run for it.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"What's up with him?"

Chell turned, quickly. Aaron was standing in the workshop's back doorway, shading his eyes against the sun with the back of his hand.

"That Randall kid is a regular genius for not listening to good advice," he said. "Now I get to close while we pick up five hundred thirty-two marbles and a load of broken glass, which isn't exactly my idea of recreation. You okay?"

She started to shrug out of sheer habit, then stopped.

Aaron had always, always been straight with her. He'd never so much as shaded the truth for her benefit, showing a lack of duality which could easily be mistaken for naivety by someone who'd never seen him dicker with a salesman or a trader from out of town. And she had been honest with him in return, but she hadn't exactly trusted him with her confidence, had she? Not on this single, vital subject.

When she looked at it that way, it was a pretty shabby way to treat a friend. And as for Wheatley- yes, he was a hypocrite of unbelievable proportions to accuse her of using him, while being so stunningly blind to the irony of it- but the horrible thing was, he had a point. It was a small, crooked sort of point, and it needed sharpening, but it was there. She'd seen his fear, his reluctance, and she'd forced him anyway, because she'd known he'd make a convincing spectacle.

But it was for a good reason-

She shook her head. She didn't know how to explain to Aaron that she was having to fight off the growing feeling that she'd managed to live among humans for four years without actually managing to become any more humane. It sat in her stomach like a stone in the bottom of a pond, flat and murky, sickish.

"Didn't think so." Aaron was watching her closely. He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a little book; leatherbound, scarred and weathered and carefully stitched together. "Here, I was looking through this old thing last night. My dad's old journal- he was just a kid then, back when this place was just a heap of rubble in the road."

Taking his time, he leafed through a couple of the soft, yellowed pages. "I ever tell you my grandaddy used to run supply caches for the Resistance?"

The Resistance. It was a powerful, evocative phrase, even now. The people who had stood up for humanity in its darkest hour were regarded as near-mythical heroes, and their stories struck a chord even for Chell, who'd never even known they'd existed until four years ago. She was, after all, pretty damn resistant herself.

Most of the time, she chalked up the loss of her memory as a mercy, plain and simple. The world had changed beyond recognition while she'd been in cryosleep in the Relaxation Centre. If she'd had memories- friends, family, a home, a life-

As it was, she had nothing to tie her to the world which had existed before the Combine invasion, before the Seven Hour War, the portal storms, the Resistance liberation of Earth- and she was practical enough to be grateful. She couldn't even imagine how much harder would it have been, walking out into a world where everything she'd known was gone forever, and having to live the rest of her life knowing what she'd lost.

The way it was, she'd had a lot to learn when she'd first arrived in the gentle little community of Eaden, but then, what the hell was she, if not a quick learner? She'd absorbed as much as she could, as much as was relevant to her new life, and trusted that she'd pick up the rest over time. She'd never seen a Vortigaunt face-to-face, or travelled any further than New Detroit, but she had as good a grasp of the history as any of them, and after the things she'd faced in the facility, none of it had fazed her that much. It had actually been the smaller things that had been harder to relearn, the trivial little things which should by all logic have been easy to get the hang of.

Proportion had been the difficulty, mostly- having a sense of it, and adjusting it to fit her new life. Hard to care that much about questions such as whether or not you should wash your hair in the morning, to frame an example, when you had previously been occupied with questions like whether or not you could sprint into cover before the turret-fire took your knees off.

It was only lucky that she'd found something that she could really focus on- something that felt right, that she found she could do- to connect her to her new life, or she might have ended up finding it difficult to care about anything at all.

Aaron tapped his finger on an open page. "Now, Dad used to help out whenever he could, and one day he was out scouting around to the north, when he stumbled across something kind of out of the ordinary. Said he took it for a crash site, at first, a downed Hunter, something like that... but it didn't quite add up."

He looked up at her. "Talks about a big paved lot on the edge of some woods, crater in the ground and a bunch of junk just lying around for no good reason, rusting away. Something off about it, too. 'Couldn't say why, but I felt like I was being watched. There might have been more to find, but I didn't stay any longer than I had to. It was no good, that place. I'm not going back.'

He held the book out to her. She took it, and felt a cold shock go right through her, from her scalp to her toes. Halifax Sr. hadn't been much of an artist, but the faded pencil sketches under the words were clear enough. There was the fence, the little guard hut with its striped barrier, light poles leaning like shattered spaghetti, a graveyard of parts against a line of dark scribbled trees. It was incredibly eerie- like looking at a snapshot right out of her own mind.

"Have to admit, it never occurred to me till yesterday that my dad's no-good place and the place you came from might've been one and the same. If I thought about it at all, I guess I just put it down to a jumpy kid expecting Combine round every corner. If I'd known-"

"-you might've gone looking," said Chell. She was staring fixedly at the page. "Thank God you didn't."

He gave her a thoughtful, measuring look. "That no-good, huh?"

Her voice was fervent. "Worse."

Aaron was silent for a while, rubbing his eyebrow absently with a thumb. "You know I'd do anything it took to protect this town," he said, eventually. "Figure you would, too, come to that. And from what I can tell this place is trouble with a capital T. But if the only three people I know actually been there- you, my dad, this young fella of yours- are all telling me to leave well enough alone, I'm not too thick-skulled to listen."

Chell, who had been unconsciously holding herself like a prisoner about to receive sentence, started breathing again.

She was not the kind of person who set much store by big showy verbal promises- and with something this serious, she wouldn't have presumed to demand one from Aaron anyway, even if she had been. It was enough for her that he properly understood the gravity of it, the danger- now that she could tell he was convinced, that his good sense would not allow him to take it lightly, her mind was far more easy.

Under the circumstances, she'd even let him get away with the young fella of yours.

"Speaking of thick-skulled... you'd probably best catch up with him while you still can. On those legs, he'll be halfway to the Boneyards by now. You know," Aaron added, glancing across the yard to the open gate at the far end, "moment I set eyes on him, I thought he reminded me of someone. Took me till just now to place it."

His eyes stayed on her, kindly, concerned. "Someone I met 'bout four years ago now. Just walked into town one day out of nowhere, just like that. Jumping at shadows, looking at every little thing like they'd never seen like of it before, like any second they were going to wake up and find themselves somewhere else. Somewhere they weren't too partial to, either."

She looked away.

"Now, that someone... she was strong, and she got better. Him, though..." Aaron gave an expressive shrug. Other folks, the shrug suggested, might rate Wheatley's chances how they liked, but he, Aaron, had his own opinion, and it wasn't overly positive. "Kind of squirrelly, isn't he?"

Chell bit the sore place on her tongue lightly, deciding how to respond. On one level she agreed- outburst aside, so far Wheatley seemed to be taking to her town like a duck to lava. It was probably stretching the boundaries of optimism to expect anything else, and yet...

"If you'd been there," she said, eventually, "you'd be squirrelly, too."

She pressed his father's journal gently back into his hands, and headed out through the gate.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

6. The Tower

Wheatley was lost.

He'd stopped running fairly quickly, as it had dawned on him that he didn't actually have any destination in mind, other than simply away. Unfortunately, by that time he'd already been out of sight of anything which might have given him a clue about where he was. There was a tallish sort of brambly hedge to his right, and the road at his feet seemed to be leading directly out of town and into the fields beyond. It was small, and rutted, and if the neat white-painted sign nailed to the side of the barn to his left was to be believed, someone with lots of optimism to spare had come along at some point and named it Hope Street.

The barn looked slightly familiar. It was tall and red-timbered, a little like the one near the Eaden sign, except he didn't remember the goods elevator running nearly the height of the structure, trailed with creepers, or the cavernous set of doors in its long red-timbered side. It took him a while to realise that it was in fact the same barn- he was simply looking at it from the other side.

He wandered a little way into the field behind the barn, kicking gloomily at things- it wasn't bad, kicking things, once you got the hang of it, he could sort of see why humans liked doing it so much.

"Brilliant, that was. Absolutely brilliant. Why don't you try opening your stupid great big gob a bit wider next time? Might be able to fit the other foot in it. Because obviously, there's nothing she wants to hear more than me comparing her to the mad cow that tried to kill her a bunch of times, that is obviously going to go down like a weighted storage cube, that is, really going to make her feel better about having me hanging around. Rrrgh."

He snarled, smacked himself on the forehead, and flopped miserably against the big, contoured lump of metal at his back.

"I don't even know why I got so worked up. It's her not saying anything, that's what it is. Just standing there, in silence- yeah, maybe saying the odd word, throwing the occasional couple of syllables out there, but for the most part letting me do all the shouting so she can stay all calm and hang on to her precious... being all perfectly justified and having the moral high ground. Silently. Manipulative, is the word for that. Practically Machiavellian, and I do not use that word lightly."

Wheatley sagged. "Oh, God... that's all bollocks, isn't it? It's not her fault at all. Wish it was, though. I'd feel a lot better, for a start."

He looked down at the thing he was leaning against- a chunk of half-rounded, riveted metal, dark and discoloured, like the shell of some giant prehistoric snail. From its highest point, a thick length of steel rebar climbed upwards, strung with wires.

Absently, Wheatley glanced up- and did a double-take, starting backwards, mouth hanging open.

"Oh, what? What's one of those?"

Above him, rooted there like some strange species of extraterrestrial tree, a three-legged structure towered into the sky. It was taller than the barn- taller than the town hall, or anything else in the town, come to that- a looming, elongated pyramid of criss-crossing metal girders at least thirty feet high.

The whole structure was festooned with cables and wires of all colours, strapped to the metal beams in drooping bunches of rainbow spaghetti. In addition, each welded strut was dotted from top to bottom with dozens of things which looked like nothing so much as pale plate-shaped mushrooms, but on closer inspection turned out to be satellite dishes. All shapes and sizes, white, pale grey, paint-streaked, stencilled- they stuck out from the structure at every possible angle, clustered in random configurations as if they'd just happened to sprout there.

The three places where the structure met the ground were encased in three strange seashell-like blocks of verdigrised, contoured metal, giving them the appearance of massive hooves. Wheatley craned his neck on one side, trying to read the letters which, spray-painted and very slightly askew, ran up the side of the hoof he'd been leaning on.

"EV…OLG… XOF." He gave the letters a baffled blink. "Evolgxof?"

"Foxglove," said somebody, over his head.

"Ohh, right," said Wheatley, craning his neck the other way. "Oh, that makes much more sense, that does. Foxglove. I- aah! Who- oh, there you are, up there! Had me worried for a second there. Hallo!"

"Hi," called the human, who was leaning off the side of the structure about ten feet above the ground. He was attached to one of the horizontal girders with a climbing clip, and his freckly, good-humoured face was mostly obscured by something that looked like an antiquated riot police helmet, but was probably a safety mask. He pushed it up and waved the clunky old welder in his gloved hand cheerfully in Wheatley's direction.

"You must be the guy Mart Otten was talking about. How's Chell?"

Wheatley winced. 'Furious', although technically correct, was probably not what this mountaineering human wanted to hear.

He raised his voice. "Fine, fine, she's fine, er, got a bit of a hole in her, long story, but, you know, got it stitched up with a bit of string, no harm done! Well, harm done, obviously, but not actual, lasting damage, is what I mean. Physically. No lasting physical damage done."

"Glad to hear it... I think." The human scratched the back of his head dubiously with his free glove, then grinned. "Garret Rickey."

"What? Oh! Right, that's your name. Did not know what you were on about there." Wheatley folded his arms and leaned casually back on the nearest hoof. "Wheatley, by the way. My name, I mean. Interesting sort of contraption, this, isn't it? Very… advanced-looking. Very Sciencey. I know a fair amount about this sort of thing, you see, quite knowledgeable about, um, machines, machinery, computers… your own work, is it?"

"Well, she's kind of everyone's," said Garret. He stowed the welder away in a makeshift holster hanging from one of the supports, and patted the girder above his head, fondly. "We've been working on her for 'bout three years now, all told."

"Three years? Blimey. What took that long? I mean- I'm not being rude or anything, it's very impressive, but, er..."

"Soon as I get her working, you'll find out." Garret grinned again. He had a lot of sun-bleached curly hair and the kind of upper-body build that suggested he arm-wrestled cougars in his spare time. "She's going to put Eaden on the map."

Wheatley nodded, in what he calculated to be an astute, impressive sort of manner. "Oh, it draws maps as well, does it? Funny, because to me, it looked more like some sort of communications set-up, what with all those dish things all over it and everything, and the big antenna on top. Fine, though, I can see now, obviously- maps happen to be something else I am a bit of a legend at, by the way. Reading maps, following maps, that whole area of map comprehension and interpretation is my particular speciality within the… map sciences."

"That so?" Garret, who had been hanging back from his clip and listening with a slightly bemused air to most of this, began to get a look which a person inclined to be suspicious might have called a little bit sly. "Well, it's great to get to talk to someone knows as much as I do about the technical side of a job like this."

"Yes, I-"

"Between you and me, most folk round here are pretty handy with a hammer, but when it comes to how to spot-weld an RSJ or splice your basic belkin-patch cable, you might as well be speaking flux-shift for all they know 'bout it."

"Er-"

"Most of them wouldn't even know the difference between an in-line LNB signal amp and a tri-ax optical MDU."

"Right," said Wheatley, whose eyes were making panicky little darts as if they wanted to escape from his head and, by doing so, the situation. "Haha. 'Cause what sort of, of moron wouldn't know that?"

"By the way." Garret unlooped a thick coil of loose wires from the end of the girder he'd been working on, sorting through them as he talked. "I better get these hooked up before I fit the rest of this panel back on. Can you pass me a three-eighths crimper? Should be in the tool-box there- looks like we might be able to reach, if I lean back some."

Wheatley looked down at Garret's tool-box, a large, battered metal trunk sitting with its lid open on the grass.

"Oh," he said, weakly. "That's quite intense."

Garret's tool-box had what looked at first glance to be at least four hundred roller-bearing drawers, assorted compartments, and more tools than anyone should reasonably need for anything, ever. Inanimate as it was, Wheatley couldn't shake the definite impression that it was smirking at him.

"Umm, absolutely! Not a problem!"

"She's mostly scrap, of course," continued Garret, plaiting wires expertly together and pretending not to hear the mildly frantic metal clattering noises from below. "Stuff from Aaron's stockroom- you met Aaron?"

"Er, twice! Briefly. Here you go."

"Thanks, but those're slip-joint pliers."

"Oh. Well, er, easy mistake to make, think you'll find, they do look very similar, slip-joint pliers and... and what you said the first time- give me a moment-"

"Sure, take your time. Anyway, that place is a goldmine. We weren't getting anywhere 'til I had the idea of looking though all that scrap he keeps lying around in there. As it is, I still had to write the software to get all these different systems to talk to each other from scratch, let alone the dish relays themselves-"

"-Ahah! Got it, got it, there you go."

"Uh, well, that's a Robertson screwdriver. Have a look in the fourth drawer down. So at first we were only trying to get a better radio signal in here, fit up a more reliable way of communicating with the bigger towns we trade with, that kinda thing."

"How about this?"

"Yeah, no... closer, though, kind of. That's a hammer. And signal's always been kind of patchy around here. There's just a lot of natural interference for some reason, so you need a good strong transmitter to start with. But then I got thinking, since the Ottens don't mind this thing in their field, why not go for something a little more ambitious?"

"This?"

"That'd be my sandwich," said Garret, kindly, taking it anyway. "I guess it is time for a break. I'll come on down."

He stuck the sandwich in his mouth, unclipped himself, and slid through the nets of wiring and steel mesh to the lowest horizontal strut, then swung down and dropped to the ground in a single agile movement.

"So, er, just to clarify," said Wheatley, who wanted to steer the conversation far away from the subject of tools and technical knowhow, "what does it- she, sorry- what does she actually do?"

The young man looked up at the apex of the mast above him. There was a devout enthusiasm in his face, so strong that it was very nearly love.

"When she's fired up," he said, dreamily, "the whole structure's gonna act as a base station, getting us signal clear across the tri-state area, maybe even further. We'll get wireless digital signal processing and data transmission as high as two g-bits per second. We'll have long-distance capability that'll put the vorts to shame. Radio, of course, and phone, internet, all the public news broadcasts, independent channels- you name it. No more shifting around trying to find a good signal halfway across town- if it all works out, we'll be able to send and receive anything just as well as those hotshots over in New Detroit. Maybe even better."

What was it with humans and getting completely obsessed with things? Wheatley supposed that it was what allowed them to get so much done, to think up things like inventing other life-forms to do things for them, or hopping in little metal tubes and blasting off into space just for the hell of it, or cutting atoms up into tiny bits just to see what happened.

True, he sort of knew what it was like, to really, honestly want something so badly that you ended up doing desperate, crazy things you'd never normally dream of just to try and get your hands on it. After all, he'd been so hell-bent on escaping the facility in the end that he'd shaken off decades of protocol-driven inertia and gone looking for the deep-sleeping, slightly brain-damaged, button-pushing-fingers-possessing means to make it happen. Since then he'd done all sorts of bonkers things he'd been too scared to even think of, before- but it would have been nice to say that he'd been motivated by something a bit more noble and enterprising than absolute terror of what would have happened if he hadn't done them.

It was a problem that humans didn't really seem to have. They just did things. Nobody was standing over Garret Rickey and telling him that if he didn't build this giant insane tower of his and get it working by such-and-such a time they'd chuck him into an incinerator.

Choice, that was the thing. Choice made all the difference. Ask a machine 'why?' and they'd go, 'Because I'm programmed to.' An Aperture machine would probably add 'and She'll turn me into thirty pounds of wire wool if I don't'.

Ask a human 'why?', on the other hand, and they always got a loony sort of look on their face, and went, 'why not?'

Garret, meanwhile, had pulled out a grubby little memo recorder, and was making rapid notes on the glowing touchscreen with his thumbs, sandwich stuck in his mouth again for safe-keeping, still gazing up at the structure towering over his head. He seemed to have forgotten that anyone else was there, which- given the rather daunting experience with the tool-box- suited Wheatley just fine.

"I'll just leave you to it, then," he said, stepping carefully backwards. "Can see you two need some, er, alone time. Keep up the good work."

"Nice meeting you," said Garret, distractedly and a bit muffledly, around the sandwich. "Come back and help sometime, we always need more hands."

"Right!" called Wheatley, who was halfway across the field by now. Walking backwards took a fair amount of co-ordination- more than he was really comfortable with- but he was anxious to get out of shouting range before Garret snapped out of his contemplative state and asked him to identify any more incomprehensible pieces of equipment. "Will do."

He made it to the corner of the barn, turned, and nearly walked straight into Chell.

She stopped dead in her tracks, as did he. An extremely awkward moment passed, followed by several more slightly less awkward moments, followed by Wheatley finding his tongue.

"Hallo," he said. This seemed a safe enough bet. "You… alright?"

She nodded, looked past him to the end of the field, where Garret was now busy unbolting a panel from one of Foxglove's massive hooves.

"Had the speech?"

"Ha, yep, chapter and verse. The whole sales pitch." He coughed. "Obviously I pretty much knew what she- the tower, that is, by the way, she's a her- pretty much knew what she was about soon as I saw her, didn't take me long to sort of get a handle on the project, as it were, so I was able to, um, advise him on a couple of points. Glad to help out, you know me, always glad to be… generally helpful… look, I'm sorry I said that, back there, I didn't mean it, honestly, it just sort of slipped out."

He forced himself to hold eye contact- something which did not come naturally; it was his ingrained instinct to glance somewhere new every couple of seconds, and her serious grey gaze was hard for him to bear. He tried desperately to fathom her impassive human expression, trying to judge if anything he was saying was hitting the right note, or if he should just start running again to be on the safe side.

"You're not anything like Her, honestly, honestly you're nothing like Her at all. And I'm not- I'm not just saying that because it might make you less hacked off with me- although, although, got to admit, cards on the table, that is a factor, it is up there, in my- reasoning- but doesn't alter the fact that it is actually true, you're about as much like Her as- I- I mean, apart from the fact that you're both female, um, both of the female persuasion, and you are both quite good at murdering things- which is fine! Which is fine, because, um, important, vital difference, you only kill things when you have to, I have noticed, it's not like it's your hobby. Again, sorry, the point is, even when you were trying to murder things, you weren't anything like Her. Annnd... still are not. Obviously."

Chell didn't say anything at first. She looked down, feeling the neat patch of gauze on her left elbow.

"I had to make Aaron he went looking- if anyone did- it's..." She swallowed. Her voice was even lower than usual and not entirely steady, but quite clear. "It's my worst fear."

Wheatley let out an incredulous huff of laughter. "Your worst- sorry, at the risk of getting into another row, which I'm not looking for, believe me- but seriously, come off it, you? You're not afraid of anything!"

She looked up, sharply. She might have suspected mockery, or even flattery, but Wheatley hadn't intended either- hadn't intended anything, other than a plain, admiring statement of fact- and it showed. Her expression faltered, and she shook her head.

"Not true."

"Yeah, right, fine. Push the other one, it opens the door." He started to laugh again, got a better look at her face, and became immediately sober.

"Oh. You're doing that... 'being really serious' thing again."

"These are good people, Wheatley. My-" She stopped, her lips compressed and white, jaw set, as if she was in pain. "My friends. If one of them- if any of them ended up- in there- it'd be my fault-"

"Hey!" He was alarmed, not as much by what she said as the way she looked, how her voice broke on the last word, the way her fingers started to pick and pluck savagely at the dressing on her arm, as if it was some kind of combination she had to solve. "Hey, hey, no, don't worry, it's alright! No, because I bet, right, that Aaron bloke is totally convinced now, we probably absolutely convinced him back there, that it was a really bad idea to go anywhere within a mile of the place. Just like you said, convincing, and your ideas always work, don't they? Good ideas, from your direction, never a problem. And! And you know what, even if for some mad reason he's not completely one-hundred-percent convinced, we could try something else. We could think up something else, like, er... well, we could... break into his house, and- stay with me, I can see you're looking sceptical but I haven't got to the good bit, yet- break into his house while he's asleep and put on a, a bed-sheet or something, I could go on your shoulders- no, actually, it's probably better the other way round, from a structural point of view, centre of gravity and that, plus I've had a bit more practice. Um... where'd I got to?"

"A bed-sheet," said Chell, after a moment. Her voice was oddly choked, and her mouth was doing some odd things, but at least she'd stopped picking at her arm.

"Oh, right, right, yes! And we could wake him up and tell him that we're a mysterious time-travelling ghost, from, like, the future, and it's vitally life-or-death important that he makes sure nobody ever goes anywhere near the facility, because- his- umm, are you all right?"

Chell- who for a worrying few seconds had really looked like she was undergoing some painful sort of internal spasm- burst out laughing.

Wheatley wasn't sure what was so funny, but he wasn't about to complain, either. Her whole face came alive when she laughed; not in a scary-brilliant, born-puzzle-solver-and-stuff-breaker sort of way, no, this was a different thing altogether. It was like sunlight in the facility, like suddenly seeing a patch of bright blue sky clear through a gap in the cage of panels and realising you were much, much closer to it than you'd thought.

And whenever he managed to do it, whenever he managed to make her smile, or laugh like she was laughing now, leaning helplessly against the side of the barn, giving herself entirely up to it- the fact it had been him made it even better. Even if he didn't know what he'd said, exactly, it felt like a success, and more, it felt-

-like I could do it all day, no problem. Would not mind that at all.

"Yes," she managed, at last, straightening up and gingerly letting go of her side. "Aaron believes us. He'll keep them away."

"Well- well, that's great! Isn't it? What're you so worried about, then, if-"

She shook her head again, this time with a touch of impatience, and he realised rather belatedly that- for her, anyway- her worrying hadn't been the point. For Wheatley, who could hardly ever avoid announcing to the world in general what he happened to be thinking at any given time, it was sometimes a bit hard to keep in mind that she only did the same when there was an actual, valid reason. In this case, she was trying to explain.

"It's just why I... pushed you."

"Oh, what, to tell him about it? Pfff, don't worry, it's fine. I mean, yes, it was a hideously traumatising experience and everything but, you know, I'll live. Just sort of, I dunno, warn me next time. Some kind of, of non-verbal signal before you launch me into it like that, that'd be perfectly adequate preparation. I mean, I do vaguely remember telling you at one point that I like to have sort of forewarning in these kinds of important, possibly hazardous situations, the cliff notes beforehand, so to speak, just a rundown of the most salient points before you chuck me in at the deep end- but, er, it's okay if you don't remember me telling you that. I think we were both a bit out of sorts at that point, and four years is quite a long time."

"Yeah. It is."

She gave him one of her half-comical, half-cynical looks. It seemed to suggest that they were back to business as usual, but what she said next wrapped that notion around a brick, slung it through a few dozen portals for extra oomph, and fired it directly into his stomach.

"I missed you."

He stared at her. She looked oddly troubled, considering; for all the world as if she was the one who suddenly felt as if their innermost systems had suddenly kicked off a violent self-cleaning-cycle, instead of the one who had the upper hand by default, calmly making earth-shaking statements like that out of the blue.

"What you did... I hated you," she said- quietly, matter-of-factly. The cleaning-cycle inside him went into overdrive, and not in a good way. "I was mad as hell at you, but- I missed you. Understand?"

"Umm, not... not entirely..."

She sighed.

"Me neither."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

[Sleep Mode activated]
[error: file incomplete]
[Accessing…]

The cold little cubicle was even smaller than the shower in his flat, which was quite an achievement, and he was all over goosebumps, apart from the places where the really uncomfy sucker things with wires on were attached to his bare skin. He'd already been there for quite a while- long enough to become confused about the passage of time- and he was getting properly fed up with following the brusque, infrequent instructions from the hidden intercom somewhere in the ceiling.

Somewhere up there, he was fairly sure, a bunch of people with labcoats and clipboards were looking at the data he was giving them, whatever it was that was being recorded by the sucker things and the wires and his responses to their endless questions, and he only hoped that there was at least some reason for it, that somebody was getting something useful out of all of this, because all that he personally was getting was cross and very, very nervous.

"Listen, er, is this going to take much longer? I mean, we've been here hours, now, we've done all sorts of crazy things- well, I have, don't really know what you're up to up there, but I'm sure it's very technical and everything- and normally I'd be fine with a bit of overtime but I've sort of got-"

"You'll hear a short tone," said the intercom. It sounded bored. "When you hear it, step on to the blue circle."

"Right, fine, anyway, thing is, there's possibly been some sort of administrative cockup, right, 'cause nobody told me I was down for this today and I've sort of got something I was planning to-"

"Stand on the blue circle," snapped the intercom.

"Alright, alright! Keep your hair on-"

He stepped forwards. Immediately, everything went dark, and a livid blue glow flooded the ceiling of the cubicle. He ducked.

"Oh. It's gone- it's gone blue. Is that supposed to happen?"

"Subject detected," said a friendly, twanging sort of electronic voice. "Voice print one hundred percent complete. Electroencephalography results calibrated. Subject is now ready for core scan."

"Sorry, 'scan'? Wh- look, joking aside, how about, right, before we go any further you let me know what, exactly, it is that I'm being scanned for? And if it'll hurt. That bit's fairly important, because, last time, right, last time you lot pulled me in for one of these compulsory test things, some kind of, um, biometrics scheme I think it was, the word 'scan' was definitely thrown around, and it actually hurt quite a lot. I mean, I don't have a particularly high pain threshold, I should probably tell you right now, and that was not an experience I want to have to go through twice. Especially since, as I said, I've got something I need to be doing. Quite important- very- very important in fact, so the sooner I can get out of here, the better, thanks. Apart from anything else, it's bloody freezing in here. Smells a bit weird, too."

He paused.

"...Hello?"

The intercom stayed silent. He looked up at the blue-lit ceiling, hesitated, rapped lightly on the wall.

"Anyone there? Or have you all, I dunno, gone for coffee or something? Hello?"

Nothing. It was bloody typical of them, the scientists, walking around as if they owned the place just because they all had proper degrees in things like quantum mechanics and robotics and nuclear physics from MIT, instead of the sort of computer science diploma you got by doing night classes in a small room over a laundrette. You'd see one of them every so often- more and more, lately- a scientist in their Aperture labcoat, wandering the corridors with an abstracted look in their eye, and you'd know exactly what they were after. It was every employee for themselves, and if you didn't reverse direction before they spotted you, if you weren't quick enough, or if you happened to be above-average in terms of noticability, that abstracted look might suddenly focus in your direction.

And after that, Heaven help you.

Being, generally speaking, the first thing that people looked at in a hallway full of not-unfairly-tall people, he tended to have to resort to tactics like Oh! I Just Remembered Something Really Important I Have To Go And Do In The Exact Opposite Direction, or Oh Wow, Look At That Amazing Thing Behind You, or, if circumstances were particularly urgent, Does Anyone Else Smell Burning?

None of these tactics tended to work very well, and anyway, he hadn't even had a chance, this time. They had wanted him specifically. They had even known his name.

He wished he knew what time it was, but they'd taken his watch around the same time as they'd asked him if he had any jewellery, piercings, fillings, joint replacements, cardiac devices, etcetera. They'd also taken his glasses, which meant that even if he'd had his watch, he wouldn't have been able to see what it said, especially not in this blue-tinged, odd-smelling darkness.

He was beginning to realise that he probably wasn't going to be getting back to the office any time soon, and that wasn't fair, wasn't fair at all. Today was supposed to have been the day, after all these weeks, the Big One.

He'd sort of put it off a bit, once or twice, every time, every weekday that he'd taken that long walk across the office to the little table by the photocopier with the exact change in his pocket and hundreds of brilliant things to say lined up in his head, and ended up back at his desk a minute later with a bagel he did not actually particularly want, a vivid mental snapshot of her quick bright smile, and the realisation that he was an utter idiot.

But today- today had been different, he'd just known it. He'd even written his little speech down on a stack of little Post-its, which was serious-level forward-planning as far as he was concerned, but now it wasn't going to happen because the bloody scientists had bloody decided that today was a really good day to start titting about with more bloody scans.

"Alright, this is getting beyond a joke, now. And what is that smell? It's like... almonds or something- look, if you're seriously going to leave me in here while you have a little snack, you could at least turn the lights back on!"

The intercom clattered. Now there were two voices, distant and fuzzy, as if neither was speaking directly into the microphone, or even facing the right way.

"How the hell is he still talking?"

"No idea. Should be out cold by now."

"Well, he does look kind of dopey anyway, it's hard to t- wait a second- is that still on?"

"What?" A close-up clatter. "Oh, sh-"

He was scrambling for the cubicle door even before the intercom clicked off, his hands finding nothing but flat featureless ceramic tile in the darkness, a cold sick clot of fear rising in his throat, meeting the cloying taste of almonds in his nose and mouth as his heart sped up and his breath came shorter and faster. The sickly-sweet perfumed air was lead-heavy in his lungs, choking, and he tried to yell but a black-spotted wave of dizziness came sweeping over him, and then he was falling-

[redacted; file corrupt]
[diverting active]
[rebooting…]

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Grab me! Grab me- uff!"

Wheatley hit the floor shoulders first, which was an awkward way of doing things. His upper body uncurled from the ball he'd rolled himself up into while he'd been in Sleep Mode, leaving his legs sprawled mostly on the sagging sofa and unable to help him at all. He was stuck.

By degrees, and with a lot of flailing, he managed to throw the balance enough to keel fully off the sofa. It was a complicated process, and by the time he'd actually managed to collapse, legs and all, on the floorboards, he couldn't help feeling that he'd really accomplished something.

He lay still, letting the sickly claustrophobic traces of the nightmare ebb away. Something about a tiny white box, and... well, something bad had happened, something terrifying. And there'd been something about Chell, he was almost sure, but what was most pronounced was that same sense of dislocation, something at the back of his mind scrabbling weakly to connect.

There was a single red point of light above the couch, a tiny glowing eye which caused him a moment of terror before he realised it was the radio set. It had been quietly hissing static to itself when they'd come in that afternoon, and Chell had turned it off with an absent flick of a switch.

She hadn't said much, after their chance meeting at the barn. She'd seemed a bit distant, somehow, as if she was aware she'd skirted a little too close to something she hadn't meant to stumble over, and was being extra-cautious to compensate. Of course, Wheatley had compensated quite adequately himself, at least at first, filling any available stretch of silence with his usual waffle, the verbal equivalent of aerosol party string- but even he had wound down a bit in the end. Given what she'd said, he didn't think that she'd been upset, exactly- but something had definitely been up with her, and he'd started to feel more than a little helpless in the face of it- he couldn't even begin to puzzle it out for himself, not if she wasn't even going to give him the slightest clue what it was.

He still couldn't believe that she'd said that. I missed you. Granted, she'd also said that she'd hated him, but she had used the past tense, and that had to mean something, didn't it?

I missed you. It was only a shame that she hadn't elaborated, hadn't gone as far as to state exactly why she'd missed him. If he could manage to work out what it was, he could make extra-sure that he went on doing it, or being it, whichever was appropriate.

"Presumably not because of my ability to summon emergency escape lifts, for example," he said, out loud. "Or... to not go absolutely murderously bonkers when handed a near-infinite amount of power. Or- actually, you know what, process of elimination isn't really going to work here, it's a bit pointless trying to list everything it probably isn't. Could be here all night."

He sighed. The rug was actually quite a bit more comfortable than the couch- not as padded, but he didn't really need it to be, and at least his feet didn't stick off the edge. There was a little moonlight slanting through the window, and the light provided just enough contrast for him to be able to see his hand as he lifted it up, a dark spindly shape against the pale greyish spread of the plastered ceiling.

He turned it back and forth, studying it. Four fingers and a thumb- the whole thing was such a simple set-up when you thought about it. There was hardly anything to it, but the things you could do if you happened to be lucky enough to come with it installed were bloody infinite. He'd picked it all up fairly quickly, he thought, considering- although admittedly, that wasn't much to do with him. It was more to do with all the movement protocols programmed into this new body, giving him a leg-up, allowing him to act more or less like he'd been walking around and using his hands for things for more than three decades, instead of less than three days.

He wondered if she would even have been able to tell- say he'd somehow made his way out on his own, like this, put on an accent- would she even have guessed that he wasn't human? Would she have guessed he'd been him?

Probably, he decided. She would have figured it out. She always had been sharp like that, and besides, the Aperture logo which had been helpfully embroidered on his avatar's shirt pocket would have been a dead giveaway. And he couldn't exactly say he blended in very well. No, 'very well' was definitely a bit of an exaggeration. A better way of describing how well he was fitting in out here, based on everything that had happened so far, would be 'not at all.'

He sighed again, a bit louder. The little front room was dark and warm, and- in stark contrast to that first night, in the wheatfield- entirely quiet. It was the variety out herethat was so unnerving- in the facility, unless something was going on, you had the same grey noise all the time. It didn't change, you might not even be aware that it was there unless something called your attention to it, but there it was, day in, day out, in the background. Reliable, that was the word.

Out here, on the other hand, there were no constants. It was either as silent as the grave or full of things that went skreep-skreep and yaaark. There was no order to anything.

At this point, Wheatley, who hadn't been paying much attention to the direction his thoughts had been wandering in, suddenly caught up with himself and realised that he was missing the facility.

It was a terrible shock, as if his rambling mind had walked, face-first, into a hidden electric fence. He sat up, struck dumb, wide-eyed with horror. It couldn't be true. He had spent so long- so unimaginably long- waiting, planning, longing, hoping, praying- trying to get out- the very thought of being back there terrified him- he couldn't be missing it-

He remembered reading a book- well, sort of scanning it lightly, to be honest, there'd been an awful lot of books in Her files and he'd been in a bit of a hurry to prove a point at the time- but there'd been something in this one about a bloke whose wife had gone doolally and, instead of, say, getting a qualified psychologist to prescribe her some hefty anti-psychotics, he'd decided to park her in an attic and let her get on with it. Right now, this felt like an excellent idea, and so he promptly shoved the insane, dangerous thought unceremoniously to the back of his mind, and hurled everything else he could think of on top of it, just to make sure it couldn't get loose and start wandering around the circuits of his brain like the aforementioned mad spouse, attacking the saner thoughts around it and chewing on the furniture.

One thing was for certain- he'd never, ever, in a million years tell her that he'd caught himself missing the godforsaken place. God alone knew what she'd think of him. After she'd escaped (and he still didn't have a clue how she'd escaped, hadn't been keen to broach the subject at all, to be honest) she'd clearly never looked back.

He winced, involuntarily. Well, until he'd made her- asked her to-

Thunk.

Wheatley started, and peered worriedly up at the ceiling. One major disadvantage of this new body was that it didn't have any kind of exterior light, which was doubly ironic considering that it was made of nothing else. The moon had drifted behind a cloud, and without a backlit optic, he was very much in the dark.

Thud, went the thing that had gone thunk.

He hesitated, then stood up. The little front room was quite low, and his head very nearly brushed the ceiling as he fumbled his way across to the doorway and ascended the staircase, a narrow, rickety wooden affair which creaked and yowled like a whole horde of wheatfield-things under his feet.

The upper floor of the house was barely half the size of the lower rooms, and- following what seemed to be the typical style of Eaden architecture taller than a single storey- perched on top of them as if it had been dropped there by accident one day and had just happened to cling on. There was a tiny hallway with only two doors, and around the first of these Wheatley could see a soft glimmer of light.

"Hello? Are you in there? Um, also, are you all right?"

Thunk. There was no question about it. Whatever it was, the sound was coming from this room.

Wheatley gave the door a dubious little nudge. It moved.

"Oh, brilliant, not shut. Lucky. Very lucky, to be honest, I still haven't really made any inroads concerning this whole 'handle' malarky, definitely wouldn't have known where to start if it had been, er, locked or passworded or something. Still don't feel happy just barging in though, unless- hello?"

Still nothing.

"Alright, see, if this had been my old body, I could've just played the trusty old 'knocking on a door' audio file a few times, would have done the job nicely. Um, sadly, though, that seems to be one of the few things which didn't survive the transfer. I'm not saying that's your fault or anything, I'm sure you did the best job you could with the limited time, resources, and knowledge available to you, I'm just explaining that, among the things I don't seem to have any more, is the ability to make it sound as if I'm knocking on a door. Which is a pity. Are you- are you hearing this, at all, or...?"

He listened intently for a few seconds, then took a nervous step back- at which point something on the other side of the door went not only thunk and thud but bang and scrape.

"Wh- Right, that's it, I'm coming in."

Her bedroom was small, low-ceilinged, plain. She didn't seem to be much of a one for decoration anyway, if the rest of the house was anything to go on, but the peculiar thing about this room was that there was hardly anything in it, not even the things which humans tended to label 'necessary.' No tables, no chairs, not even a bookcase or a picture on the wall. There was a mattress on the floor in one corner, a confusion of blankets and cushions all over the place, and not a great deal else.

In the light of the small lamp- a rounded, cordless thing like a white pebble- he spotted her. She was tightly curled at the foot of the mattress, wedged up against the corner in a nest of tangled sheets and pillows. Her eyes were closed and her face shone with sweat, and as he stared, her body jerked, kicking hard against the wall.

Thunk.

So there was one mystery solved. Wheatley was pretty sure he understood; just like you didn't put the great big military androids with machine guns in the wing made entirely of glass, you didn't put the sleeping scary-intense natural expert at wrecking things in the same room as ornaments and breakable items of furniture. Now that he was looking, he could see that there were dents in the plaster and dings in the skirting-boards, and a heavy curtain across the little window, made from a kind of thick muffling fabric that looked as if it'd stop you damaging yourself too much if you happened to bounce off it, and on a second inspection, the little lamp looked like it had spent a disproportionate amount of time being used as a football.

She rolled over in a sudden violent movement, half-off the mattress, and in her sleeping face he saw a terribly familiar expression. There was only one thing he knew of which could make her look like that, asleep or awake- so utterly focused, so grim and alert and hair-trigger tense.

She was testing.

She coiled her knees under her, and her right hand fought a handful of sheets into a deathgrip. Whatever she was seeing, whatever path her mind was dragging her down, Wheatley knew instinctively that it belonged to the world they'd left, the nightmare world that he'd only just caught himself missing, long grey corridors and vast white chambers, and a Voice, a calm cold Voice that echoed everywhere-

Even as he watched, her whole body tensed, readying for another desperate lunge across an obstacle only she could see. It was frightening for him to see her this out of kilter with reality, just like he'd been terrified when she'd been shot, when she'd looked up at him with clouded, uncomprehending eyes, and he'd realised she didn't know what was going on.

Wheatley was used to not knowing what was going on. For him, confusion was business as usual. When shedidn't seem to know what was going on, on the other hand, there was clearly something terribly wrong with the balance of the universe- zero had been divided by, the apocalypse was underway, the Four Horsemen were getting up and looking for their scythes in the umbrella stand, etcetera.

Somebody else in his place might have tried to shake her awake, but the painful thump she'd given him last time he'd attempted to wake her up that way was still fresh in his mind and he still wasn't used to having physical control, anyway, especially in this very specific situation- there was only one thing he was used to doing, here.

Without even thinking about it, he crashed to his knees at the edge of the blanket-mattress-pillow-nest, and yelled.

"Whoahh! Whoah whoah whoah, hold your horses, stop!"

And, to his utter astonishment, she stopped.

Half-curled, jaw clenched, pulse racing in her neck, she was clearly a long, long way from relaxed, but she stopped as if her internal spring had caught on an opposing cog, freezing her in place. Wheatley gulped- startled, relieved, and completely at a loss for what to do next.

"Oh. Alright- alright, um, didn't actually think that'd work, but... hang on, I'm- I'm trying to think of something, give me a minute..."

He thought, frantically. Her face, so still, so studious, as if she was running God-knew-how-many calculations a second in there- ready to take his advice, but equally ready to take care of herself, run, puzzle, fight-

"Ah! Okay, alright, I have thought of something. I'm not too sure if it's going to do any good, mind, but, umm, we're a bit low on options right now, so I'm going to at least try. Er… and, oh, bloody hell, I just thought, you're not even going to talk, are you? 'Cause you think you're still in th- okay, never mind, doesn't matter, still not a problem. Look, thing is, I can't see what you're seeing, which does make it significantly trickier, so you're going to have to help me out a bit. Alright? Just nod, if you can hear me, okay? Just nod."

Her chin jerked, slightly.

"Close enough, right, I can work with that. Er… most importantly, it's all fine, you don't need to worry. I know it might be a little hard to credit, considering, but there's not actually a lot She can do to us right now, for reasons which are, um, fairly obvious to me but might be, understandably, a little bit harder for you to grasp. The important bit is, nothing's going on, annnd... we don't have to rush or anything, we can take our time. Whatever's in front of you right now- just guessing, is it a pit? Bottomless pit? Just nod."

She nodded, a little more clearly.

"Yeah, er, had a feeling it might be- well, you don't need to go that way. I'm absolutely positive, there's another way, in fact- oh, look over here, there it is!"

Sitting back on his heels, he pointed- rather pointlessly, really, unless she could see through her eyelids, but just in case- in the general direction of the glowing pebble thing. It had a nice, reassuring sort of light to it; not too bright, not glaring, just warm and friendly, which was probably why she kept it around.

"Nice straight corridor, no pits, no turrets, just lots of handy portal surfaces if we need 'em. Got your portal gun, by the way?"

Her hands tightened reflexively on the sheets.

"Right, that's a yes, brilliant, that'll make it much easier. Definitely foreseeing a very easy ride from here on out, no particular hazards on the radar. Right, well, no point hanging about, off we go, just follow my rail!"

It was the most bizarre thing he'd thought he'd ever done, and by this point there had been a lot of bizarre things, from holding his own burnt-out corpse in his hands to finding himself suddenly on the moon. She really did seem to be seeing the things he described, allowing herself to be guided by his voice just like she had in reality, and so he rambled on, picking up confidence as he went, leading her through her own dream.

"Come on, this way! Easy up here, flight of stairs, don't trip, be a bit embarrassing to get all this way and then knock out a tooth or something on a step, really, wouldn't it? Nicely done. And up ahead, we've got, er... well, up ahead's a... big... empty room. Just an empty chamber, classic, minimalist, door at each end, no obstacles or anything... don't know what it's there for, to be honest, a sort of... chillout zone, maybe, or a waiting room, or a- a giant squash cour- never mind, doesn't matter what it's for, point is, it's perfectly safe. See? Through we go."

The facility that he painted for her, as the minutes ticked away and her clenched jaw and clutching hands slowly began to untense, was a benign, barely believable fantasy. It was a world away from the memories he'd been so reluctant to relive for Aaron that morning, as different as day and night, the harmless twin to that evil, entangling horror. His imagination was short on detail but long on wishful thinking, and for Chell's sleeping mind he drew a picture of an Aperture where walls stayed put and floors held you up, where the turrets never worked but the lifts always did, where it was breathtakingly, beautifully simple for her to work her way upwards- always upwards- after his guiding voice.

Maybe it was the Aperture he wished he really had made for her, the Aperture he'd planned to make back when he'd thought that he'd be so much better in control than Her, when he'd pictured how safe and sane the place would be with himself in the driving seat. Once he'd taken possession of that giant, omnipotent body, he'd been so carried away by the feeling that he could actually Make A Difference, like- [as soon as they notice all my amazing ideas] -well, like he'd always wanted to, that he'd forgotten that the chance to Make A bloody enormous Difference to her had been right in front of him, right then and there- the easiest thing in the world, just helping her escape.

And maybe it wasn't even as clearly-defined as that, just a vague idea of a place where he could actually help her, somewhere where he more or less knew how things worked and could lead her to safety. It was certainly very different from the way things had been so far, out here. Everything up here on the surface was strange and bewildering and he had no function, other than trailing after her through a world that she belonged to but he couldn't even begin to understand.

Wheatley was not blessed with much of an ability to keep at things which didn't seem to be working out, and it was terribly discouraging for him to realise that, out here, he couldn't even pretend to be speaking from a position of knowledge and experience. He couldn't even begin to fool her- or anyone else- into thinking that he knew what he was doing.

He didn't try to prolong the dream, even once he'd managed to witter her unconscious mind down from a nightmare into something closer to a sort of linear, piecemeal sightseeing tour. It barely even occurred to him, in fact- the thought that he might have been able to keep her going a bit longer would have delighted him when he'd been in control, when he'd been testing her, but now his mind shied instinctively from the very idea, skirted it with a shiver of something like revulsion. It felt far too much like something She might have done.

Still, for this short space of time, in this small room with its one warm point of light, he at least felt as if there was a point to his presence. Guiding her through her dream, he was useful.

"Nearly there," he told her, at last, leaning back against the wall and lacing his fingers together, turning the bowl of his hands inside out. His hard-light knuckles bent back without a noise, which struck him as distinctly disappointing.

"Brilliant, well done. And... ding! Here's the lift. It's straight up to the top for us, now- no detours, we're not going to be stopping to take in the scenery, just all the way up, vertically, from A to B- A being where we are now, B being the surface. Topside. The great outdoors. Speaking of which, stand back, doors closing, safety first... and up we go."

She'd unwound, slowly, as he'd talked her through her own convoluted dreamscape. She'd stopped looking like she was set to start bouncing off the walls at a moment's notice, and the edge-of-a-blade tension had ebbed out of her limbs and out of the stubborn lock of her jaw. Now, she turned over in her nest of blankets and her hands slackened, dispelling the illusion that there had been anything held between them at all.

Wheatley shifted, carefully, drew his knees up a little.

"Annd... we're out."

He'd been half-afraid that she would wake up, but to his relief she just sighed and made a small sound under her breath- words, nonsense, he couldn't tell- and stayed deeply, calmly asleep.

He waited for a little while, turning the cordless-lamp-pebble-thing idly over in his hands (he'd picked it up at one point, helping her navigate an imaginary dark bit which had required the services of an imaginary torch). There wasn't any batty half-legible scribbling all over the walls of this small room, and it was warmer and cleaner, and instead of sitting on a crate in his little spherical shell he was sitting on the floor in a great big lanky thing the size of a small tree, but there was a funny sort of familiarity about it, all the same.

"You know what?" he said, quietly. "I mean, obviously, you don't know what, you can't hear a word I'm saying 'cause you're fast asleep, thank God, it's just a figure of speech- but... what I was going to say was, d'you remember Kevin? Little round chap, yellowy sort of eye, not what you'd call a particularly erudite conversationalist. He was one of the corrupted cores you stuck on me back when you were... umm, well, not to get into all that again now, let's just say when we were having a certain minor difference of opinion. About you living. About you, continuing to be al- okay, just going to apologise for that again- sorry- and move on."

He propped the pebble on his knees, draping his arms absently over the top.

"Kevin didn't have a lot of lumber in the attic, to be honest, there wasn't much going on up there, but I'll say one thing for him, he knew what he wanted. I mean, he didn't really have a proper big multi-part gameplan all sorted out like we did, never had the head for all that 'bigger-picture' stuff, did Kevin, but he knew what he wanted, he wanted to go to space. Which, surprisingly- I mean, you'd be forgiven for thinking that was a slightly unrealistic goal- but surprisingly it was actually where he ended up. In space, with me. And we had some times, you know... floating... looking at things... him being all like 'I'm in space," and me being all 'yep, yes, we are both in space, that is definitely true'... but you know what he used to say, sometimes? 'I'm bored of space.' That's what he'd say. 'I'm bored of space, don't like it up here, it's too big. I want to go to Earth. I want to go home.' His exact words."

Wheatley sighed into his folded arms. "So it's like, he wanted that really badly, but then he actually got it, and... it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And in the end, of course, in the end he... well, he got smashed into sherbert by a massive great big chunk of rock out of nowhere, which on reflection doesn't really fit into the sort of moral I'm attempting to convey here, but... what I'm trying to say is, I'm not- I'm not sure I can hack this. I don't- I- I have no idea- well, I just don't know what I'm doing, really. I have no idea what I'm doing. I mean, it's alright for you, you're human. This is what you're supposed to do, wandering around up here, eating plants and, and cows and things, hanging around with lots of other humans in your little communities-"

She moved, suddenly, turning over. He froze, willing her to settle again and not do anything difficult, like waking up and wanting to know what exactly he was doing in her bedroom, gawking at her. Thankfully, she only shifted into a more comfortable position in the nest of blankets, became still.

"I mean, don't- don't get me wrong," he continued, after an extra-long pause, just to make sure. "I don't want to go back, not in a million years- in fact, can I just state right now, just for the record, that I am never, ever, setting foot back in there, ever again. Ever. Not even part of a foot or, or even a finger. Not even the tip of a finger, it's not going to happen. It's just..."

He fiddled with his tie, his voice fading to a mutter, his fidgety fingers pausing at the edge of the small grey circle-shutter logo on his shirt.

"I'm an Aperture device, aren't I? Out here, it's not- it's- I'm... I'm not compatible with anything. Daft sort of way of putting it, probably, to you, but basically true. I don't have a point, you know? Sorry, sorry, again, you don't know, asleep, obviously, but if you weren't, maybe you would. Not likely, but possible, you might."

Wheatley sighed again. He unfolded himself and set the pebble-lamp down on the floor, getting to his feet, casting huge jerky shadows across the ceiling, as if someone with a knack for shadow-puppetry was violently murdering an enormous spider. Chell hadn't moved again since she'd rolled over. She stayed where she was, curled away from him towards the wall.

"Well... cheers for listening, anyway," he said.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell listened to him leave, picking his way clumsily over the pillow-blanket obstacle course that was her bedroom floor. Once she was sure he was out of earshot- or audial-receptor-shot, or whatever it was that he had- she rolled over, propping her bandaged elbows on a heap of pillows, fixing the pebble-lamp with a pensive look. She tended to leave it on- it was a skim battery, charged algae, and could keep going for a ridiculously long time on its own.

She'd been awake for some time. She'd woken up as soon as he'd ended her dream for her, and she wasn't particularly proud of herself for the deception, but by the time she'd been properly awake he'd been talking about things he clearly didn't want her to actually hear, and she hadn't known how to respond. She was bewildered enough by the realisation that he'd just talked her out of her dream, out of one of the violent night terrors which had plagued her for the last four years. Her sleeping mind had just accepted him into the scenario- even allowed him to change it- whereas she was fairly sure that if anyone else had tried that, they would have been looking out in the hallway for their teeth.

It was also a shock to realise that- despite everything, everything that had happened since the first time she'd willingly followed the sound of his hopeful, rambling waterfall of a voice through the facility- some unconscious part of her still trusted him.

She wanted to help him- in return, partly, and partly because she did know how it felt, to feel so out of your depth that you were drowning. She didn't like the way that all the frantic optimism had drained out of his voice as he'd talked, until all that was left was something that didn't sound like it liked itself very much, and didn't really see why anyone else should, either. There was precious little comfort that she could have given him- only that she'd found it hard herself, adjusting to a world she'd known next to nothing about, and that would have been pretty poor consolation, considering. As he'd pointed out, she was human. Her natural social instincts might have been critically atrophied at first, but at least they'd existed.

He was so strange, he grew harder for her to fathom the longer she knew him- utterly human for so much of the time, full of human frailties, hungry for approval and interaction, contact. That morning, when she'd taken advantage of him, it had been because she'd had instinctive confidence in the total control his emotions had over his mouth- and in the total lack of control he had, over his emotions. A very peculiar thing, now that she thought about it, to expect from a machine.

She wondered-

Wondered, perhaps, wasn't the right word. Chell rarely wondered, had little time for wondering, it was too close to wandering, rambling vaguely around with no destination in mind. Chell did not wander. Her thoughts moved like a marathon, a relay-race, measured and paced and swift, concept after concept passing from one to another. She took what she knew and ran with it; and in this case, she knew...

Down in the dead space beneath the facility, she'd seen the evidence of Cave Johnson's final project. She knew what it had been- sick, half-crazed, dying, the master of Aperture had set his engineers to work on a way of placing a human mind in a computer. She knew that they had succeeded, and that the procedure had been carried out at least once. She was, you could say, familiar with the result.

And of course She, the near-omnipotent being that Cave Johnson's assistant Caroline had become, hadn't known- hadn't remembered anything of being human until the things they'd discovered in Test Shaft 09 had brought it forcibly home to Her. She'd excised Her remaining humanity like a lump of cancerous tissue, purged it from Her mind as soon as She'd realised what it was. Chell was under no illusions about that, and she knew that if she owed her life to anyone in the aftermath of that last hideous struggle, four years ago, it hadn't been Her. It had been the human She'd been created from, however little of her remained. It had been Caroline.

If the process had been carried out once, wasn't there a chance that they might have tried it again? After all, She lied. She almost always lied; it was the nearest thing that a being as stone-cold malicious, intelligent, and deadly as Her had to reliable constant. She had said that Wheatley was a construct, the product of the greatest minds of a generation working together with the sole purpose of creating the dumbest moron who ever lived.

Chell just found this too tidy to be true. She had no idea what had made Wheatley the way he was, but she was coming to seriously doubt it had ever been intentional. Despite what She had said, she couldn't seriously believe that anybody, even an entire team of Aperture scientists, would ever have knowingly put together such a mess. He certainly wasn't the perfect idiot, because even his idiocy was inconsistent. He wasn't the perfect anything.

And yes, she'd felt lost out here, at first, but she'd had her one saving grace; her rock-solid survivor's drive, and with the help of the kind people around her, it had been enough. And she'd known, hadn't she, as hard as it had been to adjust, she'd at least known that the adjusting was worth it, she'd needed nobody to tell her that this world was where she belonged, where she deserved to belong. Even that last little snarl of fear, the too-familiar voice that whispered you missed this, had no power over that, at least in her waking mind.

Wheatley, on the other hand, had about as much natural drive as a square wheel. Having clearly long since given up on any attempts at learning any of the vast list of things he couldn't do, he instead spent most of his time trying endlessly to pretend he could do them. If he put one-tenth of the effort he put into incompetently lying his head off into actually trying to do things- if she could make him try, give him a reason to feel like he should-

Well. It'd be a start.

Chell settled back and looked up at the soft-lit ceiling. She pulled the lamp closer to her chest, and her quick fingers sent shadows flicking across the plaster- a bird, a rabbit, a sphere with a bright, blinking eye.

She smiled; a slow, sweet, determined smile. It would have worried the hell out of Wheatley if he'd seen it, particularly if he'd known himself the cause of it- it was unhurried and curiously, unwittingly fond, but it was still the kind of smile that- coming from her- suggested that something was about to get good and solved.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"This next test presents a unique challenge."

The two small robots stepped out of their respective assembly pods. At the far end of the chamber, the lock cycled open, revealing a dark, featureless space and a catwalk, leading away into the distance.

"Please note that any memories either of you may have of me placing the Cooperative Testing Scheme on hold and violently disassembling you are fabrications, caused by the stress of you being violently disassembled. In honour of your successful reassembly, I've compiled a brand new series of challenges, which will need to be completed within a set schedule. I hope I'm not boring you, Orange."

The blue robot shook out its high hockey-player shoulders and gave Orange, who was staring dreamily off into the distance, a hard nudge. It jumped, and squawked crossly.

"The first part of this test requires you to locate and retrieve a quantative sample of a certain non-standard testing element. Unfortunately, the elevator at the end of this catwalk is out of service. You will need to implement your Aperture Science Portal Devices as well as your integral long-fall cushioning systems to descend safely to the bottom of the shaft."

Jogging to the very end of the catwalk, the two robots peered gingerly down the dark, echoing hole in the centre of the elevator platform. Their optics sent a murky blue-amber glow a little way down the shaft, illuminating a grim vertical stretch of cracked ceramic tiles that petered out into complete blackness.

"You'll be happy to know that I sent a scouting robot down there for you, so you can have some idea of what to expect. He never came back, but I'm sure that's just because he's having too much fun."

The robots looked at each other across the shaft. It was a good thing- as far as their peace of mind was concerned, anyway- that they had been programmed with next to no ability to comprehend the concept of a 'lie'.

"Continue testing."

Orange gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Blue nodded eagerly, and they both took a short run-up and leapt, unhesitating, into the abyss.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

7. The Monster

Chell climbed down from the crate she was using as a stepladder, and plonked a large, heavy, honey-coloured bowl down on the big central table.

Wheatley watched her nervously, his hands splayed on the floury tabletop. He had his placeholder grin on- the worried, darty-eyed one which meant that he had no idea what was about to happen, and was waiting for a little more input before he decided whether to be pleasantly surprised or properly alarmed.

"What're you doing?"

"We," she said, stressing the word and hefting a two-pound sack of flour onto the tabletop, "are making bread."

"Umm... alright then, uh... why, if you don't mind me asking?"

She paused, and looked at him. He scrambled to backtrack.

"I- I mean, okay, fair enough you doing it, but why me? It's not like I'm a- a making-bread-expert, that's you, you've clearly got all the expertise you need in that area right there in that devilishly clever little brain of yours. Not really going to bring much to the table, metaphorically- or, indeed, literally speaking, I do not have anything to put on this table, although," he added, trying to scrub the flour off his hands with the trailing end of the sofa throw, "I do seem to be taking a fair amount away from it, which is a bit alarming. Fair amount of this sort of... white powdery stuff, seems to be a bit clingy. Um, also, you might have forgotten- understandable, what with me looking all human now and everything- but 'looking', um, 'looking' is still the key word there. I'm not ac- I don't have any of the, er, the requisite equipment. I don't actually eat."

"Fine," said Chell, fetching a jar of yeast from the cold store. She was wearing her old jeans today, the ones she'd been wearing in the facility. They looked somewhat the worse for wear, but she'd beaten the blood and machine oil out of the worn fabric, and she liked them too much to admit defeat. She'd been up bright and early that morning, had left the house long before he'd taken his becoming-something-of-a-habit morning dive off the couch. "You don't have to help."

Help. The effect of this single word was immediate. Wheatley stopped edging from foot to foot, his fidgeting slowed, and Chell could almost see the circuits buzzing away in his head. His eyes brightened behind the glasses, uncannily like the way his optic had flared whenever he'd been psyching up to try and hack something for her, that same hopeful, tentative assumption of responsibility. It was exactly what she'd been counting on. She knew that it was fairly easy to force him to do things- he was about as resistant to threats as a cobweb was to a sandblaster- but if she could induce the same level of motivation, just by saying help...

"Well, hang on, there's no need to put it like that. I mean, I suppose I could give it a go- I've not got anything else on this morning, as it happens- or... any morning, really, itinerary; more or less blank for the foreseeable future, actually, there are not exactly many demands on my time, so... yes. All yours. What can I do?"

He started to lean casually on the table, remembered in the nick of time about all the flour, and settled for leaning casually on the back of the wicker chair, instead.

Chell unrolled the top of the sack of flour, dumping the contents into the bowl. A big mushroom-cloud puff of whiteness rose up into the air, wavered in the sunny front-room light, then drifted sideways with unnatural speed and spread across Wheatley's front. He yelped and stumbled back, swiping at it, sending little eddies of flour dust swirling through the air. As Chell watched, startled, he ran out of backing-up room and hit the wall with a thump that rattled all the bottles on the little shelves, jars of herbs and seeds jingling against each other like chattering teeth.

"Aah! It's alive, it's alive! Get off! Get it off me!"

Chell closed her eyes and massaged the dark smudges beneath them with her thumb and forefinger. Not exactly a great start.

"Wheatley, if it's dangerous, I will tell you. Okay?"

"Well, yes, fine, of course, but that was unprovoked, that was an entirely unprovoked attack! If you're going to start unleashing volatile substances like that at a moment's notice, you could at least warn me first!"

She shook her head, and refocused on the task in front of her. Mixing the yeast in a smaller bowl, she left it to froth, prepared the butter and molasses, and poked a well in the heap of flour. By the time she'd finished, he seemed to have decided that the flour dust really wasn't out to get him and was looming curiously over her, trying to see what she was doing. He was terrible with personal space and she kept having to save the smaller objects on the table from his quick, ungainly elbows. It was like being shadowed by a clumsy, slightly floury coat-rack.

"Oh, that's weird, it's sort of- it's sort of... bubbling. Is that supposed to happen? Also, just out of interest, umm... what is it?"

"Yeast," she said, and then, because he was inspecting the smaller bowl so closely that his nose was nearly touching the froth, and she couldn't resist it, "and it is alive."

He jumped back, and fell over the crate.

She stepped over him and took a few jars from a shelf, added the rest of the ingredients to the flour along with the yeast. Tossing in a good few handfuls of seeds, she mixed the ingredients to a rough dough and split it into two halves, turning both out onto the floury surface of the table.

"Here. Watch me."

He tried. She had to admit, observing him- and she was observing him, far more closely than he suspected- that trying, and once his attention was focused properly on something and not bouncing around in six directions at once, really was something he put his heart into. He watched her like a hawk (or, more accurately, like an anxious heron that'd been told there'd be a test later) biting his lip in concentration, trying to copy her as she kneaded the dough with her fingers and the heels of her hands, working it into a smooth ball.

It was odd, how he invaded her space but not her privacy- even though she was used to doing this alone, working by herself in this sunny front room, half-listening to the staticky undercurrent of quiet music and chatter from the old radio on the windowsill. This was her place, her ritual, but his presence failed to disturb her. She disliked having an audience, hated the sensation of being scrutinised, studied- but he didn't feel like an audience to her, he never had- not while he'd been in his right mind, anyway. She was his audience, if anything, his constant listener, and it was strange how easily she'd fallen back into the role, after four years without his never-ending waterfall voice.

"It's very relaxing, this, isn't it?" he said, after a minute or two. "Very... very sort of... Zen, somehow."

"Piece of advice," she said. "People get jumpy around that word."

"What, Zen?"

"Close enough."

"Why?"

She shrugged, kept kneading. "Bad memories."

He nodded, sagely, hoping it might give her the impression that he knew what on earth she was talking about, and continued to try to keep his ball of dough relatively ball-shaped and not- as it kept threatening to become- a splat. Her own ball was looking a lot healthier and more bread-ish than his, and she worked on it absorbedly, a little crease between her brows, her dark hair pulled tightly back into the knot behind her ears, a scarce few silvergrey strands catching the light just at her temples. He wondered if it was the flour, which seemed to get absolutely everywhere. It was certainly all over him.

"So, um, how long did it take you to learn all this, if you don't mind me asking? Not- not that I'm getting bored or anything- far from it, it's very... relaxing, as I said, I just wondered."

Chell glanced up, brushing her forehead with the back of her wrist. "Not long. It took practice, but it just felt... natural."

"Handy," he observed, poking at his own ball of dough, which was sitting there sullenly on the tabletop as if he'd personally insulted it. "I could do with some of that, to be honest. An unprecedented surge of, of latent, innate talent in... well, in a few key areas, definitely wouldn't hurt, particularly since... oh. That's a bit dodgy. Is it meant to have all lumps in it? Because there were a few to start with, but they seem to be multiplying, which, have to say, is the opposite of what I expected."

"Keep going," she said, spreading a fresh palmful of flour across the table. Wheatley flinched, involuntarily. His static cling problem wasn't getting much better, and everywhere that wasn't sticky with the alarmingly uncooperative dough was getting powdery. Although he was fully aware that it was ridiculous, since his arms and his shirt were made of exactly the same material, he kept feeling the urge to roll his sleeves up.

"Hey, here's a thought," he said. "Have you ever thought of branching out a bit? I mean, I can see you've got a good little thing going here, loaves, rolls, very practical, classic, old favourites, I'm guessing, but maybe not incredibly exciting, given the whole sort of spectrum of baked goods out there. How about trying something with a bit more pizzazz? Like, I don't know, bagels or something? Could be really terrific, bagels. The way forwards."

Chell gave him a quizzical look.

"Ahah, alright, I know where you're coming from, why bagels? Very good question, answer being... er... well, why not bagels? Brilliant invention, bagels, got a good positive feeling about them in general. The way they look, great, and... they're round, and round things are... well, just very aesthetically pleasing, aren't they? And you can put whatever you want in them, bits of plants... lettuce... fruit, and... well, they've got that hole in the middle, nearly forgot that, the hole, very handy for... holding them, I'd imagine, grip, and also... storing very thin drinks. So you've got a very thin drinks glass, you put your drink in it, slot it through the hole in your bagel, and you're not going to be able to knock that over in a hurry, are you? Very clever design, all round. Little pun there- all round- just thought I'd draw your attention to that."

She smirked, took the ball of dough carefully away from his hands- which had been unconsciously busy squeezing it into knuckly clumps- and went down to put it with hers in a cloth-covered tray under the warm pipes in the kitchen. Wheatley followed her, wobbly on the uneven kitchen steps and-

"Ow!"

-clocking his head sharply on the low doorway.

"Your dream," she said, carefully, closing the cupboard door. "Yesterday. You mentioned bagels."

"Umm... oh! Yes, definitely, I did," he said, feeling his smarting forehead. The kitchen was even tinier than her front room, little more than a short stone corridor set into the back of the house, and as she stood up he took a hurried step backwards, suddenly aware of how close she was to him in this small space. "In- in passing. As I said, they were more of a secondary detail, really, in terms of the entire- um, incidentally, out of interest, aren't you supposed to put those in that thing? Big whatsit over there, lots of doors, looks like it'd do some serious damage if it fell on you?"

"Oven," she said, "and not yet. It needs to rise."

He blinked.

"Rise where?"

Chell decided that it would be a hell of a lot easier just to show him once the dough had risen properly, than to start trying to explain microbiology and the fermentation process to him at this point. She washed her hands in the big sink, and then looked across at him.

He was speckled with clots of electrically-charged flour, trying unsuccessfully to unstick his gluey fingers from each other. His eyes flicked from her to the running tap, and he backed off in alarm.

"Whoah, whoah, are you out of your mind? That's water! Do you have any idea how much juice I've got running through this thing? Alright, granted, I'm not entirely clear if it's waterproof or not, that probably would have been one of the things in that manual that you didn't manage to transfer across, along with the door th- never mind, amongst other things- but that's no reason to just decide to have a bash at it on the offchance that it doesn't light me up like bloody November the Fifth! You might as well chuck a toaster into a bath- yes, fine, the toaster might get a bit cleaner, but it's still going to end up fried!"

Chell, still regarding him thoughtfully, turned the tap off and dried her hands on a towel. He had a point. He also had a lot of flour all over him- not to mention, now that she looked properly, a lot of dust and dirt and fluff clinging to his sneakers and trouser bottoms, turning the bright blue-white-and-black surfaces dull and muddy. After several days outside, away from the clean, clinical environment it had been designed to function in, his avatar was becoming nothing more than a giant static-charged lint trap.

"Course," he continued, "I'm still in that 'energy-saving' mode, that might possibly not be helping. Kept it on, basically I thought that on the whole, dishing out nasty burns left right and centre wasn't really going to endear me to anyone, but- oh! That's an idea! Maybe if I turn it off- hm. Bit technical, but..."

He fidgeted for a moment, and Chell privately promised herself that if he asked her to turn round she would smack him round the head with the nearest thing to hand. Fortunately (both for him and the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be a lumpy clay duck that Romy Hatfield's twins had made for her during a brief ornithology phase) he didn't.

"Right, might as well try it. Commencing turning energy-saving mode off, here goes-"

He flickered blue for a moment, then turned his hands over, studied them, pulled a face.

"Oh. Well, that was a bit of an anti-climax. See, I was hoping, that since it burned you, it'd burn off all this crap, but clearly, it's a bit more enduring than those organic little mitts of yours. Umm... so maybe, right, if I left it on for a bit longer, or- oh, hang on! There's a thing in here, another setting, didn't spot it before! 'Incalcination cycle.' Let's see… oh, wow, there's literally a ream of stuff about it here, can't be that complicated, surely. Dum-de-dum, 'standard maintenance procedure, two thousand degrees Kelvin, use with extreme caution,' etcetera, etcetera... well, never mind all that. Incalcination cycle. Run it."

She started to move. "Wait-"

There was a bright, blinding flash, a thick buzzing zzzzzzzap, a short yelp, and the sudden acrid smell of burnt flour. By the time Chell lowered the arm she'd thrown across her eyes, her skin tingling from the sudden, intense wave of heat, Wheatley was brushing the last traces of ash from his hands, looking down at his clean shirt. He looked quite pleased with himself, if slightly dazed.

"Oh, look at that, it worked! Brilliant, just sort of cremated the whole lot- poof, gone- although, admittedly, got a bit hairy there for a second, had no idea all that white stuff was so flammable. Sure it's safe for you to be messing around with it?"

"Usually," managed Chell. She'd had the presence of mind to step back at the last second, saving her eyebrows, but she was still shaken as hell, as anyone who'd just witnessed a split-second case of spontaneous human combustion in the middle of their own kitchen had the right to be.

She put a hand up to his chest and pushed him lightly backwards, and they both looked down at the two blackened size-fourteen footprints he'd left in the middle of the floor.

"Wheatley."

"Um. Yes?"

"Next time you do that... warn me first."

Wheatley swallowed. "Right. Understood."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Several hours later, a grim post-mortem was taking place in Chell's front room. The lights were turned down low out of respect for the deceased, and a slow-burning, sweet-scented candle was guttering on the windowsill, filling the room with sepulchral shadows. Wheatley, Romy, her twins, and Duke the collie were grouped around the big table, watching Chell carry out the autopsy.

She levelled her sharpest old breadknife, the serrated edge glinting in the candlelight, and tried, unsuccessfully, to pierce the blackened crust of the... thing in front of her. Calling it a loaf, even in the loosest sense, would probably have been enough to get everyone involved prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act.

She tried to saw the end off, and produced no noticable result. Drawing her brows together, she aimed carefully at a jagged fissure running the length of the thing's surface, and stabbed.

Clonk, went the knife, bouncing off. Wheatley winced.

"It looks like a rock," said Max, solemnly, as Chell massaged the shockwaves out of her elbow.

Jason nodded. "From space."

"I've got to say, it's kind of... impressive," said Romy. The four Hatfields often dropped by after school had ended over at the hall- a tradition with its roots partly in Romy's desire to keep her best friend up to date on local news and partly in the twins' violent love affair with Chell's raisin bread- but today they'd stayed for much the same reason that people slow down to look at terrible car crashes.

Romy was right. Wheatley's loaf was a work of art, in its own horrific way. Puffy in places it should have been flat, flat in places it should have been puffy, it leaned like a set of Penrose steps, baffling to the eye. It had strange geometry. It had been out of the oven for at least an hour, but it wouldn't stop smouldering (making the candle and the open windows a necessity, at least for the five present who needed to breathe) suggesting that there were still unpleasant chemical reactions taking place inside. What it had done in the oven was almost as worrying- showing alarming cannibalistic tendencies, it had overflowed its tin and eaten half of Chell's own loaf. It had the surface texture of sandpaper, and seemed to have gained at least two pounds of mass out of nowhere. It weighed roughly about as much as a bowling ball, which was a coincidence, since it was about as edible as one.

Duke the collie, for his part, kept propping his head on the table and giving it confused sideways sniffs, his keen canine nose apparently just as unable to register it as 'food' as it was to register Wheatley as 'human.'

It had taken Chell almost half an hour to force it to let go of the tin. She'd eventually given up and hammered it out with a chisel, and the sides of the thing glittered with half-embedded aluminium shrapnel.

"I don't know what happened," said Wheatley. He was staring forlornly at the thing, chin propped on his hands, which were already smudged with soot. Chell had banned him from 'incalcinating' within twenty yards of anything living or flammable.

Chell wasn't entirely sure what had happened, either. She'd stuck with her policy of non-intervention through the knocking back, second rise, and baking, and she'd been ready for the result to be fairly bad, but the thing on the table was in a category of its own. She was pretty sure that she could have taken the same ingredients and worked for days without ever being able to deliberately produce anything like it.

"Are you sure, right, that you didn't accidentally put the oven on the 'abomination against Science and nature' setting?" Wheatley asked her, plaintively. "Because that would explain quite a lot."

Duke, who seemed to have decided he was the lesser of two bewildering unknowns (the greater being the thing on the table) gave him a consolatory lick. He sighed.

"I'm sick of looking at it, to be honest. Can we just chuck it, please?"

Chell picked up the disastrous thing in both hands, weighing it critically.

"Good idea…"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The morning was growing warm, and the long grazing pasture that ran from the back fence of Aaron's yard to the row of trees at the far south was quiet and silvery with dew. A few shaggy sheep wandered and grazed, completely undisturbed by the presence of humans in their field. They could see what was going on, and they were used to it. For them, it was a part of life- every so often, the strange, upright, fleeceless creatures that fed them liked to do this, coming along and making the place untidy with their bits and pieces and making a racket for no good reason, before politely clearing up after themselves and leaving again.

Chell pulled the butt of the shotgun tightly to her shoulder, leaned her cheek against the cool grain of the wood, waited. A little way behind her, Wheatley hung on to his ear-protectors and watched her, half-apprehensive, half-fascinated. The protectors were fairly useless, since his audial receptors weren't exactly located in his ears, but they seemed to make him feel better anyway.

"Pull."

Beside them, Garret, grinning, hit the trigger. The clay-pigeon trap's spring-loaded arm- a chunk of steel cut from an old tractor and held on a coiled wire wound to straining with a crude windlass- snapped forwards with a sound like someone kicking a hollow metal goalpost, flinging a hacked-off slice of Wheatley's mutated loaf nearly sixty feet into the air. Chell tracked it above the level of the trees, her calm, intent eyes following it right to the apex of its arc, waiting for the point between momentum and gravity where it would, just for a moment, seem to float-

The sound of the shot cracked off the trees, brittle and thunder-loud. The black speck exploded, a puff of inky dust against the sky. The sheep went on grazing, the spring lambs leapt into the air and scattered, and Wheatley yelled, a shocked, exhilarated war whoop right in Chell's ear as she ejected the spent cartridge and reloaded.

"WHOOOO! Ahahahaaa, nice shot! Did you see that, it just disappeared! Bam, atomised! Oh, that was amazi- hang about, what are you giving it to me for?"

"Your turn," said Chell. She put the barrel into his hands, taking care to keep it pointed at the grass, and tugged his elbows into a better position, up on her toes for better control of his lanky, tensed-up limbs.

She'd spent countless hours in this wide, sheep-scattered field over the last four years, at least once a week, keeping her hands and her reflexes as sharp as she could. It was yet another part of her universal insurance policy against That Place. She found a curious peace in the practice, and she liked the hand-me-down shotguns and rifles her friends favoured, liked how little their weight and their worn wood and metal had in common with the portal device's cold engulfing handshake, its flat, punchy recoil, the queasy reality-splitting sounds that plagued her dreams.

Recently, her sessions had suffered a sudden check. Emily Kent- a small, somewhat dreamy woman in her mid-fifties who lived at the far end of town from Chell's little house- was Eaden's best potter, and her work graced every kitchen, shelf, and table in town. With a canny eye for the niche market (and a place the size of Eaden pretty much was a niche market, in itself,) she ran a popular sideline in batches of hollow, disc-shaped clay targets, perfect for Chell and anyone else who wanted to keep their hand in without having to chase down something with a heartbeat.

Then- just a couple of weeks ago- Emily had put her back out while throwing a vase, earning herself six weeks of rest on strict orders from Dr. Dillon and creating an abrupt town-wide shortage of inanimate things to shoot at.

Chell's idea had been spot-on- although Wheatley's bread was absolutely useless for human consumption, it was ideal for target practice.

A little of her confidence appeared to transfer to Wheatley, who relaxed enough to let her kick his back foot into a more balanced stance, although he still looked somewhat overwhelmed.

"Wow. Um, I should probably tell you at this point, that- for some reason, for- probably for several, unrelated reasons, lack of limbs probably being way up there- nobody has actually ever voluntarily put me in charge of, of any sort of lethal weapon before."

"That's a big shock," remarked Garret, to a nearby sheep. It cropped another mouthful of grass in bored assent.

Chell reached up and shifted Wheatley's thumb off the barrel, leaning up against his back, keeping her own hand on the gun to stop it wandering upwards. He was slightly mistaken- she was not putting him in charge of this, not entirely. After all, she actually had once voluntarily put him in charge of something that could easily have been classed as a lethal weapon- a very, very large, incredibly lethal weapon, in fact- and that, in his own words, had not ended well.

But she needed him to get it, the concept that she couldn't put into words, that the audience didn't matter, that trying to do things because you wanted to get them done was a million times better than trying to do them because you were afraid that the universe would think you were an idiot if you didn't. Fear was a great motivator when you had nothing else to go on, but it was a rotten substitute for self-confidence, and if there was one thing that his fragile, frantic headlong bravado was not, it was self-confidence.

"Closer to your shoulder," she told him.

"Closer, right..."

Wheatley was finding it hard to concentrate. He didn't feel all that relaxed any more, and he flinched as her free hand darted up under his right arm and adjusted the stock, which kept slipping from the angle of his neck. He wished that this body came with some sort of complicated, attention-requiring trajectory-calculating software, something intrusive that would have kept his mind on the job in hand, instead of what it did have, sight, touch, etcetera, lots of high-quality sensory input which didn't do anything to distract him from how bloody close she was. Being this close to her felt like standing right next to a grenade that might or might not have a pin in it, except where your average grenade was full of regular, boring old explosives, this grenade was packed with a stunning fireworks display. It might still take your eye out, if you were right at ground zero, but it would be worth it.

She steered his arm in an upwards arc, showing him how to follow an imaginary target, telling him various concise things about sight and aim- at least, he was vaguely aware that she was saying words, but the actual detail was a bit lost on him. She was leaning up on her toes, closer than his shadow, and her serious, upturned face rested gently against his elbow, filling the periphery of his vision with her slender cheekbones and dark flyaway hair.

If she noticed his distraction- his suddenly overkeen senses- she showed no sign of it. Her sharp, practical slate-grey gaze was fixed firmly on the middle distance, the blue patch of sky above the trees.

He didn't know why she was involving him in all these things, things that she and the other humans around her could have managed perfectly well without him. In that small bitter inward place that was forever looking for the next notice of dismissal, he was very afraid that this was the point, that she was trying to prove he really wasn't capable of much; that, just like She'd said, he was programmed to have terrible ideas and that was all he would ever be good at. She'd been kind, unbelievably kind, so far, but there was nothing to say she had to be. He knew how ruthless she was, when she wanted to be- and she was very, very good at breaking things.

Oh, but it wasn't all bad- it was a very long way from all bad. She made him nervous- of course she made him nervous, only a moron wouldn't have been nervous of her, crazy-brilliant and as implacable as a loaded gun (fittingly enough) and just as deadly. Yes, she made him nervous, but he was nearly always nervous anyway, and at least this was a hopeful sort of nervousness; comfortable tension, worry without fear. It stunned him to realise that this- here and now, her hand on his arm and the quiet cadence of her low, underused voice at his shoulder- this could easily be the closest he'd ever come to feeling at peace.

She was looking at him. After a moment of mutually confused silence, he came back to something approximating reality and caught on that she'd said something that required an answer.

"Oh, oh, right, um, yes, absolutely, I'm right with you."

She nodded, then nudged his finger into the safety-catch, flipping it off. Too late, he realised that he had possibly just agreed to more than he'd bargained for.

"Oh. Ah... hang on- hang on a minute, having slight second thoughts here, can I just ask, is this going to hurt? Because when you did it, it did look a bit like it might h-"

Several things happened, very nearly all at once.

Garret, in response to a nod from Chell, released the trap. The arm snapped forwards, the loaded chunk of rock-solid frankenbread leapt skywards, the lambs leapt skywards as well, and Wheatley- who hadn't been prepared for this at all, who had in fact been looking in completely the wrong direction- yelped and pulled the trigger.

The shot obliterated the middle branches of a small tree about fifty metres away, the target continued its unassailed plummet towards the ground, and the shotgun itself slammed backwards at about thirty feet a second and nailed Wheatley in the teeth, dropping him like a bag of rocks and sending his ear-protectors flying in a brightly-coloured arc. Chell, who'd just about managed to jerk back in time, caught them.

"Oh, Jesus!" Garret slid off the trap in a hurry. "Is he okay?"

"Ohh… ow," moaned Wheatley. He was lying flat on his back, sprawled like a chalk outline in the long grass. "Oh, God, that really… wait, did- did I hit it? Ohh, I didn't hit it, did I? No. Miles out. Have to say, wasn't- was not expecting that, it's got a kick like a bloody mule, that thing. Not that- I've actually ever been kicked by a mule- or seen a mule, even, now I think about it- but still, pretty confident that I'm correct, in saying that is what it had a kick like. Highly unpleasant, anyway."

Garret stopped in his tracks, a startled, impressed grin quickly replacing the concern on his freckly face.

"Holy God. He's bulletproof."

"Well, fair's fair, that wasn't exactly a bullet, that was a bloody great big gun straight smack to the face, but let's not sweat the small stuff," said Wheatley, sitting up. He caught Chell's eye and looked away, embarrassed, brushing staticky bits of shredded grass off his shoulders. "Sorry, er, that didn't go quite according to plan, did it? I was a bit... distracted, I think, for some reason, no idea why, won't happen again. Ah, that is, if you were planning on going through all that again, obviously, you've got most of a loaf left there, if you did decide you wanted to use up the whole lot, we could easily be here all day. Your call."

His expression was a curious mixture of dread and hope, teetering in a delicate balance between please don't make me do that again and please don't decide I'm not up to it.

Garret glanced up at the sun. "It's still a while before I've got to be down at the store," he said, cheerfully. "What d'you think? Won't hurt to do a couple more."

Chell wasn't so sure, and if that expression was anything to go by, Wheatley wasn't either. Nevertheless, she reached down and caught his hand, hauling him to his feet.

"Fine. This time, listen."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Here you go," said Garret, resurfacing from the very back of the ancient chiller cabinet, the frost-choked section stacked with boxes and bags of deep-frozen produce. "Pretty sure this's been in here since last harvest, anyway."

Chell took the bag of frozen rhubarb and passed it silently across to Wheatley, who was currently sprawled against the big sacks of potatoes at the side of the counter as if someone had maneuvered him over them and then cut all of the strings holding him up. He pressed it gratefully against his shoulder, all of his previous concerns about wet things apparently chucked clean out the window.

Chell couldn't help feeling slightly guilty- although Wheatley couldn't bruise and didn't have bones to break, his hard-light body and its pointlessly accurate ability to feel pain had some definite opinions on the subject of being repeatedly battered with something heavy, and right now it was clearly giving him hell.

"Ahhh, miles better. Give me a minute, this is fairly technical, just got to reboot my nervous system, seems to be stuck on the 'agonising physical trauma' setting at the moment, which is not ideal."

"That's the pain barrier," said Garret, helpfully, hopping back up on his stool behind the counter and rummaging for the dog-eared old electronics magazine he'd stashed underneath. Aaron had taken the store's rickety truck to pick up an order in Depot, the nearest town- an overnight trip on hard roads- leaving him technically in charge. "You've got to push through it."

"Right, well, I'm pushing," said Wheatley, jamming the dripping bag of frozen rhubarb up against the angle of his jaw and shutting his eyes. "Gahhhh... nothing much happening, though, don't seem to be getting through. I think it might be password-protected, this pain barrier whatsit. Nope, nothing doing, still hurts."

Chell, who was sorting through a box of old optical discs on the counter, winced. She'd tried her best to help him past the issue of controlling the recoil, but he'd still only managed to stay on his feet twice, taken her down with him three times- her side still hadn't forgiven her for that part- and stubbornly stuck to his party trick of smacking himself heavily in the face and shoulder with the butt of the gun every time he pulled the trigger. Far from getting better with practice, he'd actually got worse. He'd evolved an alarming habit of simply letting go of the gun mid-shot, destroyed several tree branches and a fence post, and finally blown a hole in the chickenwire that fenced off the pasture from the row of trees.

They'd had to cut the session short after that, while Garret tried to speed-mend the damage and Chell stopped the sheep from making a break for freedom. Wheatley had tried to help, but had only really succeeded in proving that most sheep are absolutely freaked out by strange human-shaped things coming at them flailing their limbs about like mad windmills, and in the end she'd had to gently ask him to stop helping.

"At least though, at least I can actually do something about it, stick something on it, frozen vegetables, whatever- which is brilliant! I mean it, you have no idea how great it is, being able to do something towards alleviating the discomfort, I mean, before, what did I have? Optical lids, couple of handles- basically, if something's getting on your nerves, what can you do? Nothing, you can't do anything, you're stuffed. I once had this- itch in my left port for six months. Couldn't do a thing about it. Drove me bonkers! So what I did in the end, right, was I had this brilliant idea, there was this sharp bit sticking out of the wall in this one place right next to my management rail, and I took a good long run-up-"

Behind the counter, Garret lowered his electronics magazine, and raised one of his eyebrows. Oblivious, Wheatley frowned and took the bag away for a moment, meltwater dripping sluggishly down his neck.

"...and, that's funny, come to think of it I can't actually remember what happened after that. All a bit vague from that point onwards... took care of the itch, though, definitely."

Chell, who was busy giving him a fairly appalled sort of stare, started a little as Garret leaned over the desk and poked her in the shoulder with his magazine.

"Reminds me," he said, quietly. "Got something for you out back."

"Hey, hey, wait for me, I'm coming!" As Chell moved to follow Garret into the stockroom, Wheatley tried to get up, made it halfway, and then keeled over on the potatoes again, clutching the half-melted rhubarb against his neck.

"AAHHhhhh ow ow ow okay no I'm not, not coming, bit of an optimistic assessment there. Uh, tell you what, you- you go on ahead, me and my bag of stuff here are just going to kick back here a while, okay? Just... chilling out here for a bit, if everyone's down with that."

"Great," called Garret. "Hold the fort for us, okay, buddy? We'll be right back."

"Er- right! Fine- that's fine, not a problem. Got you covered, you can count on me..."

The sound of the door behind the counter closing seemed louder than it had before, thudding dully in the big, high-raftered space.

"...buddy. Yeah, not sure it's exactly the word I would have chosen, myself, Mr. I-Know-My-Way-Round-A-Toolbox, but there you go," Wheatley mumbled, sitting up a little and wincing.

He felt an instinctive, needling sort of dislike for Garret. It was near-identical to his resentment towards Aaron- involuntary, illogical, but no less bitter for it.

Garret was smart and confident and had known Chell for about four years longer than Wheatley had. Garret had been hanging out in this peaceful, pleasant little town with her for four whole years while he'd been stuck in orbit around the moon, and just that on its own was a nasty, uncomfortable fact he could do nothing about.

It was close to the way he'd felt when he'd realised all the humans- the ones who'd shown up out of nowhere when he'd brought her back, the ones who'd tried carefully to wake her up, and bombarded him with urgent questions he hadn't known how to answer, and taken her to the doctor's house- had all known her name. It had brought it forcibly home to him that he had no claim on her, hardly anything, not time or usefulness or familiarity or friendship- not even a single favour.

He wasn't much of a fan of being out of Chell's line of sight like this, either. Things seemed to go bad fast whenever she wasn't around, as if her presence was a lucky talisman that he needed to get through the day in this alien place without incident. Well, without much incident, anyway.

It occurred to him then that- ideally- the person in charge of an operation like this should be in a position to oversee the whole area, not sprawled on a heap of potatoes while holding their neck as if afraid it might come unscrewed. It just didn't project the right sort of aura of responsibility and command.

"Not as if there's much going on here, joint not really rocking at the moment, true, but it's- it's the look of the thing, isn't it? It's just simple professionalism. Affects the whole look of the place if the proprietor's spark out in the root vegetables. It's just not a good image."

The store was never completely quiet. He liked that about it- there was always a little noise going on, something up to something in one corner or another. The cranky old chiller cabinet buzzed by the counter, a thick monotonous grinding sort of sound which was just different enough from that Other Sound- the one he'd caught himself missing- to be comforting. The big radio crackled. A couple of wet orange things- fish, his memory vaguely supplied, although he'd thought that fish were supposed to be bigger, more sort of edible-looking- circled inside a big flat-bottomed glass ball on the counter, stuffed between a stack of jam-jars and a rack of spanners. The bit of machinery clamped to the side of the ball wheezed away to itself, blowing bubbles into the water.

Wheatley got up, gingerly, keeping the bag of rhubarb pressed against his neck, and had a go at getting behind the counter. It was harder than it looked, because Garret hadn't bothered to leave the little wooden hatch in the counter propped open, but he eventually managed it by ducking underneath.

There was a lot of interesting things in the shelves around the other side- jars, magazines, folders, reams of paper, books- not the reading kind, these books were all full of columns of handwritten numbers. Very important numbers, probably, whatever they were for.

"It's still fine in here, by the way!" he called. "Everything's under controaaAAA-"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Does that sound like a problem?" asked Garret.

Chell shook her head. Wheatley did a lot of yelling, and by now she had become fairly good at telling the difference between the sort of yell that meant 'I have just become aware of an actual valid source of danger' and the sort of yell that only meant 'something unexpected just happened and I'm surprised.' The noise she'd just heard through the stockroom door was definitely in the latter category.

Garret shrugged and resumed looking in the drawers of the parts-littered workbench. "Well, like I said, I didn't think I was gonna find anything- what you gave me was pretty specialised. So I had a look around out here last night, went through some stuff me and the old man've been meaning to clear out for years, and… score."

He grinned, and dropped a sealed plastic bag into her outstretched hand.

Chell held it up to the light. There was the lead she'd ganked from Wheatley's avatar device, coiled neatly in the plastic with its striped black-white three-pin connector- and there, nestled next to it, another thing, bulkier, uglier, discoloured black steel.

She shook them out into her palm. The thing that Garret had found for her had three holes in one end and a shabby USB jack on a short lead at the other. Taking the two parts carefully between her thumbs and forefingers, she clipped them together. It was a stiff, complaining fit- not surprising, since Wheatley's lead was mint-condition Aperture tech, and the thing Garret had found was from God-knew-where and looked like it had been in a house fire, but it was a fit, nonetheless, complete with a snug, unbudging click at the end.

"Perfect," she said. "I owe you."

"Yes, you do," he said, smirking. She swatted him with the plastic bag.

"It would've been easier if you'd told me exactly what you wanted to do with this thing," he continued, ducking her and lifting a small greysteel laptop case up on to the workbench in front of them. "I mean, I told you, if you actually brought this mystery tech you're working with down here, I could get it set up myself-"

Chell shook her head.

"- but the way I've fixed this baby, I'm pretty sure that if you don't get a picture on start-up, there wouldn't be much else I could do anyway. I've basically loaded every codec I could get my hands on into this thing, and a couple that I cooked up myself trying to get Foxglove talking to all the different systems I've got down there. I've set up a little routine to try 'em all out 'til it hits a positive."

"How's she going?"

Garret slumped a little, letting out a big sigh. All of a sudden he looked younger than his twenty-odd years, tired and a bit forlorn, rubbing his face bearishly with the flats of his hands.

"Could you... maybe ask an easier question?"

It was easy to forget, Chell realised with a guilty sting, that she was not the only person in the world with problems to be solved. Neither was she the only one who had trouble letting go of things that most people would have given up as a lost cause.

Garret had been working on Foxglove for three years now, three years which had started off in a flood of optimism and enthusiasm, with nearly everyone in town getting involved in the site at the bottom of Otten's Field. Back then, there'd almost always been two, three, four, half-a-dozen, or more of the citizens of Eaden down there with him, sawing, hammering, welding, teetering up ladders or on crude scaffolding, standing around Garret and his reams of schematics as he talked and waved his arms around as if steering fleets of imaginary planes into landing. Others had given time, parts, tools. Chell herself had helped whenever she'd had the time- still did, along with Aaron, who was more long-sighted than most, even if he was getting more than a little tired of his stockroom being periodically ramsacked, raided, and used as a engineering workshop.

But the months had turned into years, and the numbers of helpers down at the bottom of Otten's Field had slowly dwindled away, and Foxglove had been nearly finished, always nearly finished. The thing had been nearly finished for the best part of two years, and these days, if you went down to the bottom of Otten's Field, the odds were ten to one that you'd find Garret working down there on his own. Eaden was a place kept alive by its own sleepy but steady progress, and everyone understood that when you struck out into the unknown, sometimes you hit a reef, so nobody blamed him when the amazing things that he'd promised had failed to manifest, but Chell could tell that the loss of faith and interest hurt him more than he showed. The town lived with their fritzy radios, shaky LAN connections, and the three-quarters-of-a-TV-station that you could get by sticking a coat hanger to your chimney and pointing it towards New Detroit (fifty percent news, fifty percent snowstorm, all the time) and although the name carefully stencilled on the comm tower's massive third hoof was Foxglove, more than a few people were starting to jokingly refer to it Garret's Folly.

Chell felt for him, her brainy, amiable, honorary little brother. Working with him, she'd picked up a little practical knowledge- metalwork, carpentry, things that involved breaking stuff apart and turning them into new things were very much her forte- but not nearly enough to help him with the tricky circuitry, the coding, the scratch-built digital wizardry needed to turn Foxglove from an inert work of modern art into something that spoke.

She propped her elbows on his shoulder and leaned over to poke at the laptop's scratched screen. All she could do for the moment was try to take his mind off it, play a little to his endless love of explaining things- and if it helped her with her own problem, well, there wasn't any harm in that, was there?

"Fine. How do I make this work?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"-AHHHoh it's you, short stuff with the wellies. Hello!"

Ellie Otten said nothing. She was too scared to speak.

Ellie was a thoughtful little girl, bright for her age, shy around strangers and good at noticing things that other people- older people, particularly- didn't. Like all small children, there were things that frightened her, terrors that stuck with her despite the reassurances of her parents. Fires, like the blaze that had taken the old mill last summer. The big storm culvert at the other end of town, black and bottomless, like a hungry mouth.

Monsters.

Monsters, like the ones her teacher touched on with sanitised care in class- more to the point, like the pictures Lindsay Randall had shown her once, the ones from her grand-uncle's book. Things like insects and animals but wrong- and worse, things that looked nearly human, but weren't.

Her parents had often reassured her that all the monsters were gone, a long time before she'd even been born, and she'd believed them, right up until the terrifying moment when she'd looked up from playing with Linnell on the gate by Green Pond and seen a monster, a real one, tall as anything and wrong in a way she couldn't have described but somehow just knew, standing right there on the road looking at the old town sign.

And then she'd seen that the monster had Chell- Chell, who was weird and brave and cool, who'd once rescued Linnell when Max Hatfield had accidentally dropped him into the storm culvert and understood about sometimes just not feeling like talking too much. She'd been draped against the monster's back like a dead thing, with her bloody hands hanging over his shoulders and her pale, lifeless face limp against his neck.

Run and scream, Ellie, Linnell had told her. Right now, your legs and your lungs are your best friends.

Which wasn't true, of course, Linnell was her best friend, with Lindsay Randall coming a close second, but Ellie had run and screamed anyway.

Her dad had explained to her later that Chell was okay, and that the monster wasn't a monster at all, just a stranger from out of town, but Ellie had remained inwardly firm on this second point- she knew a monster when she saw one, and she hadn't wanted to see this one ever again.

Except now here she was, frozen to the spot in front of the counter in Mr. Halifax's store with her dad's list of orders for the week in the pocket of her dungarees, with the monster looking right at her. Ellie wouldn't really have been able to explain why she knew there was something very wrong about him, but those eyes were a start. They were too blue- the bright, bright blue of crayons, of the bottom of a painted pool, weirdly depthless.

"Sorry about the, er, screaming," said the monster, with an embarrassed huff of a laugh, leaning over the counter to get a better look at her. "Although, to be fair, no more than you did the other day, going off yelling your head off like that. Tiny bit unnecessary, despite the undeniable urgency of the situation... still, sorry, again, you just scared the life out of me there, sneaking up on me with your silent little welly feet. Hang on, be right with you-"

He dropped something onto the cash register- a bag of squelchy wet red stuff that hit the scrollworked metal top with a splatch- and ducked underneath the hatch in the counter. Ellie squeezed Linnell so hard that her small arm nearly disappeared into his worn green plush. She wanted to run, but this time her feet wouldn't move. She was stuck.

Wheatley surfaced on the shop side of the counter and looked down at her, blinking. He was an expert on the subject of being afraid himself, but he was a lot slower on the uptake when it came to recognising fear in others. It wasn't so much of a lack of empathy as a lack of practice, since nobody- with one very short period of exception- had ever had any reason to be afraid of him before. From the outside, he just didn't recognise the symptoms.

"Look, I'd feel happier if you stopped the whole... staring thing, really. It's a bit rude, particularly with you both doing it, you and your little thing there. Granted, uh, it's only got the one eye, makes it a bit less disconcerting, but-"

"s'not a thing," managed Ellie, in a tiny voice. "s'a vrtignt."

"Right, I have literally no idea what you just said. Volume, see, think there might be something wrong with your little volume control in there, just saying, you might want to get that checked out, because I've met you twice now and you're either shrieking like a banshee or making little squeaking noises like, well, like a bird. Little baby bird. Is it a code? Because if it is- ohh! Oh, or, just thought, maybe you don't speak English! I didn't even think about that. Well, it's okay, then, it's okay, because I've actually got translation software somewhere in here, managed to hang on to that, let's have a try... Hola! Hab-luh... you-sted... uh... English?"

Ellie stared up at him. She could hardly understand him- she'd never heard anything like his strange, rapid-patterned voice, with all its 'r' sounds in the wrong places and its long, gently-rounded vowels- but although she was still afraid she had to admit that, for a monster, he wasn't exactly doing anything very monstrous. He was just… standing there, looking worried, waiting for her to react.

"No? No, nothing doing. Well, er- hey, tell you what, guess who's in charge right now? Have a guess."

Silence.

"You're- you're not going to guess, are you? No. I'll tell you, it's me. Only in charge of the whole store, thank you very much. Officially and everything. And- oh, oh, there's a thought! You're in here, technically, that makes you my first customer! Brilliant! What can I do you for?"

Silence. Ellie continued to stare, and Wheatley's enthusiastic expression sagged a bit in the face of her big-eyed scrutiny. He started to wonder exactly what Chell was doing out there with Garret 'Cleverclogs' Rickey, and how long she was planning to be about it. Without her as his translator, without the fact that she almost always knew when things were going pear-shaped and how to put them right, the small yammer of anxiety telling him that he wasn't handling the situation right was free to grow, unchecked.

"...Nothing, okay, I'm sensing a pattern here. Come on, give me something to work with- this is a shop, traditionally a place where people, um, buy things, is the general concept, so I'm assuming you didn't just come in here for the view."

He gave the nearest shelf a desperate look. It reached all the way to the ceiling, stuffed with a baffling array of different objects, most of which he'd never seen before in his life. He had no idea what they were all for. He supposed that humans recognised them all just by the names written on them, but if that was the case, if they really had to memorise the names of fifteen million random products and objects and things so they didn't end up buying cleaning fluid instead of fruit juice every time they went shopping, then he was amazed that they had enough memory left in those squishy primate brains of theirs to invent so much as a ball-point pen.

"I'd be tempted to say come and grab what you want yourself, but you're never going to be able to reach a fraction of this stuff. Don't mean to be rude, but you're about a foot tall down there, you are quite miniscule. How about, right, how about this as an idea, if I sort of point at some of these things, and, process of elimination, we'll eventually arrive at what you're after. Like... this, how about this? Can of something, writing, um, 'Buzz Off', and it's got a, a picture of a... umm, some sort of sad bee. Right, not sure what's going on there, but any good?"

He looked hopefully at Ellie, who had unfrozen enough to give her head a tiny little shake.

"No. Alright, we could be here a while, but, never mind, how about this? I actually know what this is, it's a light-bulb. In a box. Got a whole stack of them here, nearly all the way to the back of this thing, this shelf, and I actually think they're all the same, so not much variety, but if a... a sixty watt BC pearl's your thing, it's your lucky day. Got millions of them."

Ellie shook her head again. She was more fascinated than afraid, now, and would probably have found her dad's list to show him if she hadn't been so curious to see what he was going to do next. He had his arm nearly up to the shoulder in the shelf, feeling fingertips-first past the bug spray and the stacks of light-bulbs to the dark dusty space at the very back.

"Okay, we've got something else back here, I can feel it, let me just- hmm. Hang on, seems to be a bit stuck, might have to manually override it..."

He braced his other hand on the underside of the shelf above, tugged harder.

"Hah, no, it really does not want to come out. Never mind, I can do this, if it's hidden away at the back here it must be something really important, definitely worth a look. Count of three, I'm going to have a go at a manual override. You might want to stand back."

Obediently, Ellie hopped backwards.

"One... two... thr-"

twannnnnggggg

CLONK

Ellie watched, fascinated. Everything on the shelf- and the shelf above that, and the shelf above that, and everything else all the way up to the high wood-beamed ceiling- jumped, setting off a chorus of tiny warning rattles and clinks, the sound of dozens of rows of hundreds of different things settling gently against each other.

The monster jerked, too, his big buggy eyes widening, an intense curve of pressure suddenly entering his posture, his splayed, braced elbows, his knees just about starting to buckle.

"-Ah. Uh, not to- not to alarm you or anything, a-absolutely no need to panic, but- but, just out of interest- how are you at holding things up?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"'Scuse me," said Ellie, poking her head politely around the door of the stockroom. Garret looked up from the screen of his laptop, Chell just behind him, coiling the striped lead carefully back into its bag.

"Ellie! Hey! What's up?"

"He says to tell you that there's a- a bit of a-" Ellie frowned, looking down at Linnell's tangled paws, trying to get it exactly right. "A bit of a sitch-yew-ayshun d'vellepin."

Garret looked at Chell.

"Does that sound like a pro-"

She was already running.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

8. The Cold Hard Truth

"Of course, I did actually have it all under control," said Wheatley.

They were walking back across the main square, the late-afternoon light throwing long, crisp black shadows from their feet, from the buildings on the sunset side of the square and the people walking here and there around them, crossing the wide, earthy space on errands of their own. Like a puppet against an illuminated curtain of golden dust, the shadow-Chell walked purposefully ahead, the black rectangle of Garret's laptop held in her crossed arms, and the shadow-Wheatley loped anxiously along behind her.

"And anyway it's- it's like he said, it could have gone at any time, definitely structurally unsound to begin with, that thing. Balanced on a knife-edge. Hanging by- by a thread. On a- uh- it was balanced on the edge of a knife, and the knife that it was balanced on was, itself, hanging by a thread. Accident waiting to happen, is what I'm driving at, practically a miracle it hadn't come down on anyone before. Lucky I flagged it up for you, really, I mean, I'm not suggesting negligence or anything, not pointing blame in any one direction, but someone could have been seriously hurt. Like that little kid, whatsername-"

"Ellie."

"That's the one, yeah, with the wellies… we had a bit of a chat, while you and old cleverclogs back there were fixing the shelf. Told me all about these things, vortigaunts, I think they're called. Amazing! Did you know, right, they can talk to each other over miles? Entire bloody continents, sometimes, and- here's the unbelievable bit- they only do it with their brains! I know! Incredible!"

He waggled his fingers, presumably to indicate the mysterious, awe-inspiring properties of telepathic communication.

"Plus, plus, she gave me a thing, look."

Chell looked. The 'thing' was a hairclip, and with some difficulty, and some tentative help from Ellie's far smaller (and far less clumsy) fingers, he'd managed to wedge it across his tie like a tie-pin.

It had a frog on it.

"It's funny, that, isn't it? That thing where you feel like you'd be proper cut up about it if a, a shelf fell on someone, like you get a bit sort of queasy just thinking about it, even though you don't exactly need them for anything, or hardly know them, even."

Chell slowed a little. It was funny, but not exactly for the reason he meant. The feeling he was describing- empathy, natural concern without a particular motive, call it what you wanted- was not normal, not for anything out of That Place, anyway. No other Aperture device she'd had anything to do with had been capable of trying to express genuine concern- even exhibiting the appearance of it had been beyond them, in most cases.

She'd encountered other personality cores, although she hadn't had the chance to study them in any great detail- on the two occasions when she'd stumbled across them she'd been under a bit too much pressure to start taking notes. On the surface, they'd been just like him- but then that was exactly it, that was all they'd been- surface. They'd all been equipped with one primary function, one ever-repeating obsessive program cycling around their single-layered artificial minds; cake, dubious facts, curiosity, space. They'd barely seemed self-aware. Wheatley's primary function was just as clearly-defined- or at least, it was supposed to be- but where was this simple human depth, this half-crippled complexity, in any of the others?

She stopped, one foot on the first step up to her own front door.

"Wheatley?"

"Yep?" He was still grinning down at the frog-clip.

"What's... your first memory?"

He looked up, startled. "Er- sorry, what?"

She raised her eyebrows at him. He blinked, worry beginning to overlay the surprise.

"Sorry, yes, I-I did hear you, it's just that… well, I don't know, really, it's not the sort of thing I tend to go around thinking about much, usually, my first memory, and of course it would've been absolute yonks ago, ages and ages and… where did this come from all of a sudden? I mean, are you just sort of information-gathering for some reason or- is it a test? It's- it's not a test, is it?"

"No. Just..."

Looking back later, Chell wasn't exactly sure why she did what she did next. Maybe she thought it would help him focus, or grab his attention, or maybe it was because the steps beneath her made his looming six-and-a-half feet just that little bit more accessible to her, or maybe it was simply a moment of pure silly impulse, although that in itselfwas as rare for her as a meteor-strike in July. Whatever it was, she parked Garret's laptop case on her own feet, reached up, and placed her fingertips gently on his temples.

"...try."

He twitched, taken aback by the sudden contact. His glasses caught the sun, flared golden, and she found herself thinking of the long-gone Aperture scientist who must have coded all of this, who must have spent countless hours constructing all this detail and writing it into the avatar device's basic template, taking every hair and texture and movement and recreating it all in hard-light- and for what? To make something that looked human enough to hawk a few products? The word 'overkill' sprang to mind (as it did fairly often in reference to Aperture, although usually in a slightly different context.)

The detail was staggering, when you looked for it. She could see every line of his face, every stratosphere-blue striation in his eyes, his pale near-invisible eyelashes- far lighter than his hair, which was an unremarkable straw-blond and needed combing- the tiny screws at the sides of his glasses, and- there- a single thumbprint smudged, clear as daylight, on the left lens.

"Is... your holding my head going to help me remember?" he said, weakly.

Chell gave a little shrug. She felt strangely giddy, as if she'd been tethered to something for a long time and was only just beginning to pull loose. She was not naturally a touchy-feely person- beyond the occasional hug from a close friend like Romy or Aaron she very rarely initiated contact with anyone. It wasn't that she had a problem with it, exactly- she just wasn't very demonstrative. She tended to keep herself to herself, and not do things that involved a lot of spontaneous contact in public. Things, for example, like taking someone's face - someone she technically only barely knew, at that - gently in her hands in plain view of everyone who happened to be walking across the town square. She knew that a lot of people were probably going to be looking at the two of them, that if she looked up she would see Bill van Buren leaning interestedly against the doorway of his place a couple of doors down, and that Karen Prell and Dina Nelson (if Aaron was Eaden's heart, those two fine citizens were its mouth) were probably staring bug-eyed in her direction from their favourite spot in front of the Hall.

She didn't give a toss.

"Well- I'll have a go," said Wheatley, dubiously, scrunching his eyes tight-closed. "Let's see, first memory, first memoryyy... thing is, it could sort of do with a good spring-cleaning in here anyway, you try hurling everything in your mind into an, an entirely different container all of a sudden and see how tidy everything ends up, not to mention the, uh, the massive trauma from- wait, wait, this is looking promising, I think I've got it. Uh, well, firstly, first of all... it was dark, and I remember thinking, wow, don't think much of this, not much going on, could get seriously boring if all this nothing continues for any great length of time, and then I remember thinking, hang on, hold the phone, I'm thinking, since when was I thinking? A-and then, all of a sudden, blink- just like that-"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

-there was light.

He felt his optic flare and the neat little central opening in his lens shrink to its narrowest contraction, reacting to the bright harsh overhead lights. He looked up, down, and blinked for absolutely the first time ever. Everything was white- white floors, white walls, white ceiling, white coat on the thing- on the human, that was a human, he was more or less sure of it- who was looming over him, poking urgently at him with a small white tool and muttering to himself. The only things that weren't white were the human's hair, the gooey yellow, red, and pink stuff that was trying to escape from the whitish triange-thing in his free hand, and the photo on the little white badge clipped to his front.

Dale, CA, Intern, he read, and then realised with a happy little flare of accomplishment that he could read.

"-dead if anyone finds out I dropped freaking mustard in the co- oh, shit!"

Talking, that noise was talking, and if Dale, CA, Intern could do it, then so could he.

"Hello!"

"Oh, Jesus," said Dale, CA, Intern, dropping the things in his hands and backing off. This didn't feel like a particularly good start, but he was nothing if not optimistic- literally, he had practically no idea of anything that he was, right now, and that was more than a bit confusing, but if he'd been asked to list the things he thought he might be, optimistic would be way up there, optimism seemed to be a quality he had right in hand. Not that he seemed to have hands.

He wheeled his optic in a loopy arc, testing its rotation, flexed his handles, blink-blink-blinked. Everything he did have was working perfectly, and that was something else to be optimistic about, wasn't it?

"Umm... hi," said Dale, CA, Intern, staring down at him with an expression he thought looked more than a bit worried. "Are you... uh, can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear! Ears: fully-functional. One-hundred-percent functional."

"You-" Dale, CA, Intern swallowed. "You don't... have ears."

"Don't I? Odd, I could have sworn I- no, you're right, actually, I don't, do not seem to. Huh. Oh, well, alright, fair enough! Hearing... thingies, things for the purposes of hearing with: fully functional. That's good, isn't it?"

"Um... yeah, it's- great- sorry, it's just you're not actually... I mean, you're not supposed to be- You know what, um, hold that thought, I'm going to go get my supervisor-"

With that, Dale, CA, Intern shoved the gooey squarish thing somewhere beneath the level of the workstation and left the room. The door hissed heavily shut behind him.

Now the room was completely empty- clean, white, nothing in it except a lot of computer screens filled with orange scrolly text, too small and fast for him to read. In the absence of anything better to do, he experimented with his optic a bit more, counted how many screens there were- fourteen, and counting was another thing that it was nice to find out he could do- hummed a bit, tried to whistle.

He wasn't sure that he liked being on his own. It was, he thought, a little boring, and he hoped it wasn't going to be happening very often, or for very long.

Finally, there were voices from somewhere outside, hurrying, echoing, getting closer.

"...serious error, it was supposed to stay dormant this time, until we could determine the effects of the last set of adjustments-"

"I know, sir, I didn't- I was just working on the calibrations like you told me, and it just fired up and started talking!"

"Well, talking we can work with. We're behind enough as it is. Right, Dale, you've never worked with this thing online before, so listen carefully. Do not say anything that might constitute a paradox. In fact, just keep your mouth shut. This thing is now a total tabula rasa, and we don't want it picking up anything that's going to destabilise its primary function. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. And humour it. The last thing we need is the damn thing getting hysterical again. Keycard."

The door made a happy trilling sort of cloc! sound, and hissed open. Dale, CA, Intern hurried back in, a little way ahead of another human- shorter, thinner on top, with his own little badge that read Moss, D, Head of Research.

"Hello!" he said, cheerily, to the new human.

Moss, D, Head of Research smiled at him. "Hello, I.D Core. How're you feeling?"

"Er, good! Feeling pretty alright, actually. No complaints, um, although, is- just to clarify, is that who I am? I.D Core? Only that's not quite-"

"That's what you are. You're a personality core, and that describes your function."

"...Oh."

"You sound uncertain."

"Un- uncertain? No, no, no, I just- I just had a sort of feeling, er, this idea just now, out of nowhere, you know, pow, that I... have a name. Definite name-type-thing. Not I.D whatsit or whatever. I mean, I'm not knocking it, sounds very... Science-y, important, but-"

"I see," said Moss, D, Head of Research, frowning a little and exchanging a glance with Dale, CA, Intern, who was hovering nervously behind him. "So... what is your name, I.D Core?"

"Um..."

He tried to remember. He really tried, shut his optic tight and concentrated- and concentration didn't come easily, it was like trying to keep a lot of differently-sized marbles from rolling down a slope, bright shapes slipping away in all directions over a blanket of dizzy scattered urgency, and all the time a weird dislocated fog lurking underneath. There was a shape, the shape of a word- words- he could almost frame them and catch them and stop them rolling away, but-

"...I don't... I don't know. Umm... I think... a W? W is- is definitely involved, or- hang on, or is it a J? Could be, could be a J, um, it's tricky, I just can't seem to-"

"Do you know why you think you have a name?" said Moss, D, Head of Research.

His optic snapped open again, the lens widening to a large, hopeful bright-blue point. "Er, well, I mean, people usually have names-"

"People do. Personality cores don't."

The point dwindled.

"...Oh."

"However," said Moss, D, Head of Research, thoughtfully, "we, ah... decided that you should be allowed to have a name, I.D Core."

"Wh-" started Dale, CA, Intern. His superior kicked him sharply in the ankle, and continued, smoothly.

"Yes… we programmed it into your memory banks. As, uh, a… special feature."

"You- you did? Oh, well, cheers! Thanks very much!"

"Can you remember it now?"

"Er- well- it's... umm, don't tell me! Don't tell me..."

He tried again. The baffling murky fog was still there, underneath, but now that he knew that it wasn't important, he could push it aside, shove it right under and go after what really mattered. The biggest brightest marble of all, the one they'd given him, it was right there and he could get this right-

"...Wheatley! That's it, isn't it, that's my name! Yes, hahahaa, you're nodding, I'm right, I got it right, brilliant! Wheatley, that's what it is, absolutely nailed that one, didn't I? Spot on. Tremendous."

And this was brilliant, this sensation in itself, a surge of feeling impossible to describe in its simple glad intensity, the sheer joy of Getting it Right. He hoped that there was going to be a lot more of this to come, lots more things to Get Right, because he could get used to this feeling, he really could.

Wheatley. He tried it out again, his name, getting comfortable with the pitch and tone of his brand new voice at the same time. He tried to make it sound urbane, cool, the sound of a smooth go-getting high-flier of an I.D Core (whatever that was) packed into two short syllables. He wasn't sure that he pulled it off, exactly, but never mind, it was a work in progress.

"Wheatley. Oh, great name, love it. It- well, it just sort of fits, you know? Very- very sort of me, somehow."

"Glad to hear it," said Moss, D, Head of Research, absently, making a note on a small pad he seemed to have pulled out from thin air. "Excellent... response."

"It is? Oh, fantastic, are you writing that down? That, that it was an excellent response? I mean, I don't want to be pushy or anything, but, you know, first question out of the gate and I hit it into orbit, so to speak, it'd be nice to have some kind of, of record."

"Er-"

"Nothing fancy, nothing fancy, just something that- that keeps, you know, like a, a memo of some kind, or- or a sticker. Ohh, do I get a sticker? That'd be magical, if I got a sticker."

The two humans looked at each other. Moss, D, Head of Research gave a sort of panicky, demanding do-something flail at Dale, CA, Intern, who looked lost for a moment and then ducked below the level of the workstation. After a moment, Moss, D, Head of Research, followed him, and a frantic whispered exchange took place.

"I don't have anything, sir! I've just got my lunch!"

"Just find something! We're supposed to be on the front line of innovation here, so damn well innovate! Aha! What's this?"

"Uh, that's my bana-"

"I-know-what-it-is you idiot! Here, give it here-"

A moment later, the two scientists reappeared in his line of vision. Dale, CA, Intern looked a bit dubious, whereas Moss, D, Head of Research was smiling, something small and white stuck between his fingers.

"Dale, if you 'd like to do the honours."

Dale, CA, Intern took the little stickery thing, bent down to optic-height and stuck it hurriedly on his inner shell, just to the right of his optic, smoothing it down with his thumb.

"We call this an Aperture Science... er... Positive Reinforcement..."

"Affirmation?" said Dale, CA, Intern, helpfully.

"...Affirmation, um, Sticker. There you go."

The workstation to which he was attached- by some sort of connector cradle, he vaguely understood, a bright-yellow metal rollcage- was highly-polished, its wipe-clean white surface reflective. By craning the inner gimbal that controlled his moving parts downwards, he could see himself, his own bright optic, lower lid half-closed and handle crooked in a faceless, nearly-gestureless equivalent of a big grateful grin.

"Ohh, would you look at that. Thanks, mate, much appreciated- ooh, look, and it's got letters on!"

The little sticker was white against his spotless light-grey shell, lettered in bright blue and orange. He narrowed his lens, focused, squinted.

"BRA... ZIL. Um... Brazil? Is- oh, is it code, of some kind?"

"You can r-" Dale, CA, Intern looked across to his supervisor for help, and found none. If anything, Moss, D, Head of Research looked at even more of a loss than he did. "Uh... yeah. It's code."

"Right! Got you. Code. Annd... what does it mean, exactly?"

"It- uh, well, Bra... zil... well, it's kinda like, short for... a cross between brilliant... and, uh... resilient."

Brilliant and resilient. Oh, he liked the sound of that.

"Ha, wow, I get it, I get it. Brazilliant!"

"Uh... exactly," said Dale, CA, Intern, and- despite a warning glare from Moss, D, Head of Research- patted him awkwardly on the shell. "Brazilliant."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"So- so after that," said Wheatley, "they made some more notes, brought in a few more people to have a look- you know the sort, Science-y types, white coats, clipboards... and they asked me some more questions- well, some, ha, felt like millions at the time. Just sort of interview stuff, mostly, your average sort of what-would-you-do-in-a-given-scenario sorts of things, and well, not to blow my own trumpet or anything, I think I did pretty well on them. Blew 'em away, they all seemed well happy, wrote it all down on their little clipboards, and then this one bloke- seemed quite important, definitely one of the big wheels, he was- he said I was much better. Didn't actually say much better than what, come to think of it, but I assume he meant some other core they had in mind for the job. Impressed as anything. He said- and I definitely remember this- he said I was perfect."

His eyes were still closed, and his proud, absolutely guileless grin stretched between Chell's hands, nearly from thumb to thumb. "Sticks with you, something like that. And then they said they had a job for me, very important job, only they had to run a few more tests first and they were going to have to shut me off for a while. Obviously, I wasn't much of a, a fan of that idea, at all, and I said couldn't I stay awake for the tests instead, but they didn't like that, got a bit snappy, to tell the truth, and then they said if I stayed awake while they were doing it, while they were running the tests, I would die. Didn't want that, understandably, so one of them did something and that was that, click, off. Annnd... well, that's it. My first memory."

Wheatley opened his eyes, blinked. His pupils contracted like his old optic in the gentle evening sunlight, dwindling against the blue. "Not particularly gripping, really, not exactly what you'd call high-octane stuff, but at least it's all there."

She nodded, slowly, and took her hands away from his face. He felt curiously bereft at the loss of contact- panicky, almost- but then it had been... nice, just talking into the darkness like that, to be that close to her, just his voice and her touch.

"Nothing... before?" she said.

He looked down at her, confused, anxious. "Before... my first memory? Are... I'm not sure we're on the same page here, to be honest. You're asking if I remember anything before my first memory... answer: no, because it's my first memory. Before that, there wasn't actually a me to have memories, obviously, so recollections are going to be a bit sparse up until that point, and when I say 'a bit sparse' I mean, well, 'non-existent.' Was... sorry, was that the wrong answer?"

She shook her head, but he could tell from her face- her eyes, the slight set of her jaw- that she was disappointed, that he hadn't said the right thing. Again.

He looked away, fighting the sick feeling that had been rising steadily in what technically wasn't his stomach for days now, the queasy terrified little voice that whispered that he shouldn't even be here, that he was losing it, as if his grasp on this whole situation was a cable fraying into thinner and thinner bits, unravelling under the tension. He'd let her down so badly to start with, worse than he could even start to work out how to make up for, and despite his attempts to put a brave face on things, he knew, he knew he'd failed at everything she'd led him into since. Everything she'd prompted him to do since they'd left the facility, task after task, simpler and simpler, right down to even just remembering something the way she'd wanted, and it was all so... horribly... familiar.

What's the equivalent- the little human community-thing equivalent- of Relaxation Centre Attendant? Where do they stick you when they've run out of things for you to be crap at?

He didn't want to think about it but he couldn't help it, like poking at a circuit that you knew was broken just to test the sting. Somewhere out of sight and mind, where nobody had to bother with you, and you weren't really supposed to do anything and you never even saw anyone else- and he knew one thing for absolute certain, wherever that place was, it was the last place that someone like her would ever bother to go if she could help it, even to visit. For some reason, that was the worst part of all.

"Listen," he said, helplessly, "listen, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm trying, all right? All this- I'm- I really am trying."

Chell frowned a little, looking back up at him from the second step, and for that moment he could practically see all that scary-brilliant determination, building behind her eyes like a thunderhead. He prayed that she'd just remembered something completely unrelated that she needed to do- pick up milk, reshingle the roof, blow something up- because the thought that it might be him that she was focusing on with that level of determined resolve in her eyes was- well, it was absolutely terrifying.

And then the moment passed, and she smiled a small preoccupied smile, curled a fist and socked him lightly in the arm- well, 'lightly' by her standards, it stung, but he didn't mind that, not at all- picked up the whatever-it-was she'd borrowed from Garret 'Cleverclogs' Rickey, and turned away, pushing in through her own front door in a bright jangle of bells.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Hours later, at the time of night when anyone with any sense should have been asleep, Chell descended the stairs and moved with careful, measured steps into her darkened front room. She circled the big table, playing deliberate hopscotch around the parts of the floor she knew squawked like mad cats when you trod on them.

The air in this room and in the little kitchen was sleepy with the scent of new bread, warm from the cooling oven, and she stopped for a moment, breathing in the dark, taking stock. This was hers, all of this, these white hand-smoothed walls, this uneven floor with its knots and woven rug and the white stripes that the waxing moon drew across it from the window, and although she didn't care a huge amount about stuff it was so good to be able to stand in this space and know it, inside out.

Chell valued connections, familiarity, knowing every nook and cranny and understanding how a place worked- that this door wouldn't shut if this cupboard was open, that she'd repaired the crack in the corner of this window two years ago, using the flat of a breadknife to apply the putty, or that the kids who went to school in the many-purposed town hall had made this wonky sampler for her as a thank-you for showing them how to make bread. The luxury of this safety, this peace of mind, this sense of fitting, had never quite worn off, and she hoped it never would.

Here, on the other hand- right in front of her, as she leaned back thoughtfully against the big table- was something that did not fit. Not in the purely spatial sense- one knee drawn up nearly to his chin, the other sneakered foot dangling off in the other direction, overshooting the arm of the sofa by at least six inches- and not in a general sense, either. Here, where everyone was joined closely together like pieces of a jigsaw, he was like a piece from an entirely different puzzle thrown into the box by accident, and while it didn't matter to her, she could tell that it certainly mattered to him.

She could have tried to reassure him, to tell him that it got better, that it took time- he was gullible and hopeful enough to believe that, she suspected, if it came from her, and she hoped that it was true- but she instinctively wanted to go one better, solve it, hit him with solid incontrovertible proof that it was worth sticking with this. It made perfect sense to her calm, logical, marathon-running mind, and if something beneath that was needling quietly at her, she just put it down to simple technical concern. What she was about to do was a little risky, after all.

It was curious- and useful- that even though he'd stated that he didn't really need to sleep, out here he seemed to have fallen fairly easily into a normal sleep rhythm, or at least a pretty accurate imitation of one. He slept when she slept, happy to switch off for the same six or seven hours that she did, and she wondered what it was like to be able to summon sleep on demand like that, as easily as pressing a button.

Silently, she knelt on the rug by the sofa and opened Garret's laptop, already hooked up to the stripe-headed Aperture lead through the lucky-find connector. Wheatley was curled away from her on the sofa, the back of his neck exposed above the collar of his spectacularly badly-ironed shirt, unmoving. It was a little disconcerting, a small reminder of what he really was; in his sleep mode, at least, he didn't appear to breathe.

Even by moonlight, her eyes and her memory were sharp enough together to place the correct point, the area just at the nape of his neck where the hard-light surface gave way to a simpler optical trick, a small patch of hologram. She held her own breath to steady her hand, and slid the little jack through into the hidden port underneath.

He flinched a little as the connection clicked into true, made a small unintelligible noise of protest. Chell kept still and waited, and he settled, drawing his knee up a little tighter, his hands digging into his own shoulders. She didn't know if there were different layers to his artificial sleep, if, like her, he had REM cycles or anything equivalent- but right now he seemed pretty deeply under, curled up like a ridiculously overlanky hedgehog in a coma, dead to the world.

The laptop's screen flickered, and she pulled it towards her, settling cross-legged against the couch. The low backlit glow threw weird hollow shadows into her face, uplighting her like the mad scientist from any number of the old films they sometimes screened in the town hall (sci-fi, with its high occurrence of deranged, all-powerful computers and sundry other apocalyptic threats to humanity was, unsurprisingly, not her favourite genre, but she'd seen a few, nevertheless).

A screen popped up, maximised itself. The next thing to appear was a progress bar, scanning quickly through a list of all the codecs Garret had loaded on to the machine, the letters blurring into each other, the bar creeping steadily towards the three-quarters mark until -

Device detected- 00004/[F]AS[IV]IDPC241105/AS[I]HRAD
Encryption key found.
Warning - some file formats may be incompatible with current user platform. Converted files may be saved directly to disc.
Do you want to continue?

Did she?

This- what she was about to do- definitely counted as an invasion of privacy. She valued privacy. True, he'd once aggressively dismissed hers just for the sake of a rush of simulated endorphins, but that didn't mean much by this point- two wrongs, in her book, did not make a right, or even a slightly less dubious wrong. She knew damn well that she was on a very shaky moral footing here- except- except she was really only trying to (solve it) help him… wasn't she?

Chell narrowed her eyes, her mouth tightening imperceptibly, and pressed Enter.

At first, she thought she'd crashed the tough old laptop altogether- the screen flickered again and jumped into an entirely different resolution, and the whine of the fan chugging away was worryingly loud. The laptop was growing warm against her legs; she felt the heat through the worn cotton of her shorts and started to consider what she would do if it actually started to smoke.

Wheatley made another unhappy sort of noise and twisted face-down- fortunately the right way and not the one which would have wrapped the lead around his neck like the world's most pointless noose. The whine of the fan stepped up another notch, and the screen flickered a final time- went- for one startling second- dull pixellated Aperture orange- then went black.

She smacked it with the heel of her hand and slumped back against the sofa. An outright failure, a simple you-have-got-to-be-kidding crash, she would have found easier to accept- but it had seemed to be working, it had nearly worked-

Flicker.

Static.

A flash of something, frozen, an image staggered with patches of dead pixels, interference, chunks of red-green-blue, skipping, blurring.

Flicker.

More flashes, one after the other, jerky stop-motion. Whiteness, overhead glare, odd rounded corners, motion. Something starfished against the white- the picture was clearer now- a hand- hands, long-splayed-big-knuckled- cupping in the stream of water from a blue-striped whitemetal faucet. The sound of a splash from the laptop's tinny little speakers, a wobbly distortion over the shaky first-person shot, a winded gasp- a voice.

Chell stared.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"...easy, nothing to it, certainly nothing to get worked up about. Not a problem. I'm just going to go up there, and, and say it, this time. Far far braver thing to do than I have ever done, and that- Shakespeare- although, doubt he ever had to do this, famous actor in his day, didn't even have to use his own name, just went round calling himself The Bard, like, like Prince or something. No, he probably had all the oldey-timey girls throwing themselves at him, didn't he? Jammy old sod probably had to fend 'em off with a stick. With a quarterstaff- right, okay, I'm getting distracted again, no more messing about. Thought about it enough now, just action is what's really needed here. Just say it."

He splashed his face again, then looked up and ran wet hands through his hair, turning a not-particularly-memorable side-parted affair into a mad porcupine-quilled wreck which he then fought mostly flat with a comb. His hair was a bit of a problem, although he had a tacit understanding with it. Like its owner, it tended to do its own thing unless explicitly instructed otherwise, at which point it keeled over with cowed docility and did as it was told, right up until the point when it suddenly got another great idea. The only difference was that his own great ideas ranged over a wide variety of subjects, whereas his hair's great ideas mostly revolved around different ways to look like a limp sort of hayrick knocked over in a storm.

"'Hello! The usual, please.' Good start, good start, fairly innocuous, suggests that sort of familiarity. You're one of her regulars. Only- only don't put it like that, ha, no, for God's sake, that does sound fairly dodgy. You're a regular customer. Better. Umm... 'Thanks, that looks great... you know, while I'm up, you know what I find amazing? How you remember what everyone wants, I mean, of course, I noticed you write it down the first time but after that, you- you get it right every time. It's actually quite amazing. Not that I was- I mean, I wasn't specifically watching- ah- I just mean, I have enough trouble remembering where I put my keys in the morning, you know? Let alone whether some perfect stranger likes mustard or not.' Nice save, best not to dwell on it though, keep the momentum going- 'So! Understand you're busy, probably got hundreds of bagels to be delivering, wouldn't want to keep you, but, um...'

He leaned over the sink, screwed his eyes shut for a moment, then looked back to the mirror, searching the reflection of the men's restroom for inspiration. He wasn't sure he agreed with the name, 'restroom.' It suggested a tranquil sort of place, somewhere to go for a bit of a time-out, not somewhere you ended up, terrified, shaky, hands sweating, stomach knotting up into a sick greenish little ball like a dollar bill accidentally put through the wash.

There wasn't much in here to give him any help, either. Only this line of off-white sinks and a strip of overhead lights- one of which was flickering fitfully- the tiled floor, the poster on the wall behind him.

WASH YOUR HANDS!
A GERM-FREE FACILITY
IS A SUPER-RESISTANT RADIATION-ENHANCED NECROTISING PLAGUE-FREE FACILITY!

They'd had to set the last line in extra-small type to fit it on the poster, but they'd still found room to squeeze in a happy face. He tried to copy it, grinned a big hopeful grin. The effect wasn't bad, he thought- his eyes still looked a bit worried, but hopefully she'd be so blown away by his little speech that she wouldn't notice.

Hopefully.

He took off his glasses. There. A lot better. It was a shame that he couldn't actually go and talk to her without them, but he knew from experience that the confidence boost just wasn't worth the massive disorientation. He didn't know a great deal about her, hadn't even managed to get up the courage to ask her name, but he knew that most women didn't tend to find a total inability to tell walls from doorways much of a turn-on.

"But I was wondering, if you're- if you happened to be free, any time soon, in the not-too-distant future, you know, no mad rush or anything- and it really could be any time you wanted, I don't exactly have anything life-altering planned in the foreseeable future, nothing that can't be rescheduled- so, umm... if you were, free, that is, I was wondering whether you might be interested in, in going somewhere. With, with me."

His voice had veered a little too high, become embarrassingly plaintive. He tried again, tried to force himself to sound calmer, smoother, more controlled.

"With me. Sort of doing something, like- well, just as a random example, having a drink. Just after work, nothing, you know, showstopping, really, I mean, I know a nice sort of place, although, obviously, if you knew anywhere I'd be more than open to suggestions, if you did want to do that, if that did sound, um, bearable- and it's okay if it doesn't! Absolutely fine if it doesn't, just say, I'm not going to, to be offended or anything, would totally understand- although, although I would of course prefer it, if you said yes- not trying to influence your decision in any way, there, just saying, cards on the table I'd really, really like it if you did-"

He cut himself off and bonked his head lightly on the very top of the mirror, pressing his forehead against the cool-sharp feeling of the unfinished edge.

"Rrrrghhh. Why is this so hard? This is not hard, you're just making it far too complicated. It's just a drink, you don't have to recite her a bloody saga. Just, just wrap it up now, skip to the end. 'So, yes, that's basically what I'm asking. You, me, some sort of place that isn't in here. Thoughts?' See, that's fine, that's fine, close enough right there. Not hard. Right."

He replaced his glasses and looked at himself in the mirror again, tugged his shirt straight, straightened his tie, checked his watch. Twenty to eleven. His stomach gave an extra-queasy twist, and he put a quivery clammy hand on the mirror, trying to steady himself. It was nearly identical to the way he'd always felt before every job interview he'd ever had, that horrible plummeting sensation of not being good enough, of not being prepared.

"Maybe I should write some of this down."

He-

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-leaned weakly against the flimsy cubicle wall, hidden from the table by the photocopier by a sickly overgrown rubber plant, which had nearly no leaves but was almost as tall as he was. He felt dizzy, his head buzzing as if he wasn't getting quite enough air, and he wished he had a paper bag or something to breathe into. He wasn't entirely sure why breathing into a paper bag was supposed to make you feel less like passing out, although he guessed it was a diversion tactic, that the idea was that you were so preoccupied with what an arse you looked huffing into a paper bag that you stopped thinking about whatever it was that was making you feel like fainting.

There she was. Bang on time as always, you could set your clock by her, if your clock wasn't more or less knackered from being dropped into a Cup Noodle. Even through his panic he felt a kick of pleasure just to see her, as if she was an old friend he hadn't met for some time, and it was ironic to the point of cruelty that he was so scared of trying to talk to her properly, because it really was what he wanted to do most of all. Just talk to her, listen to her voice, find out what she thought about things other than bagels, maybe even hear that amazing laugh.

He hadn't exactly managed to have a proper conversation with her yet, but he'd said something two weeks and three days ago- he couldn't remember what he'd said and he was fairly sure that it hadn't been anything particularly witty or insightful, but she'd actually laughed and that had been brilliant. If there ever ended up being a movie about his life- yes, granted, not the likeliest of possibilities by this point, but you never knew- that bit was definitely going in the highlights reel.

The first time he'd seen her, he'd immediately believed himself to be in love- love at first sight, that mythical thing everyone was always on about, the big L, the real McCoy. This had been naïve of him, he knew that now. You couldn't know you loved someone just by seeing them once across a stack of neatly-sorted bagels. Love was a huge many-layered thing, deeply complex, reliant on a bewilderingly intimate level of insight into a person's heart and soul, all the relevant authorities agreed on that point. No, you definitely needed to run into them at least five or six times to be sure about something as major as that.

It had been almost three months, now, since that first day. He was still terrified of being caught gawking at her, especially since he'd noticed how sharp she was, how she never missed a trick even when dealing with complicated orders from other departments and fussy eaters and people who kept changing their minds all the time- all at once.

He always asked for the same thing whether he really felt like it or not, partly to make her day just that little bit easier, but mostly just for that small sweet moment when he could say 'the usual' and see the slight answering smile that told him that she remembered him.

'Hello.' He'd start with 'Hello.' That was always a safe bet, and he'd take it from there. Even if she said no- and he'd considered having a go at running the numbers on that one, but it had been too depressing and he'd never been any good at probabilities anyway- even if she said no, at least he'd know that he'd tried.

He swallowed, shuffled through the little sheaf of Post-its stuck to his sweaty palm, and was just about to take a determined first step out from behind the leggy rubber plant, when someone behind him said his name.

"Wheatley?"

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He turned.

White coats, that was what registered first, and the small part of his mind that was composed enough to still be thinking about self-preservation yelled a muffled warning. All around him, his colleagues suddenly remembered other things to go and be busy with in different parts of the office, drifting away from him like smaller ships tacking away from a storm.

"Uh... they want to talk to you," said his cubicle-across-the-way-mate, uncomfortably, from beside the three scientists, before edging away, shamefaced.

The first scientist looked impatient, hand already held out for his ID badge. He unclipped it and handed it over, because that was just what you did, what you had to do, and shot an anxious glance over his shoulder towards the photocopier.

"Umm... yes?"

The scientist scanned his badge- beep- looked up, gave him a thin smile.

"Come with us, please."

If he'd been thinking clearly, he might have been more worried. After all, the last time this had happened- the biometrics scan thingummy- it had turned into an extremely unpleasant experience, the kind of extremely unpleasant experience that causes inexplicable deep-tissue bruising and nosebleeds. If he'd been thinking clearly, he might even have tried to ask what they wanted him for, if he'd done anything wrong (always a possibility, he was aware of that)- but his head was still full of hopeful anxiety and the little sheaf of Post-its was screwed up into a damp little wad in his palm, and all he could really think about was whether he was going to be able to make it back before she left or not, because if he missed his chance today, who knew when he'd manage to get enough nerve to try again?

Whatever this was about, he hoped that it wouldn't take long.

[/skip]
[saving to disc, please wait]
[error- connection terminated]

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell shook out her stinging hand, gritting her teeth. The act of pulling the lead from Wheatley's neck had generated a short hail of fat, bright-blue sparks, snapping wickedly against her skin, but stronger and sharper by a long shot was the utter shock of seeing-

She took a dazed little step back, and leaned against the table.

Herself. Herself, in his mind. Herself, long, long before her own earliest memories. She'd thought that trying out his lead was a long shot, she'd really only expected to be able to use the little laptop to access the log files he'd mentioned, if she was lucky- but instead she'd got far, far more than she'd bargained for.

Of course, she'd seen herself from the outside before. She wasn't so much camera-shy as camera-indifferent, unless the cameras were specifically aimed at her with less-than-friendly intent, at which point she tended to become camera-hostile and (where possible) downright camera-destructive. Eaden, for all its communication difficulties, was not technologically impaired; it might not be as advanced as the bigger towns and the cities but there were cameras, photographs, even home-shot films on special occasions. There was a clunky old Cinefour camcorder in its battered case under her stairs- she'd traded it from Garret once, on a whim- and a freeze-framer on the kitchen counter next to the lumpy clay duck, endlessly playing the same few moments of herself and Romy at a festival, her friend laughing, reaching again and again to straighten the flowery twist of ivy that was in danger of falling from her hair, the twins crowding the bottom of the frame, colourful near-identical blurs of grins and paper streamers and overexcited dog.

She had also seen herself as few people had- few people ever had, anywhere. She'd looked through holes in the universe itself, taken a sneaky short cut around the laws of physics and seen glimpses of herself without the secondhand filter of a lens or a mirror. She was no stranger to her own appearance. The difference, the difference which nearly floored her, which set her heart hammering, was time.

The woman she'd seen in Wheatley's memory had no idea of the horror lurking in her future, no idea that she would be taken- swallowed alive- spat out into an insane, sterile, sunless world where the only rule was survival. There were no scars on her arms below the unfamiliar blue sweater, no lines of burns or shrapnel on the small quick hands sorting plastic-wrapped packages on the office table. There were no scars in her mind- she was at ease in that dull, oppressive, off-white office, she would not have flinched at the sound of the photocopier whirr-clicking into life, or the public announcement system's metallic overhead echo. Had they stood face to face, the woman she'd seen in Wheatley's memory would have looked at her in confusion, at the threads of grey in the dark hair just above her ears, the dark smudges beneath her eyes, the hardness in them.

What happened to you?

Aperture had happened. Science had happened. She had happened. And now it looked as if she'd been right, that the same had happened to him, that Wheatley was just as much of a victim of That Place as she was, but this- this glimpse of her former self- it was the absolute last thing she'd expected to find.

Moving slowly, with unusual clumsiness, she felt along the edge of the table and found the wicker chair. It creaked under her as she dropped into it, her mind buzzing, a sharp, dry sort of headache clawing out of nowhere and biting dizzily into the back of her skull like a bad head-rush.

She'd- she'd been- she was-

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

She was glad she didn't work down here.

Down here, everyone was afraid. She could sense it, she could nearly smell it, all these face-down scurrying grey drones schooling in and out of their little cubicles like spiritless clockwork. They were all afraid, even the scientists, bright sparks in a sea of corporate mundanity, brilliant like broken mirrors. She knew that the drones were afraid of the scientists, and the cameras that watched them relentlessly from every corner, but what the scientists were afraid of, she had no idea. They were always in a hurry, they hardly had time to eat what she brought them. Sometimes, she doubted that they ever went home.

She never liked riding the cold elevator tubes down into the grey-white clockwork hive, her ears popping as she steadied her crates on their wheeled rack, feeling the surface dwindle above her head. She didn't like being down here, surrounded by these frightened, dull-faced people who didn't even look at her, never even saw her because they'd long since become blind to anything that wasn't a threat. She knew there was something badly wrong here, although she, an outsider, could never quite touch it.

Nobody ever talked about it- not directly, not out loud- but she was sharp and quick and people tended to think that being quiet was the same thing as being deaf, and so she heard things just the same. She caught whispers under stairwells, saw things scrawled on tiles, things smeared away with bleach but still half-legible. This place was full of scared, callous indifference, people relieved itwasn't them but still terrifiedthey could be next. She could never stand it for long, she was always extra-efficient (and that, for her, was something)- shaving off the seconds each time before she could ride the lift to the surface and see the sky again.

He was the only thing that never made her feel uncomfortable about being down here. He was afraid- he was just as scared as the rest of them- and he was terrifically awkward around her (or maybe he was just like that with everyone) but he was hopeful and sincere and he always actually looked at her, saw her, made her feel human. After the first time, he always asked for the same thing and he always had exact change, and he always seemed to be just on the edge of saying something else, but he never did. She always smiled, anyway, to make it easier on them both, before turning to her next customer, and that was how it went, for the few months that she knew him. She figured that if it was important, he'd get round to it soon enough.

He never did.

One day, he didn't show up at the table by the photocopier. After she finally sold out, she picked up her empty crate and walked the few steps down the grey office aisle to the little cubicle she knew belonged to him. She left his bagel in front of his keyboard, just by the bobbing plastic bird, and took a curious glance around the very small, cluttered space he worked in. Nothing unusual- a calendar, a few photographs pinned beneath it, a disorganised landslide of paper and Post-its and technical manuals.

"Don't bother," said someone, just as she turned to leave. She looked across the aisle, into the cubicle across the way. The occupant was sitting in his chair, his back to her, staring at his monitor. He didn't turn round.

"Redacted," he said. "There'll be someone else in there next week. Or not. Up to them."

The monitor, she noticed, was switched off.

"Best not to know," he said, in the same flat voice. "Sorry. I've got a deadline."

She left. For the rest of that week, she retraced her steps once the rest of her bagels had been sold, and left his sitting on his desk, but the voice of doom next door turned out to be right; he never came back, and the following week, she came in to find his cubicle cleared of everything but the computer and the chair. There was a new person in it, too, someone with a blank colourless face who looked right through her.

That day, she rode the lift to the surface as usual, willing it to rise, aware of a little more tightness inside her, a little more urgency. The relief, when she was out at last, was a bittersweet flood, unexpectedly strong.

She was very glad she didn't work down here.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell came back to herself with a start, stumbling to her feet and drawing an appalling noise, like a leopard in pain, from the creaky floorboards. Wheatley moaned quietly and shifted again, knees tighter to his chest, one arm flopping protectively over the back of his neck. On instinct, she dropped the lead, hooked the laptop towards her with her foot, and booted both smartly under the couch.

She was twanging with shock, her head buzzing, completely stunned. Until now, she'd never remembered any part of her life from Before. She'd always believed that part of her was long-dead, killed by stasis and trauma, eroded completely from her damaged mind.

What she'd just experienced hadn't been a memory- no, she couldn't call it that. It had felt like the thoughts of a stranger, a woman she'd never known, recalling a place she'd never seen- but it had still been hers, nobody else's, from her own past. It was fuzzy and fading, but she clung to it instinctively, the bad and the good- the tension and shapeless fear of that deep-down place, grey offices and grey people and a big, worried, warming smile-

Wheatley. That made perfect sense, too, now that she had all the pieces. His avatar, this model that the device had found for him, it wasn't just a random body that happened to suit him to an uncanny degree, or a computer's idea of an appropriate look for him, like a desktop theme with glasses. It was his body, a digital recreation of his own original flesh and blood, sculpted in hard-light- because she'd been right, he'd actually had a real body, once upon a time. A human body.

He'd been human.

Despite his awkwardness, despite the clear discomfort it caused him to be stuck in this shape, it really was his. In some ways, it was much more his than the small metal ball had ever been, although he'd inhabited that thing for decades, for at least the entire time she'd been in the Relaxation Centre, and she still wasn't sure exactly how long that was.

How old had he been? At a rough guess, she thought he might have been pretty evenly balanced between thirty and forty, although the gentle worried hollows of his eyes and the fine-drawn lines of tension at the corners of his mouth tilted him slightly towards the latter. Not that it mattered, now. Machines had no real concept of the passage of time, and light didn't age.

She nudged a stray coil of lead further under the couch with her foot, biting the sore place at the side of her tongue. She felt crowded, all of a sudden, too cramped, claustrophobic in this small space, even though it was safe and hers.

Chell was usually extremely lucid, aware of her own thoughts and her own motivations, each partitioned and kept in neat check, like files in a particularly well-organised folder. She wasn't used to confusion. After a shock like this, she needed breathing space, time to reorganise.

Oddest of all, she realised, she wanted to talk to him about it, tell him what she'd seen, to explore this bizarre, fractured little connection between them- and wasn't that why she'd done this? To prove he was more than just an Aperture device?

She reached for his shoulder- and stopped.

There was no guarantee he'd remember. There was no guarantee he'd believe her- he might be a hopeless liar but he was all too happy to reject the truth when it didn't suit him, denying it outright when it got in the way of what he wanted to believe. She realised that she didn't want to watch him refuse what she'd found. She didn't want to hear him trying to explain away her small fragile burst of not-quite-memory, the past they'd both lost. For once, the choice was hers to make.

She retreated quietly to the door, taking her comfy old shirt down from the roofing nail hammered into the wood. As much as she realised that she wanted his company at that moment, as much as she just wanted to listen to his calming wittering while she walked off her shock by his side, she just didn't trust him enough to risk his reaction to what she'd seen. What she'd seen, and the way she felt about it- no. She didn't trust him anywhere near enough for that.

The problem was- and it was a problem, she was far too logical and sensible for an impulse so clearly illogical and silly not to be a problem for her- the problem was that she sort of really, really wanted to.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

He dreamed.

Severed from the connection, the alien call-and-response of the stubborn little non-Aperture construct jacked into his mind, his memories skipped and scattered, skittering down long-suppressed paths and hidden root directories, through drifts of corrupted files, jagged fragments of sound, sight, sensation- pain-

Voices.

"Pentothal, six milligrams. Still getting motor response -"

"Alright, now, try to relax- this may hurt a little-"

It did, it hurt a lot, worse than anything and he didn't even understand, because this couldn't be happening to him, he'd done nothing, nothing wrong-

"-so special about him? File says he's just some nobody from IT, he's not even-"

"Have you seen all these memos? Thinks we should rip out the generators to make room for a squash court. That and about a million other moronic ideas-"

"-the perfect distraction-"

"-Her-"

Darkness, crushing and absolute, and voices, and then the pain had begun again, and whatever they'd given him, it wasn't enough but he couldn't tell them because there was something wrong with his throat, with his mouth, he couldn't speak-

"-who cares? Deep storage, like the others-"

"-calm him down or we'll lose cerebral function entirely-"

"Mark two, calibrating-"

And then he could, he had his voice again but it was all wrong, something was terribly wrong and there was only one thing he wanted, needed, had to do-

"Jesus, someone do something, it's hurting my ears-"

And now this, this didn't hurt but that didn't make it any better than the pain, this feeling, this unbearable draining tearing sensation, huge important chunks of who he was ripping away into the dark like shards of glass from a splintering pane, and he didn't even know what they were because once they were gone, he could hardly hang on to the fact that they'd ever been there at all. And all he could think was pleasepleaseplease nononononono I want to go home I want to go home please- and now he didn't know where or what 'home' was but the thought persevered, a senseless desperate litany of I have to get out I have to get out I have to I I I-

"-three times now, weeks down the drain, this is getting ridiculous. We don't need any of this stuff. As long as it talks and generates bad ideas-"

"-full excision, total recollective suppression-

"-that's a positive on the cognitive rerouter-"

"Try it now."

And then-

Blankness.

Blissful, empty peace. A faint, faint sense of something he'd forgotten, maybe, or something he'd wanted to do, but with so much dim featureless horror so recent he didn't want to remember, didn't even want to try, so much better not to know, not to know anything, not think and not hurt and just be nearly nothing at all-

"I think that's done it. Shut it down."

[error: file corrupted]
[saving to disc, please wait]
[rebooting...]

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"NO! NononononononoNO!"

Someone was screaming. The darkness was no longer absolute- it had shape, now, not a disorienting void but a small, warm space, dim ambery light from somewhere and the smell of new bread. Even so, Wheatley barely grasped where he was- barely recognised the sound of his own voice.

"It's not true, it's not true!"

He shuddered convulsively, gripping his own head, gabbling broken fragments of nonsense, denial, outright refusal. His thoughts- his mind- buckled under the blurring formless rush of horror, arcing like a stripped live-wire, like the jagged core of a broken tooth, and he rolled over on the threadbare rug, dragged a handful of it into a strangling fist, screamed again, a single long wordless howl of outraged dismay.

For the greater part of his life, he'd known he wasn't completely up to scratch. He'd never been able to fully admit it, let alone come to terms with it, but he'd still known at the back of his mind, in that very small quiet ruthless part of him that refused to turn a blind eye to all his failures, that kept a careful tally of every single one. He loathed that part and usually pretended that it didn't exist, choosing instead to rely on his considerable stock of optimism, his hurling spur-of-the-moment enthusiasm, and his total inability to tell a good idea from a terrible one.

Through it all, whenever his thoughts had strayed into unusually lucid areas, whenever the neverending parade of self-inflicted disasters had really started to get him down, he'd always taken comfort in the fact that it wasn't his fault that he was this way, that he'd been designed for a purpose and that, one day, he would find out what that purpose was supposed to have been, and whatever it was, he would be perfect at it, just like they'd said he was, and everything would be...

He curled slowly into a ball again, hands still locked in the bunched-up folds of the rug, rocking in short, jerky, back-and-forth little lunges. The back of his neck ached too, a peculiar, dragging, underskin sort of pain.

White coats. A plant, sickly and leafless, growing under dull fluorescent lights. A splash of water on tiles, the glint of a needle, a bright curl of sweat-twisted paper, and- and-

"-nononononono... please..."

It made perfect sense, now that he had all the pieces. It was true. She had even outright told him, but he hadn't wanted to listen, had just dismissed it again and again as just another one of Her bonkers, malicious little lies.

You're the moron they built to make me an idiot!

Oh, he'd been perfect for the job, all right. Not good enough to actually succeed, no, oh no, but still, small wonder that he'd never got the hang of things back there in the facility, even when power and control were practically handed to him on a plate, small wonder that he couldn't get anything right even now, that he felt so out of place and pointless out here, among these humans.

"It's not fair it's not FAIR! They told me I was- they- they gave me a sticker!"

They'd lied.

He didn't want to know, but it was too late to stop. He understood. He wasn't even a true construct, like the other cores, like Kevin, like Her. He wasn't human. He was neither, less than either, designed to be pointless, to annoy and distract, a moronic handful of grit in the works of an otherwise perfect machine.

Intelligence Dampening Sphere. Made to inhibit whoever he was stuck to, made to hold them back, to cling to them like a tumour and disrupt their thoughts with inane babble and stupid ideas. Worst of all, the human in his memories- the one who'd gone around looking like he did now, talking with his voice- might have been less than brilliant in the scheme of things, no Einstein or Hawking or- or Chell, but he'd been himself, he'd been whole, and he'd had that thing, that simple human why not? which had spurred him to do all sorts of bonkers things just because it occurred to him that he could. Wheatley hated him, hated him, that smug human bastard with his face, the human whose memories were still crowding into his mind, all the dreams he'd forgotten, jumbled scraps of another life that made a mockery of everything that he was just by being there.

He keeled quietly over onto his side on the rug. It was a nice rug- flat, well-made, comfortable and comforting. He doubted that he was lowering its intelligence by much. Being a rug, its level of cognitive dexterity was probably quite low to begin with, low enough for him not to be much of a burden on its ability to successfully continue being a rug. Maybe, if he promised to stay quiet and not do anything, he could just stay here, on the rug, until either it stopped being a rug or he stopped being him.

Preferably the latter.

After a while, he became aware that something was digging into his shoulder, pressing into exactly the most awkward place and making the mystery ache in the back of his neck even worse. He reached up with numb fingers and found something there, something flat and metallic under his hand, rectangular- and something else, a long tangled loop, reeled out when he'd dragged the hidden part of the rug from under the couch.

He twisted his neck, raised himself on one elbow just enough to look at the whatever-it-was- and stared.

Wheatley had lost a lot of certainties, recently. Some of them had been good to lose, like the certainty that he was going to be floating helplessly around in space (being continually and excitably reminded of the fact) for the rest of his life, or the certainty that he'd never be able to get anywhere without a rail or a helping hand; and some of them had been downright awful to lose, like the certainty that he had to be good for something, or that everything was mostly more or less bound to turn out sort of alright in the end.

He didn't have many certainties left, now, but he still had this, at least- he could recognise an Aperture device when he saw one.

Slow as a sleepwalker, his hand crept out and touched the connector lead's white-striped, three-pinned head.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

9. The Last Resort

"I knew it! I knew she had to have something up her sleeve, I knew it was too good to be true! Saves me, brings me back here with all her little humany friends, makes out like she cares, bloody talks to me even, ohh, I knew it, knew she had to be planning something! And all that talk about my memories yesterday, well- well, that just goes to show she probably knew all along, didn't she? Surprised she could even keep a straight face, listening to me going on about my first memory back there, knowing it was all basically rubbish. Clever. Clever girl. Been playing me like- like some sort of, of really easy game. Ludo. Snap. Marbles. Playing me like a... a game of... marbles..."

Wheatley trailed off. He was curled up against the sofa, the lead in his hands, staring down through it into a world of his own. Whatever the scenery was like down there, in the sorry little dimension his mind was currently inhabiting, it probably wouldn't have made for a very attractive holiday brochure.

The bitter inner voice, the one that had so often been proved right and therefore had more confidence in itself than the rest of him put together, wouldn't be silenced. There was a horrible note of triumph in it, now, the smug I-told-you-so recklessness of something with nothing left to lose.

He could remember everything he'd dreamed since they'd left the facility, every scratchy, glitchy old human memory that being hurled into this new body had knocked loose, sent skittering into his head as he slept. He remembered her. The human- his mind cringed abjectly from the idea, pinioned like something clamped into a cage, desperate but unable to flinch away- the human he'd been- had known her.

Had wanted to-

And she'd probably seen everything, on her little screen there. She'd hooked his head up to this- thing, and she'd had a good old look. She'd probably seen it all, the whole lot, and just thinking about that made him feel sick and panicky and something else, harder to describe but something like rummaged through, his mind left carelessly open like a reference book she'd skimmed and tossed aside. It wasn't a good feeling- or, come to that, a new one.

"Just- just wasn't enough for her, was it? Not good enough me just telling her, about my memories, like she asked, ha, no, had to go and apply her tricky little human problem-solving brain. Probably thought, yeah, fair enough it looks like he's properly trying to remember, first memory and everything, but I know old Wheatley, can't trust a word he says, how about I just stroll in and have a look for myself?"

He twitched, the sick choking phantom feeling screwing itself up in what he had no reason to call his throat. He strangled the striped cord between his hands and curled up tighter, trying to overwrite it, trying to bring back the way he'd felt at the very end– that wonderfully blank, empty, painless feeling of being nothing.

"Why didn't she just-"

He stopped, his rising, cracking voice cutting itself off in mid-sentence. Another memory-

[why

why didn't she just

just hold on why didn't she pull me back in I COULD HAVE FIXED EVERYTHING I could

(space I'm in space)

blows up it'll be her own fault and good riddance I could have FIXED IT it would have been brilliant, it would have been a TRIUMPH if it hadn't been for her and her best potato buddy back there, and now I'm in BLOODY SPACE and what am I supposed to do now? What am I

(I'm in space)

she should have let go while I was still connected! Selfish! Selfish, arrogant, traitorous little- you know what, I bet they planned this, all along, the whole time! I bet She was in on it right from the start. Probably having a party, now. A Wahey-We-Got-Rid-Of-Wheatley party. You know, if I'd had a party I would have invited you, love! Because that's MANNERS! Oh, she's never going to hear me, is she? Not up here in bloody space.

(ohmygod ohmygod space)

if she is, actually, still alive. Suppose, all those explosions, fire, whole place coming down round our ears, not to mention the whole sort of oxygen issue up here, she might've kicked the bucket. Or She- assuming they weren't both in on it, and haven't ruled that out, them both being in on it, definitely haven't ruled that out- She might have killed her.

well it's your own fault if you're dead, love! You have nobody but yourself to blame for that one! No good trying to pin it on muggins here, not this time, you've gone and done yourself out of your own alibi! Didn't think that one through, did you?

still can't hear me. Space. Keep forgetting.

(spaaaaaaace ah ah ah I'm in space)

you could have held on to me! You could! Kept your grip, practically all you were bloody good for anyway, grip, jumping, buttons, tests... and the portals... and yes, the odd logical conundrum, like that whole turret scanner rigmarole, and the lasers, but- but who flagged them up for you in the first place? Huh? Who woke you up, who got you that far? That's right, me! I did! And what thanks do I get? You didn't even catch me! You never caught me, even though I told you I could have died, falling off my rail! Even- even if you weren't in Her pocket the whole time- even if you were just trying to escape and therefore- and therefore completely blameless in the matter, that still doesn't get you off the hook for not catching me that first time! Even if you really were, only trying to escape, get up to the surface, like

(spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace)

like I

I...

oh... no.]

Wheatley's fingers uncurled, letting the knotted ball of cord flop to the rug like a throttled snake.

It hadn't taken him long to realise what he'd done. Freed from the fever-pit embrace of the mainframe, freed from the Itch and its endless drip-feed of desperate poison, his own shaky sense of reason had crept back in freezing threads. It had been like watching a single cold spotlight slowly turned up over the scene of some awful disaster, being forced to keep looking at the wreckage he'd caused until every horrible detail was picked out with perfect, illuminated clarity. Spiralling deeper into lunar orbit, with Kevin screaming unhinged glee in his audial processor all the while, he'd had nothing to do but regret, nothing to be but sorry.

Am I still sorry?

The question scraped at the back of his mind- weak, tired, but no less important for it, groping blindly for his attention.

Sorry. Sorry for everything, sorry for the things he'd said and done and tried to do, sorry for the trust he'd lost, sorry for repaying the faith she'd shown in him with that immediate, shameless betrayal- he was, and he always would be. Nothing was going to change that, not this loop of wire in his lap, not the pain in his neck or the unwanted human memories battering against his fragile train of thought like acid sleet. He was still sorry, not just because of where his actions had left him, not just because he'd known, floating up there, that if he ever got the chance to speak to her again, he'd bloody well better seem contrite if he wanted any help from her at all. He knew that he was sorry like he knew his optic was blue, or that the little sticker mouldering away somewhere in the dark a whole world away, still clinging in shreds to his old body's battered shell, had once read BRAZIL.

Maybe if he told her that, or at least tried, if he just went to her and told her that he was still sorry, honestly completely sorry, but he didn't want what she'd given him, if he told her he didn't want this unbearable landslide of understanding that made him doubt everything he'd thought he was- and worse, everything he'd ever thought he was capable of being- she might take it back. The bitter little voice of his paranoia, most of its venom drawn, snorted faintly at this, but he managed to ignore it.

"Not likely, but possible," he croaked. "She might."

He stood up, shakily, clinging to the edge of the big table like a mountaineer who has just spotted a goat chewing through their only safety line, the old wood (washed spotless after that morning's baking) cool and grainy under his avatar's splayed palms. Moving as carefully as possible (and yet still managing to hit every single squeaky floorboard with an accuracy no observer would have believed accidental) he felt across the room and up the narrow stairs, just grazing the low arch of the landing, and stopped outside her bedroom door.

No glimmer of ambery light, this time. No light at all, just an open door and an empty room, blankets neat and cushions piled in the pale stripe shafting in behind him from the upstairs landing's one small high window. His own shadow looked warped, far too long, a dark menacing odd-angled thing sprawling across the floor, and he backed away from it in a hurry and retreated back down the yowling, creaking stairs.

Now what now what now what-

Where was she? Had she just nipped out for a stroll? Considering what she must have seen in his head- had the notion that this human had harboured a bit of a- a thing for her all that time ago- had the very idea been so horrifying that she'd just taken off, unable to stay in the same building as him for one more second?

Desperately, he felt through the disorganised mess of log files in his head, all the way down to the neat tidy bundle of the avatar's human-behaviour protocols. The parts of code that belonged to the small information-heavy light-bee felt much less like him than any of the data that he'd carried with him from his old spherical body- it hadn't had the chance to wear in yet, to gain any of the illogical little quirks and peculiarities he tended to etch into the coding he had to access on a daily basis, all the neat shiny corners of the alogrithms knocked off and various impractical shortcuts and unweildy memonics scratched over the top, the route markers of his own rambling, organic trails of thought. The avatar device's unique coding was still mostly free from his [intelligence dampening] influence, and with her missing he found himself reaching frantically for it like a higher authority, the only one he had left.

"There's got to be something in here. Some sort of protocol, little How-To guide- How To Get Rid Of Human Memories, that'd be a good one, that would be absolutely ideal right now- nnnnot readily apparent, though, if it is in here it is bloody well hidden. Would help if there was an index, of some kind... search function... anything? Anything useful at all?"

[Error. Please contact an engineer.]

"Right, that's- No, useful, I said. Full. Not less. I can't contact an engineer, reason; they're all dead. Unless I- held a seance- no, that probably isn't feasible, at this stage. All the engineers are dead, fairly sure about that. Neurotoxin, probably, got them in the end- it is pretty lethal stuff, as the name suggests. Anything else?"

[Error. Please contact an engineer.]

"No. Hm. I suppose I could improvise a sort of ouija board, a communicative tool of some s- wait. Wait, wait, hang on-"

Wheatley turned in the centre of the small front room, blinked sightlessly, pupils flaring brief bright blue in the gloom, scrabbling through the thready white-dark-amber complexity behind his eyes.

"An engineer... does it- does it, actually, specify what kind?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell walked south from the bottom of Otten's Field, the tall shadow of Foxglove at her back, heading through the long grass for the series of small, gentle-sloping hills known locally as the Boneyards. She closed her eyes and turned her face to the starry sky, felt the breeze on her closed eyes and sweat-damp forehead, and breathed.

The night was pleasant, fresh, quiet. She'd thought she'd heard something howl off in the distance, a little while ago, but although she'd stood quite still and listened for a whole minute's worth of even breaths, she'd heard nothing else. This was something that had taken her a little while to get acclimatised to, but it wasn't by any means unusual. Out here, as peaceful as it seemed, there was often something- fox, owl, coyote, even a wolf, sometimes- screaming in the night.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

THUD.

Garret Rickey stuck an arm under his bed and grabbed the long metal-bound case from the dusty, parts-strewn shadows underneath, pulled it out onto the rug, flipped up the catches. He had been going over the blueprints for a particularly uncooperative servo relay at the sloping architect's desk in his chaotic attic room when the noises had started downstairs, which was why he was already fully-dressed and on-the-ball- if extremely tired, bleary-eyed, and not in the best of tempers.

There were a number of reasons he could think of to explain why someone might be making loud noises inside Eaden General in the middle of the night, and none of them were particularly good. Aaron wasn't expected back for a good ten hours on the inside, it had been a pretty fair business week, and he was alone. Foxglove was Garret's consuming interest and he would happily have spent every waking minute on her if he could, but the old man was the closest thing to family he had, and for as long as he was away from the store, Garret would Take Care of Business.

He took the stairs, edging past twenty precariously-stacked boxes of cornflour which Aaron had chosen to store halfway up the staircase, ducked under the stepladder leaning crossways across the stairwell. He walked carefully through the darkened stockroom with the ease of ten years of total familiarity, and stopped by the door, waiting for a clue, a further noise that would give him a sense of where the intruder had got to.

Something, obligingly, went CRASH.

Garret repositioned his hands, reached out, breathed, than in one quick movement flicked the lightswitch by the doorjamb and hit the handle.

"Okay, buddy, what the hell are- jesusChristalmighty! Wheatley?"

"Listen," said Wheatley. He was leaning over the counter, inches from his face, wide-eyed, mad-haired, clingy with bits of dirt and tree. He was also at his absolute loomiest, so distracted that he was entirely forgetting to slump and therefore looked every one of his seventy-nine inches. "It's very, very important that you listen. I need you to stick a thing in my head."

"Wheatley, I could've shot you!"

Wheatley blinked. They were nearly face-to-face (well, face-to-neck) in the sudden light flooding the store, the strings of bare light-bulbs strung ivylike among the high rafters. Somewhere out beyond the open doorway, a dog barked.

"With what?"

Wordlessly, Garret snapped the safety back on the hefty SPAS-12 pump-action shotgun in his hands. It was practically an antique, but that only meant that Garret had had more time and more spare parts available to recondition it, improve it, and generally mess around with it in ways its original inventor had never dreamed possible. The stock traced his hands in quiet soft-glowing red, and the bright laser dot of the night-scope wavered across the far wall.

It took a moment for Wheatley to focus on it. His eyes widened even further, and he stumbled backwards, bumping once again into the stack of paint cans which, once again, failed to register the impact at all.

"Aaah! Don't point that at me! Do you have any idea what those things do?"

"When you get your hands on them? Yeah." Garret shouldered the shotgun. "Not to sound rude or anything, I mean, it's great that you've, uh, dropped by, but... what're you doing wandering around the store in the middle of the night?"

Wheatley looked down, breathed a long and completely oxygen-free breath out into his hands, scruffed through his hair a final time.

"Right, okay, good question. What am I doing wandering around in your store in the middle of the night, answer: looking for you. You weren't out in the field with the big old whatsit-"

"Foxglove?"

"Yeah, you weren't there- not that surprising- middle of the night, and I just thought, bing, lightbulb, maybe he's in the store! I mean, he seems to work there, sometimes, so it's definitely worth a shot. And here you are! Brilliant. Anyway, here's the thing, just going to lay this on you. Here goes. I know you and I haven't always seen eye to eye-"

"Guess not," said Garret, who just about came up to the hollow at the base of Wheatley's neck.

"-and we have had our differences, you know, rivalry, animosity..."

"We... have?"

"Oh, yeah," said Wheatley, although his manic, not-very-happy grin failed to undergo any sort of appropriate change. "I don't like you."

Garret blinked. "Okay..."

"Oh, don't take it like that, mate, it's not personal. I mean, it is personal, sort of, quite personal, you're all clever, and you're all... climbing things and... and knowing what things are called, and you've got that beard, and- and bit shaky on why but it all just makes it a bit hard for me to look at you without having this sort of urge to find something handy for taking a, a sort of swing with, and getting you right in your beardy-weirdy, clever ol' face. It's not very noble of me, I am aware of that, it's not really in the spirit of 'may the best man win' and all that, it's just that what with everything else that's just gone off in my skull here, not much I can do about it."

"Wait," said Garret, slowly, starting to smile. "Are you saying you're jeal-"

"You've- you've got a real mean streak, you have, you know that?" Wheatley cut him off, heedless, twitching, his hands tightening in a white-knuckled deathgrip on the edge of the counter. "Playing your little games, right from the start, you knew bloody well I didn't have a clue what you were talking about, with your- your three-eights crimper, if that's really what it's called- probably isn't- should have seen that little ruse a mile off. You- you just like watching me panic, don't you?"

"What-"

"And then, and then you go off and leave me in charge of this place, knowing, knowing I'd mess something up. Oh, yes, I see it all now, 'oh, that's a brilliant idea, give Wheatley enough lead and he'll throttle himself with it, I don't even have to lift a finger!' Clever! Very clever, always managing to make me look bad, every time you show up, es-especially in front of her! I don't even know why I even thought you-"

"Hey."

Wheatley stopped. Garret was staring at him, freckly brow knotted in confusion, his expression equal parts worried, very slightly amused, and-Wheatley wasn't sure, he was getting better at reading Chell's face but other humans were still mostly closed books to him- maybe just a tiny bit hurt.

"Are you done?"

Wheatley felt a sudden lurch of shame. There were times- and they were often the worst times, when events seemed to be falling out of his power to fix them, when he felt upset, when something unpleasant or painful was lurking inevitably on the horizon- there were times when he just didn't seem to have any control over his mouth whatsoever. Every single negative, unjustified thing he was thinking came falling out of his vocal processors, at no point bothering to consult his actual mind. Which was a shame, because his actual mind was under a lot of pressure at the moment, but it still might have had something to say- had it been asked- about how mean and petty- and stupid- it was to start having a go at somebody whose help you needed, somebody who was quite literally your last hope.

Stupid, stupid, to lose grip of who was on your side so easily, so stupid that it was probably something they'd done to him, all part and parcel of the whole 'terrible ideas' thing, the point of his existence. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted, needed, to forget this, this horrible suspicion of how much smarter- better- he might have been, before.

"Er. Yes, yes I am, done. Sorry. Didn't- um- didn't actually mean any of that, don't know what came over me, really. Stress, I think it's stress, I'm just a bit-"

He sagged. "Never mind. Not really getting the problem solved, this, is it? Like I said, I need you to stick a thing in my head, and standing round here next to all the cans of sad bees gabbing about beards and, and who's jealous of who, is not getting us any further towards achieving that aim."

"Okay, hold on," said Garret, stowing the SPAS-12 under the register and, sensing that he was probably set to be in this for the long haul, wandering around to Wheatley's side of the counter. "That's the second time you've said that. Stick what in your head?"

"This thing here," said Wheatley, and shoved the thing that had been stuck under his arm- rectangular and battered and wrapped in a long tangled lead, into his arms.

"Now, I found this under her couch," he said. "Yeah, you may well stare, odd-looking little gizmo, isn't it? Little-known fact, it is actually possible to use that thing to look inside my actual mind. Even littler- lesser- even lesser-known fact- it takes more than one person. Who is not me. And that is categorically not me being lazy, I promise you, I would absolutely much prefer to not have you fiddling around in my head, but the thing is, I really can't do this by myself. I've tried, I just tried, literally just a few minutes ago, and I definitely managed to ascertain that it is not a solo job. Gave it my best shot- you know, to hack it- I suppose my train of logic was that, yes, it was telling me to contact an engineer, but if anyone was going to be able to get the job done it would me, it being my head. But, no, bad idea, all I actually seem to have ended up doing is sort of accidentally deleting the colour yellow. Still got the word, 'yellow,' no issue there, but absolutely no idea what it looks like. Just sort of felt it go, just like that, ping, gone. Not the most pleasant sensation. Hoping it'll come back."

Garret rubbed his jaw, one-handed, thumbed the skin under his eyes, propped his chin on the cash register. "Okay. Is it... at all possible that this... whatever the hell this is... can maybe wait til morning? 'Cause I did not sleep well- okay, at all- last night, and I was kind of hoping-"

"No," said Wheatley, who had let go of the counter and was instead pacing off his agitation in a tight back-and-forth track between the potatoes and the paint cans. "No, nonono, look, you have no idea what it's like, being in my mind right now."

He flailed his hands again, tracing twitchy tangled patterns in the air like a Mobius strip that had been put in a tumble-dryer, trying to demonstrate his thoughts.

"It's- it's like- aargghh- it's like it's one of those puzzles, for children, where you've got a bunch of holes and shapes and things, and I'm a round one, round block, and my whole- head- is suddenly a great big stringy- rectangular- hole and its like- no, no, I'm not going to fit. Not going to fit. And I thought you, being such a techie and everything-"

He stopped pacing. "Look, cards on the table, I recognise that it probably wasn't the best idea to come straight out and tell you that I don't like you, I can sort of appreciate that is not going to make you any more likely to help me, not really the greatest opening gambit I could have come up with. Um. Can we... start again, please?"

"Sure," said Garret, sleepily, working a slightly sticky key on the cash register up and down with his thumb. "You want me to go out and come in again?"

"Er... no, probably not necessary, just- listen. I need you to get rid of my memories. Not all of them! Not all of them, that part is very important, there is quite a lot of stuff in here that I want to keep, but the thing is I just remembered a whole stonking great big chunk of other stuff, right smack out the blue, and I don't want it. I don't want any of it."

"You want me to... delete your memories," said Garret, sitting up a little and frowning, his fluffy sunbleached brows bunching on his freckly forehead, "with that laptop."

"Yes, exactly, you've got it, can we get on, please? Sooner the better."

"Yeah- you know, I think maybe Dr. Dillon might-"

"Look," said Wheatley, grabbing the lead. "I'll even get it started for you. Hang on, this is a bit technical-"

Getting a fiddly little three-pin connector to fit into a socket is tricky enough in the first place. Getting a fiddly little three-pin connector to fit into a socket when you've only had hands for less than a week is even trickier. Getting a fiddly little three-pin connector to fit into a socket located on the back of your own neck, when you've only had hands for less than a week and your head is exploding with fractured bits of memories that don't even feel like they belong to you, and your hands are shaking like you're going through early-stage testing withdrawal, is a hell of a feat, and Wheatley managed it on the fifth try through sheer luck.

"Ah! There, got it. Other bit goes in here, just plug it in, click, like that, and then what you do is, you push this thing on the flat bit, like this, and it makes this noise. Wait for it-"

The laptop, starting up, played a short, lo-fi three-note tune. Wheatley managed the ghost of a gawky grin.

"I like that bit. Annnd... there, see. New hardware detected. That's me, that is, I'm the new hardware. Thing is, that's about as far as I got. Had a bit of a poke, ping, oops, no more yellow. Bit leery of carrying on after that, sure you can imagine, sooo... there you go. Over to you, Mr. Engineer, this is the part where you, er, help me."

He paused, looked up. Garret had stopped frowning, and was instead standing there by the shelf full of sad bee spraycans with his mouth hanging open.

"What?"

"Holy God," said Garret, softly.

"What you're looking for," said Wheatley, shoving the laptop along the counter towards him, hardly mindful of the lead still attached to the back of his neck, "is- is anything to do with bagels, or needles, or, well, just sort of... being human. In general. That's the problem area. None of that, we don't want any of it, surplus to requirements. Get rid of it."

"That's... that's my codec." Garret reached out, nearly touched the laptop's dim orange-lit screen, stopped. "The one I wrote for... but... how..."

His fingers curled into a dazed pointing gesture, following the line of the lead, from the connector in the laptop's side port all the way along the counter and upwards to Wheatley's neck.

"You're... I don't... I..."

He gave up.

"I need a drink."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Moving as if he wasn't quite sure if he was awake or not, as if his grasp of certain fundamental principles of the universe had just taken a pretty hefty thumping- which was pretty much the case- Garret wandered through into the stockroom. Wheatley trailed unwillingly in behind him, ducking the doorframe with millimetres to spare, carrying the laptop in his arms and threatening to trip over the dangling lead jacked into the back of his neck with every step.

Garret made it as far as a half-disassembled reclining armchair which sat, most of its vital machinery exposed, between a heap of pistons and the oversized-bike-wheel thing hanging on the wall. He thumped dazedly into the cushions, staring at Wheatley like a wheel-carving Stone Age genius suddenly handed the blueprints of a Jaguar XKR.

"You've got a- you've got some kind of… hard-drive, in your head."

"Well, ha, no, actually, dzzz, close but no exit. I sort of am a hard-drive in my head. All this bit," Wheatley indicated the rest of his hard-light body with both hands and an impatient up-and-down movement, nearly dropping the laptop in the process, "it's just light, really. Not really sure how it works, lots of protocols, wireframes... but it does, it's all just solid, proddable, pokeable hard-light. Although, when I say proddable, I am not suggesting you try it, I don't enjoy being prodded. Same goes for poking, actually. No poking or- just leave all of that sort of thing right out, is the best idea."

"You're telling me you're a robot," said Garret. His grin started to grow bigger, and the eyes under the tanned freckly forehead started to get brighter and even more fascinated, even more amazed. "You're an A.I, like- jesus, like DOG."

"Nnnot exactly a big fan of dogs."

"You'd've liked this one. Trust me." Garret sat up, fished under the nearest workbench, and came up with a clean jam-jar, just like the dozens nailed to the undersides of the stockroom's many, many shelves, an entire regiment of dusty rounded glass soldiers, filled with nails and bolts and a hundred other assorted bits and bobs.

His hands weren't quite steady, and the bottle clattered musically on the rim of the jar. He'd snagged it from behind the counter before leaving the main store, breaking the bright red-wax seal with a grimy thumb while mumbling something Wheatley hadn't quite followed about sheep and lambs and hanging.

"It's crazy," he said, shakily."I can't- I mean- you're made of light? How is that even-"

Setting down the bottle, he sneaked an eager sideways glance at the laptop. He didn't seem to be able to keep his eyes off it- and the lead, and the way it slotted into the invisible patch at the back of Wheatley's neck.

"Hey... mind if I-"

"Hey, hey, hey, paws off the goods, alright?" Wheatley scrambled to heft the laptop up out of Garret's reach. "Remember when I said I don't like being poked? Well, nothing's changed on that front in the last couple of minutes, still not happy with it. The point is for you to go in and delete the stuff I don't want; it's not a tourist attraction."

Garret shook his head. "Probably should have clued me in when you were talking about, um, rebooting your nervous system earlier... and all the other stuff you kept saying, come to think of it, I thought it was a little weird, but I just didn't think twice about it. I mean, I just assumed you were-"

"Hey, hey," snapped Wheatley, hugging the laptop to his chest with a lot more economy of movement than he generally employed; a spare, defensive little bracing motion. "That word- the one you're thinking of right now- I don't like it, alright? I'm sick of it. I just- I just don't want to hear it."

Garret drank about half of the contents of the jam-jar in one gulp, gritted his teeth, hissed. "Shhhoot... what, 'human'?"

Silence. Glancing up from an idle attempt to balance the jam-jar on the arm of the recliner, Garret looked slightly disconcerted to realise that Wheatley was staring at him, goggle-eyed.

"Wheatley?"

"You... just assumed I was... human?"

"Well I sure as hell didn't assume you were a toaster oven! Jesus tillin' Christ, Wheatley, we've come a long way this last century, there's tech out there we never even dreamed we'd have before the Invasion, but you? I can't even- okay, sorry, I have to see-"

As Garret started to move, Wheatley attempted to snatch the laptop up out of his reach a second time, but Garret was ready for it and practically climbed his arm, grabbed his elbow, kicked off the half-built recliner, caught quite an impressive amount of air for someone with such a stocky, non-aerodynamic build, and grabbed it out of his hand.

"Oi!" squeaked Wheatley. "Hey, that's not fair, give it back!"

"It's my laptop," said Garret, reasonably, placing the recliner between himself and Wheatley and backing off to the maximum safe distance that the lead would allow.

Wheatley lunged clockwise around the recliner. Garret stepped back, maintaining the distance, flipping the screen of the laptop open. The lead swayed between them as they circled haphazardly around the chair, running over Wheatley's stooped shoulder and tugging dangerously at the back of his neck.

"Ohhhh, it's your laptop, is it? Oh, sorry, clearly, that just makes it perfectly acceptable to- wait, whoah, whoah, time out, it's your laptop?"

"Yep," said Garret, typing rapidly, one-handed, the keyboard balanced in the crook of his arm, dodging Wheatley as he made another long-armed grab. "Holy cow, look at all this stuff! What kind of OS- what is this running on?"

"Me! Remember? Me, here, big old wire stuck in my neck- and while we're at it, never mind it being your flipping laptop- if it is, jury's still out on that one as far as I'm concerned- it's my mind!"

"Hey, you said you wanted me to look!"

"Yeah- well- I've changed my mind, it was a terrible idea. I've gone right off it now, you're way too into this, far too enthusiastic about the concept of poking around in my brain. I'm not comfy with it at all."

"Oh, well, excuse the hell out of me, you're only the most amazing thing I've ever seen in the field of experimental electronics, you're totally right, I should be bored out of my skull!"

"Come on, look, I am not in the mood for this, you're just being childish now, not to mention we look completely ridiculous dancing round this chair like this, so just give it ba-"

He stopped dead, so abruptly that Garret, still retreating absently around the chair in an anticlockwise direction while trying to type, caught up and nearly fell over him.

"…am… amazing...?"

"All this code- I mean, who wrote all this stuff? It doesn't even read like someone built it, it's way too organic, it's more like- a translation, or-"

All of a sudden, Wheatley's voice had become very small. "Sorry... just to clarify... did you just call me-"

"Oh, my God," breathed Garret, fingers flying, "your linguistic centre- natural language processing, parse trees, nanosyntax- your vocabulary alone, it's impossible- "

"...trees? What... what've trees got to do with- ?"

"You're amazing," said Garret, slamming the laptop closed as if he didn't actually trust himself to ever be able to resurface if he looked at its contents for even another second (which, again, was more or less the case). He stared up at Wheatley in utter fascination. "You are unbelievably, astonishingly, incredibly… amazing."

Wheatley swallowed, blinking rapidly. He looked stunned, pink around the eyes, terribly vulnerable.

The simple fact was that he had no natural mechanisms to deal with this. He'd evolved complex coping strategies for being told he was rubbish- he'd had plenty of time to work on those- but nobody had ever told him what he was supposed to do if people suddenly turned round and started using words like amazing and astonishing at him. He was completely overwhelmed, and fairly terrified.

"...thanks?"

"Who built you?" said Garret, groping unsteadily for the bottle and his jam-jar. "Are they still alive? Where-"

It was at that point that massive alarm bells started drowning out the shock in Wheatley's head. Garret was fast veering into the sort of area that had made Chell look all white and sick just thinking about anybody finding out about, and it dawned on him- too late, as usual- that going running straight to the tech-obsessed bloke with the big communications tower at the first sign of a hiccup probably wasn't the best way of keeping her secret safe.

Luckily, there was an easy way out, and Wheatley grasped at it like a life-jacket.

"Right, um, I was getting to that, see, the thing is, technically, nobody actually built me- I mean, they did, but... they started with a bit of a prefab, so to speak. They started with this, this human and- and that's what I want to forget. I woke up, just now, bam, no reason, no explanation, with his memories all over mine. And, as I might have mentioned before, I don't want them."

"Why not?"

"Why not? Why not? Well- well, because- because, uh... there's not enough room! That's one reason, not nearly enough room in here for them, annnd, also, 'cause... they are very... boring. That's it, very boring, you don't even want to know how tedious all this stuff is, no reason on earth why anyone would want to have to go through them all. Including me. So just... help me get rid of them. Please."

"Oh, hey," said Garret, still tapping absorbedly away at the keys. "I think I just found your visual centre. You're right, looks like you've deleted a whole hex-triplet here... want me to put it back?"

"You- you can do that?"

"No sweat. You're- I mean, your basic platform in here is actually pretty intuitive, you know? Let's try... F-F-F-F, zero... zero."

Wheatley made an indistinct, startled sort of noise, grabbing at his own head.

"Whooaaahh! Oh, woww, look at that! Yellow! That is tremendous- I really was beginning to think I'd had that, and you would be surprised how many things have yellow in them. Oh... well done."

"You're welcome." Garret parked himself and the laptop down in the half-skeletal recliner again, balanced the screen carefully on his knees, and poured himself another generous drink. "Wheatley, look- adding stuff, that's cool, I got no problem with that, but you seriously want me to get rid of your memories? I mean- they're really that bad?"

"They're not mine, mate, that's the point," said Wheatley. He pulled a face, screwing his tie up into a limp knot with both hands and nearly enough violence to dislodge the little green frog wedged crookedly across it. "They're his. This human- I don't want to remember that I- that he existed. It's not helpful, in fact it actually hurts. Quite a lot. I mean, at least when I was knocking round on my management rail looking after all the- the humans, looking after all the humans, at least then I didn't know I used to be one. Well- not- not 'used to be', I-I'm not him, I wasn't him, he w- look, you see? I'm getting mixed up just talking about it. It's just hassle, it's confusing, I don't need it. Know what I mean?"

"Nope," said Garret.

"Oh. No, well, I can't say I was honestly expecting you to. The- the point is, the point is I just want to wake up and think I'm me and that's all there is to it."

Garret shook his head, watching endless lines of soft orange code run down the laptop's screen. "I don't know," he said. "I haven't seen anything like this before. Screwing around with it like that- it'd be like taking a Picasso and scribbling on it, you know? It just feels all sorts of wrong."

"Trust me," said Wheatley, vehemently, "it is nothing I am going to miss."

"You're sure?"

"I-"

[I said something and she laughed, and it was brilliant, and I should have asked her when I had the chance, because now-]

"I'm- I'm absolutely positive."

Garret shrugged, although he still didn't look happy. He drained his jam-jar glass again, slid out of the recliner, and set the laptop down on the nearest flat surface. "Well, buddy, like you said, it's your mind. Here, take the chair."

Nervously, Wheatley parked himself in the armchair's threadbare seat. Although it was a generously-sized chair, with his feet flat on the floor his knees were still nearly level with his sternum. Garret gave him a thoughtful look, then reached into the partially-skeletal workings below the right armrest, and pulled something.

"Hey, wait, what're you d-"

The chair reclined with a grudging, springy ka-clunng, lowering backwards and extending several nested ankle-level bits which nudged Wheatley's feet off the floor.

"AAH- oh. Right."

"Any better?"

"Er, yes, a bit, definitely a lot more... horizontal... much better view of the ceiling, not that the ceiling's doing anything much at the moment, but if it does, I'll be the first to know. So, um, now we've got the chair sorted- important, important part of the process, obviously- what are you doing, exactly?"

"Give me a minute," said Garret, typing busily.

"Right, okay, got you, sorry, probably not helping your concentration, silence is obviously a lot better suited to the, um, gravity, the complexity of what you're trying to do there. Being silent. Being silent, starting... now."

Pause. Wheatley tried to crane his neck up enough to see what Garret was up to behind him, but only succeeded in sinking deeper into the chair, which, in the reclined position, felt horribly like an upholstered Venus flytrap. He gave up, closed his eyes, and tried his hardest to settle into a state of meditative calm.

Unsurprisingly, this lasted all of ten seconds.

"Ohhh. Oh, you know what? I've just thought, what if this hurts? What if this really hurts? I mean, it might, it definitely might hurt, it usually does when, when someone starts fiddling around in my head, and- "

Garret stopped typing.

"Kind getting a little of out of my purview, to be honest, Wheatley. If you think it's gonna hurt, maybe you need something to take your mind off it. I mean, I'm no doctor, but I guess if you were, uh, human, I'd suggest…"

He trailed off, looked down at his glass, cocked his head on one side.

"You know what, hang on a sec-"

Scritching at his beard where it turned into his sideburns- this seemed to be a habit of his, cropping up whenever he was thinking particularly hard- he wandered off in the direction of a filing cabinet across the room. Wheatley, after a few false starts, managed to kick the recliner back upright, watching him anxiously over his knees as he pulled out the bottom drawer, finger-walked through the surprisingly tidy arrangement of folders inside, and came up with a single plastic looseleaf.

"Here. You know what this is?"

"Umm... Oh, oh, wait, wait, I know this one. It's a plastic bag."

"Inside the bag."

"Oh. Uh… yes, clearly, it's a… very shiny coaster."

"Nope. It's a disc- it's actually a kind of virus."

Wheatley recoiled. "A kind of what? Whoah, whoah, hold on there, cowboy, hold the phone, you are not going to go and stick a virus in my head!"

"Relax, it's short-term, totally benign. It's just a little program I wrote for Foxglove, in case we ever had a problem with lag." Garret snorted. "Might even get to use it one day, if we ever actually get that far."

"Right... because I would have said that a benign virus is sort of a major contradiction in terms. Because it is. I mean, the whole point of virus... es, viruses, is, is to mess everything up. First thing you learn about them, that's what they do, they mess everything up. It's- it's just not a friendly word, 'virus', is it? Call it what you want, prejudice, possibly, but with the best will in the world, 'virus', urrr, no, it's pretty obvious that it's up to no good."

"Actually, some viruses aren't so bad. This one increases system performance, tweaks a few basic processes, reduces network inhibitions… also, it blocks a lot of non-vital input, so maybe it'd help. Think of it kind of like... an anaesthetic."

"Re-really? An- an anaesthetic? Like- like a sort of... painkiller?"

"Exactly like a painkiller."

Wheatley clambered awkwardly over the chairback to get a better look at the disc as Garret tipped it out of the folder and stuck it into the laptop's drive. He definitely wasn't a fan of viruses- as a digital life-form, the fear of anything related to viruses or corruption was hard-coded into him- but he was even less of a fan of pain.

"Umm… well, that, yes, I can see where you're coming from, that does sound fairly innocuous. And useful, definitely, quite useful. Practically- what's the word- medicinal, really, when you put it like that."

"Oh, totally," said Garret, glibly, with only a very faint trace of a smirk. "Medicinal."

Wheatley straightened up and took a deep, purely dramatic breath. He had serious doubts that anything Garret could stick into his head from a little disc like that could really have any impact on the way he was feeling, the queasy ball of tension in his head or his- nono scratch that scratch that not mine they're not mine- intrusive old dream-memories, or the unravelling tendrils of his control over this entire sorry situation, fraying and snapping everywhere whenever he tried to do anything to prove he was in control- but that wasn't the point. The point was, he'd definitely been less than polite to Garret back there, had definitely got off on the wrong foot, and accepting this was at least a small way of making up for it, wasn't it?

"Right, well, you've convinced me. Load it up. Hit me with it."

"Sure?"

"Positive. Go ahead. Let me have it."

Garret typed for a moment or two. "Okay, it's running…"

"Is- is it? Are you sure? Funny, 'cause I'm not feeling anythiiiihhhhhh gaaahhhh-"

Wheatley gasped, nearly losing control of his knees altogether, grabbing the nearest workbench for support. A slow burning sensation rolled through him, ebbing through his neural pathways like spreading tawny-gold fire, dying down to dark embers in the pit of what his mind still- after all this time- believed to be his stomach. His vision swam and the world glowed, colours brighter, shapes sharper, very slightly off-axis, pulling a dazed chuckle out of him as he tried to restore his balance.

It wasn't like that other feeling, that… that Itch. It was nowhere near as strong, for a start. That had been a white-hot mind-melting blaze, staggeringly intense; this was much, much milder, mellow and deceptively benign. It faded, mostly but not entirely, after a few seconds, leaving a warm, buzzy sort of feeling in its wake.

He liked it.

"Huh... ahhahahaahaa... wow." His voice sounded scratchy, hoarse, as if the burning feeling really had scoured something inside his vocal processor. He felt for his glasses, pushing them straight on his nose, scrubbing a hand over his flushing face and slowly-dawning grin. "That- that felt... pretty good, actually..."

Garret had looked alarmed at first, and if Wheatley had been less dazed and more inclined to be suspicious, he might have guessed that the young man hadn't actually been completely sure what would happen when the little virus hit his system. Now, however, he gave Wheatley a quick, assessing sort of look, and started to grin, refilling his own glass and clinking it on the side of the laptop's scrolling screen.

"Moonshine-dot-exe. Cheers."

"It's got a hell of a kick to it," said Wheatley, vaguely, thumbing under his eyes and knocking his glasses wonky again in the process. "Like a mule. Like a unicron. Oh! That's it, that's it, I remember! I remember now, it's not a crow, it's a horse, a sort of horse with a spike on! Although hang on, if that is the case, why didn't they just call it a rhinocehorse? Curious, interesting linguistic choice there… incidentally, you, you know that thing you just did? Could you, um, do it again, please?"

"Uh, well… if you're sure. It's kind of… strong..."

"Not a problem," said Wheatley, with absolute confidence. "I can handle it. Do it again."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Soooo... so there I was, right, thereIwas, lying there, absolute goner, all my, my circuits and everything, fried like, like a… fried thing- pancake… kipper… wherewasI? Oh right, so, there I was, and, and I've got all these little things, error messages, telling me I'm done for... never a brilliant sign when that happens, is it? And- and- and just when I was thinking, thassit, end of the line, next stop Android Hell, express elevator, do not pass Go... you know what she did? Know what she did? She only went and put me in a whole new body! I know, I know, in-credible, right? I couldn't believe it either! She had next to no time to get that sorted, mortal danger round every corner, got enough to worry about getting herself out of there in one piece, let alone me... but that's the thing, isn't it? That's the thing about her! Well, one of the things- one of the many things, about her. Selfless. That's what she is. Don'understannit at all, 'f I'm being honest. I mean, actually no, s'not exactly it, I do, I understand it, as, as, as a concept, but what I mean is, is… well, she could've just left me in there in the first place, couldn't she? But she didn't, even after all that, I mean even I couldn't think up a reason why she should've come back for me, and you'd better believe I was trying really, really really hard, under ex-extremely difficult circumstances. Extremely difficult circumstances, ad-adverse, unpleasant… pointy... umm... sorry, where was I?"

"Talking 'bout Chell," said Garret, with commendable diction for someone who had been drinking something from a bottle with no label on it out of a jam-jar for the last hour and a half. He was leaning comfortably back in the recliner, the laptop balanced on his knees. "Sure you're okay there? Like I said, we've got plenty other chairs-"

"No, no, nono, don't you worry about me, I like it down here," said Wheatley, who was sprawled flat on his back on the workshop's concrete floor like the victim of a fairly bizarre crime-scene, the lead still running from the back of his neck to the laptop, gazing up at the ceiling. It was a surreal, interesting view, a shadowy mix-and-match jumble of load-bearing beams, hooks, spools of wire, and parts of things too big and awkward to be stored on the floor or the workbenches. There was half a jet engine up there, hanging on massive staples just where the roof met the wall, next to something that looked like part of a yacht.

"Roomy, that's the word. Anyway... oh, God, yes, her, she is something. She's got that look, that sort of doing things look, it's, it's- well, it's amazing, only, only even when she isn't, looking like that, when she's just, you know, having a little bit of quiet 'me' time, it's still like, wow... it's all in there, you can see it. She's just so... her. That's the thing, really, she's so absolutely sort of her. All of her is, you know? And, and her eyes, and- you know, first time I saw her, I mean really saw her, not a, a screen or whatever, I was like, aaahh! 'Cause I mean, she was all- well, by that point she had been in cryosleep for a bloody long time, admittedly, and I- to be honest I never thought much of how you lot looked, really. Aesthetically. You were all so tall- huh- and a bit creepy, really, with the eyes- two of them- and breathing through a hole in the middle, and it always just sort of bugged me. Got on my nerves, how weird it all looked, like, like- well, like it shouldn't, like there was something I was missing there, I suppose- but, but even then, even then, she, she grew on me, just little things like, like the way she looked when she was thinking, trying to get us out of there, and, and when she was happy when one of our little plans worked out the way it was supposed to, when she solved something. Because it really was all her, you know, doing the work, it really was, all her..."

He drew a vague, formless shape in the air with his hands, then let them flop back any-old-how on his chest, squinting, throat working. The overstuffed feeling in his head had dulled, receded under the little program's effects, but the details were still all there, patches of new memories like handfuls of time-smoothed glass, shifting and tumbling gently over each other as they settled into place.

"He- he really liked her, you know. This human, whatever-his-name-was. He had a whole little speech worked out for her, bit blurry on the details, wasn't exactly Shakespeare or anything, but the, the gist of it was simple enough... her, him, some sort of place that wasn't In There. Particularly cruel irony, that, really, considering..."

A pause.

"I-I've just realised, speaking of In There, you know the other great thing about this floor- welllll, floors in general, come to think of it, out here- they stay put! Very reliable, on the whole, floors out here. You can go, oh, look, a floor, well, thas'going to be sticking around for a while, no problem, you c'n go away and come back, and oh look! There it is again! Exact, exact same place, still flat, still solid, holdingeverythingup. Vastly underrated feature, that. Though- though, have to say, still do not understand some floor-related concepts, out here. Like- like carpet. Just weird, really, carpet. I-I mean, it's a floor, you shouldn't actually be planning to spend much time with your face in it, but you lot- you still decide, why not, let's make it all soft and furry! Don't have anything to do today, let's- let's give the floor a wig!"

He giggled.

"Ohh, you were right, you know, it's pretty bloody strong, this. Sortofff... creeps up on you. How… how many've I had, now?"

Garret glanced up. "Uh, including the first one? That'd be… one."

Wheatley blinked, owlishly. "Wh... what, really?"

"Well, I was gonna give you another shot, but you got a little… woozy, and then you were kind of trying to whistle, I think, and then you started talking about the, uh, relative carrying capacities of different kinds of birds, so I figured I should probably wait a while."

"Ohh. Fair enough."

"You were saying the… the floors move, in this place?"

"Floors, walls, ceilings, you can't trust anything to hang about for more than five minutes. Panels, see." Wheatley raised his hands and attempted, by placing them against each other at a variety of different angles, to demonstrate the shifting, unstable nature of the facility. His task was made more difficult by the fact that his hands didn't quite seem to be exactly where he thought they were in relation to each other, and the walls and ceiling of the workshop itself weren't being exactly what he would have called still, at the moment. The floor was still reassuringly motionless under him, though, and as long as it didn't try to tip him off any time soon, he was happy.

"Funny, you know, I wouldn't have liked this at all, in my old body. Perspective, isn't it, it's all about perspective, how you look at things- like, in this case, from the floor. In that little, tiny... little thing- I'd've been lying down here f'r ages, probably- on the floor, legless, just twiddling my handles and waiting for someone to come along and pick me up. Not my idea of a good time. But, but now, ohhhoho, now I can just get up whenever I feel like it!"

He demonstrated, clambering to his feet with all the grace and elegance of a newborn giraffe. "See? I mean, I've got legs, arms… ohh, you lot just don't know how lucky you are, having all this. And then, and then you go and make us without them, I mean, I'm not sure what the logic was there, put us in charge of everything just so you can kick back and relax, and then make it so we can't even go for a stroll without your help- not, not exactly what I'd call charitable, that."

"See, usually, it's not a problem," said Garret, stretching out sleepily and reaching for his glass, which he'd wedged down the side of the chair. "With you, yeah, I can see that, but I work with machines every day, and, generally it's the opposite. They're not alive, I mean, okay, it feels kinda like they are, sometimes, but most of the time it's hard enough trying to figure out what's wrong with a machine, let alone how to fix it."

"Well, have you ever asked?" said Wheatley. He wandered across to the nearest wall, poked at the thing that looked like an oversized bike wheel, making it swing gently on its hook. "Ever just, you know, gone to a machine and gone, 'hello, what's up with you then? Feeling a bit down, anything I can do? And, while we're on the subject, do you fancy having legs?'"

Behind him, he heard Garret laugh. "Not exactly. I mean, it's not like you can talk to-"

A short, sharp intake of breath, and then silence.

"What?" said Wheatley, turning. He blinked worriedly at Garret, who all of a sudden looked quite a lot like he'd been struck heavily on a particularly important part of his flimsy human skull. Just the look alone was enough to make him glance guiltily back at the wheel-thing, just in case it was a vital part of something that he shouldn't have been prodding. It didn't look it, hanging there all innocently like that, spinning slightly- but then, what did he know?

"Er... Garret? Hello? What?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell looked down across Eaden, and frowned. Her walk had taken her, by a fairly direct sort of route, down to the edges of the Boneyards and up the gently-worn grassy track which ran over the highest of the little hills. You could see most of the town from up here, a scattered crossroads of dark shapes under the moon, surrounded by a sprawling patchwork quilt of black-and-blue fields.

On this night, with her senses wide awake and snatching sharply at anything which wasn't quite how it should be, she was immediately drawn to the one thing which shouldn't have been there- a single light from the town, a flicker of orange where everything should have been dark. Eaden did not possess a particularly vibrant night-life, as might have been expected from a place where the one public vendor of alcohol shooed his half-dozen regular customers out the door at about nine if he felt like it and a town dance was considered the height of the social calendar. It was past two in the morning- there was only one reason she could think of explain that little square of light. It had to be Garret, pulling yet another all-nighter at the store, working on some difficult part of Foxglove in the all-purpose workshop he'd made out of Aaron's stockroom.

She started back down towards the town at a light jog, her bare feet whispering in the long grass. She lost sight of the light as she dropped into the fields that bordered the Boneyards, the town hidden by dark hedgerows and bordering trees, the cloudlike shapes of tall silver maples and toothy, jagged lines of spruce. Spotting the eye-height shadow of a low branch in her path, she ducked at the very last moment- a quick, playful movement- and felt the cool dew-heavy brush of leaves against her ear.

That first night, four years ago- it had been moonlit, fresh, just like this- she'd woken under a blanket of stars and stumbled to her feet, everything aching, staggered by the realisation that she was still here, still outside and free and alive. She hadn't even meant to fall asleep in the first place, out there in the endless wheatfields with the flattened path behind her that wasn't long enough, wasn't anywhere near long enough to set her mind at rest. That first night, she'd doubted that it could ever belong enough, that such a distance could exist.

She'd walked miles, that first night, walked until her bare feet bled and her head swam and the wheat had thinned and given way to trees and green fields. She hadn't known where she was going or what she was looking for, she hadn't even known if there was a single living human being left on the planet besides her. That first night, she hadn't even cared. She was free, and there were trees and wide-open spaces and living things calling back and forth in the hedgerows and stars overhead, and that had been enough.

The overgrown track on her right widened and became the beginnings of Hope Street- she climbed the fence by the kissing-gate and jogged on at a brisk pace. Not much had changed in four years, not in the shape of the bushes or the road or the trees, or the town awaiting her, but a lot had changed inside her head. She wasn't running to get out, away- her world had broadened beyond that one simple motivation of alive, being free- she still couldn't take these two things for granted, maybe never would, but she'd learned that there were other things worth fighting for, more complex, more messy and odd and human, that made them worth it. Home, friendship, belonging-

Before the Combine Invasion, the town of Eaden hadn't even existed. The general opinion was that there had been something there, at the crossroads, and something about the structure of the oldest parts of the buildings that remained- the blocky, unlovely shapes, severe angles and cast-concrete slabs- suggested that it might have been some kind of large industrial complex. A factory or a refinery, maybe, a workplace in the middle of an empty expanse of fields. Whatever it had been, it was little more than rubble by the time the first survivors- Aaron's family, among others- had found it. If there had been towns nearby, places where people lived, they had been wiped clean off the map.

Chell slowed, the looming shape of Foxglove close on her right, defining the southern boundary of Otten's Field. The small isolated chunk of recall that seeing herself in Wheatley's memory had jolted loose refused to leave her alone, the strange, slippery knowledge that everything that she'd forgotten was there, hidden neatly away behind the memory-Chell's too-young, unsuspecting face. Where had she called home? What might she have recognised, back then? A town, a city, a house, a flat, a daily commute, street names, posessions, photographs, passwords and phone numbers, the everyday trivia of a life-

She'd never missed it, any of it- she'd never had anything to miss. Things that might have meant the world to her back then had gone unremembered, unmourned- and it was better to be free of that, but it was still so, so strange to think that before all of this- before Her- she'd had a life, been part of other people's lives.

Wheatley's life-

Had it been fair- or right- to go looking for his memories? For the first time, she felt a real twinge of doubt. She'd wanted to confirm her own suspicions that his bizarrely, touchingly human behaviour was more than some scientist's clever reproduction of humanity, and she'd wanted to show him that he'd been more- was alreadymore, if he just tried to be. It was ironic, now she thought of it, that she'd been so eager to prove his humanity that she hadn't stopped to consider it- to consider that he might already be human enough to be just like her, to not want to remember.

A test was there to be solved, end of story. You didn't ask a button for permission before you pressed it, you didn't hang around to check that you had the turret's blessing before you dropped a cube on it, and if you did, you were probably going to end up painting a chamber floor with what was left of your knees. Four years in Eaden had softened her perspective, taught her that the solution to a problem was not always the simplest one, not when you were dealing with people, friends, lives, but she'd never had to bring the two worlds together before. Wheatley might be from That Place, but his jittery, scratched-record humanity made all the difference. He deserved more than just being solved.

She'd made a mistake. It sat uneasily in her mind, her instinct- to set it right as soon as possible- grating against the worrying fact that, set back to square one, she didn't quite know how to approach it.

Or, for that matter, him.

By now, she was almost at the centre of the town, and it was possible to make out the source of the mysterious light. She'd been right- it was coming from the back of Eaden General, from the one small window at the side of the stockroom, painting a soft orange stripe across the jumble of rusting cars and machinery on the other side of the chain-link fence.

She lifted the latch on the heavy steel-mesh gate, let herself in, padded quietly between the strange dinosaur-skeleton shapes of trucks and engines, lifted a hand to knock on the workshop's battered garage doors-

Something fast and violent happened, a sudden blur of motion and flooding light, and Chell managed to catch on that it was only somebody happening to open the door just as she was about to knock on it, just in time to avoid punching the culprit hard in the face.

"Wh- Chell! Hey!" Garret, oblivious to how close he'd just come to a broken jaw, beamed at her from the doorway with the sort of expression she'd come to associate with exciting deliveries of new parts from Depot or a particularly serendipitous find in the stockroom. He was wearing a massive spool of wire over one shoulder and a welding mask with the shield cocked back at the sky, and there was a massive unravelling sheaf of blueprints under his arm, and he looked, at first glance, quite demented.

"Garret, what's-"

"Uh- I'll explain in a minute, okay?" He sidestepped her and stood staring blankly into the darkened yard for a moment, then grabbed something from a heap of scrap metal and vanished into the night. "C'mon!"

Wheatley extricated himself from the workshop doorway behind her, catching his forehead a good one on the rivet-studded metal lintel. "Coming, coming, right behind you, I am- OW! I'm- I'm literally right behind you-"

He saw her, and stopped dead.

They looked at each other for a moment, she, flustered and hair-tumbled from her jog and the shock of Garret's sudden appearance, he, desperately juggling to try and keep hold of more pieces of random machinery than it was really fair to expect anyone to carry at once, and a little bit wobbly on his feet.

There was a small, not-quite-awkward sort of silence. He glanced to one side, seeking inspiration somewhere out in the shadowy junkyard, fidgeted, drew a deep breath.

"Um-"

"Wheatley!" yelled Garret, who by the sounds of it was somewhere past the fence and receding fast. Wheatley jumped, and a thing like a spanner with a lot of poky bits on one end (it was, in fact, a three-eighths crimper) slipped from under his arm. Chell's quick sure hand shot out and caught it, startling a laugh out of him- a surprised, pleased huff of sound that made her smile in response.

He grinned, shifted his grip on everything just enough to take her free hand in his, and pulled her- confused but unresisting- after him.

"Come on, it's all going on here!"

"Wait- what are we doing?"

"I don't know! Science! I think we're doing Science! Come on, let's go!"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

10. The Broadcast

"Daddy..."

Marten Otten was a hardworking, blameless sort of man. The necessary everyday routines of his farm meant that he had to get out of bed before dawn six days a week as a matter of course, and so he probably didn't actually deserve to be woken up at three o'clock on a Sunday morning by a small, worried, blonde apparition draped in a blanket, but life just wasn't particularly fair sometimes.

"Mnngg. What's wrong, honey?"

"Garret Rickey and Chell and Chell's monster say they need to get into the field and they're sorry."

"That's nice... tell Mommy about it, okay?"

"Mommy's asleep," said the quilt bundled up against his back, with a hint of warning in its voice.

"And, and Chell's monster says he's sorry 'bout my window too but he only meant to wake me up," said Ellie, twisting a few locks of her hair carefully around Linnell's head, which was pinioned under her small arm. "And Garret Rickey says he wouldn't go start making a, a racket down there in the middle of the night 'cept he thinks he's on the edge of, of a- of a something. And also he said to ask if can he, uh, can he borrow the generator."

"Sure, honey," mumbled Mart, rolling over and tugging a little of the quilt back off Heather, who made an indistinct growling noise. "That's fine. G'back to sleep."

Ellie padded obediently out of her parent's bedroom and along the creaky hallway of the big farmhouse, back to her room. On Linnell's advice, she'd pulled on her favourite red wellies before getting out of bed- shards of glass glittered on her carpet in the glow of her skim-battery nightlight, crunching underfoot as she pushed her dolls-house into a better position beneath the windowsill, and climbed carefully up to peer out of the shattered hole in the pane.

"Daddy says yes," she said.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

By the time the sun had made its first uncertain, deep-orange-red appearance over the horizon, a small crowd of curious people had gathered at the bottom of Otten's Field. Eaden folk might not have been night-owls, but they were generally early risers, and anything out of the ordinary attracted attention. They were used to Garret, but the hysteria that seemed to have gotten hold of him, the inclusion of Chell's odd out-of-towner friend, the yelling, and the constant thudding roar of Mart Otten's biggest generator, all added up to something out of the ordinary.

"It's simple!" yelled Garret, over the generator. Communication was further hampered by the fact that he was twenty-five feet up Foxglove's tangled structure, yelling through his welding mask at Wheatley, who was backed up against one of the tower's huge hooves. "I've made the connection, just come on up here and do your thing! See if you can interface with her!"

Wheatley swallowed. His enthusiam had lasted right up until the moment when he'd realised exactly what Garret wanted him to do, at which point it had evaporated like sodium dropped into water, leaving stark terror in its place.

"It's- it's high, that. It's unnecessarily high, really, very risky, you'd never get that past Health and Safety guidelines, would you, if there, uh, were any- why can't you come down here and do it?"

"What?"

"I said, why can't you come down here and do it?"

"I can't hear you!"

Wheatley took a deep, unnecessary breath.

"Why," he bellowed, with a massive shrug and accompanying eyebrow-lift, "can't you," he pointed, "come down here," stabbing another finger at the safe, unmoving ground at his own feet, "and do it," an involved sort of knot-tying flail around the back of his own neck, "question mark!"

"I told you! The main interface is up here!"

"Well, that was a pretty bloody silly place to put it, wasn't it? Amount of foresight shown there, nil! Wouldn't mind, only it's me that has to suffer for it! Can't you just run a cable down here and stick that into me instead? Sort of an extension?"

"What?"

Wheatley breathed in again. "Can't, you, run a cable, down here-"

At this point, Chell, who had been very patient up to this point, but was not enjoying the racket- or, come to that, being stranded so close to the centre of everyone's attention- pushed her way though the small crowd and hit the killswitch on the generator.

"-and stick that in me instead? Oh."

There was a gentle chorus of snickering. In the sudden quiet, Wheatley looked at the small group of onlookers as if he'd only just realised they were there, and tried instinctively to hide behind Chell. She could feel him quivering like a high-strung horse against her back, and it was only then that she realised how close he actually was to bolting. She gave him a gentle little push in the arm.

"Hey. You were fine with climbing before."

"I- I- what, Back There? With the- yes, I mean, course, course it is, but-"

She looked at him.

"-but, you were right there, then, weren't you, and, and anyway, we had to, didn't we, we had to climb all that, or else-"

"Never mind or else." she said. "If you fall, I'll catch you."

He looked down at her, twitchily, knotting his fingers around each other.

"I- I'd flatten you."

She shrugged. "Never bothered you before."

Wheatley stared at her. He wanted to say a lot of things. He wanted to say, why are you doing this, why are you making me do this, is it a test, is it the test? The last chance I'm going to get before you go whoops, didn't make the grade, sorry, Relaxation Centre Attendant it is? If it is, can you just tell me, so I can try extra-extra-hard this time?

He wanted to say, What you did last night did something to my head, don't know if you meant it to or not but I remembered who I used to be, and how he used to feel about you. And incidentally, I still sort of do- feel that, I mean, don't even know what it is but I do- and given everything that's happened, you absolutely have my permission to think that's hilarious...

And he especially wanted to say, what were you looking for in there? I know you, you never do anything without a good old solid reason. What was it? More to the point- did you, in fact, find it? Whatever it was, was it what you wanted?

He opened his mouth, looked into her serious, slate-grey eyes.

"...Right."

The small crowd watched him as he turned like a- well, like a robot- and stumbled over to the tower's nearest hoof-like foot. He was tall enough to get an easy grip on the central girder, just above the blackened curve of metal, and he curled one knee awkwardly up to his chest and braced his foot against the weldscars on the sloping surface. This felt like more than enough progress to justify a good rest, so he stopped, head down, the toe of one scuffed blue sneaker still planted firmly on the ground.

And then Chell stepped quietly up behind him, linked her hands together under the arch of his foot, and with her shoulder braced against Foxglove's hoof, boosted him up into the tangle of wiring over their heads.

Wheatley yelled, grabbed at something over his head which fortunately didn't give way, realised she'd let go of his foot, and yelled again. The wires swayed violently around him, and for about half a second he was ninety-nine point nine percent sure that he was going to fall and die, but the moment passed and his grip held and he realised that, despite the terror of the moment, he was still only about eight feet off the ground.

"I'm… fine! I'm okay, I'm fine-"

He wobbled. Garret, who had been watching from above, craned back down through the maze of wires and dishes and grabbed his splayed, reaching hand, and before Wheatley knew it he was sitting next to him on the highest supportable girder, the faces of the crowd a dizzyingly small cluster below, staring half-dazed at the glorious blood-orange lightshow in the clouds to the east.

"Hey," said Garret. He opened the laptop on his knees, fished the stripe-headed lead from one of the infinite pockets of his tool-belt, and grinned.

"Ready?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Someone was saying something. He blinked, spun his optic upwards. An infinity of bare concrete walls and monitor screens and far-off slatted vents, a strange, looming shape, and in the foreground a human face which he quickly recognised as belonging to Dale, CA, Intern. It wasn't that hard to tell them apart, he'd found, as long as you focused on the most obvious details. For instance, Dale, CA, Intern, had tufty black stuff at both ends of his face, and puffy things around his neck, which he always pulled up over his ears whenever he thought Moss, D, Head of Research wasn't looking.

"...ready, I.D Core?"

"Re- ready? Haha, absolutely, you just try and stop me! I was born ready, amigo. One hundred percent... ready for what, though, exactly, you mind elaborating on that?"

"Firing up," said someone else, over an intercom which boomed out around the high, curved ceiling of the chamber. "Zero minus three minutes. Primary safeguards are go."

"This is it, I.D Core," said Dale, CA, Intern, picking him up by the handles and setting off across an echoing, grey-tiled floor. Other scientists hurried past, crossing the wide space, filling it with the hushed, dopplering sound of their voices. He caught a momentary glimpse of Moss, D, Head of Research, standing on a gantry at the far end of the room with another scientist with his hands spread on the rail next to a small, sticklike column with a red thing on top, shouting at someone. There seemed to be a lot of looking up going on, a lot of expectant glances in the direction of the strange, looming shape.

And at him. People were looking at him.

"Zero minus two minutes..."

"This is what you were built for," Dale, CA, Intern was telling him, and now the excitement in his voice was nearly tangible. They had reached the curving set of steps which led up to another gantry directly beneath the looming, cable-strung thing in the centre of the room, and Dale, CA, Intern climbed up to stand directly beneath its curving, scaffolded bulk. A technician- no labcoat, grey jumpsuit- reached down from the scaffold to take him from Dale, CA, Intern's upstretched hands.

"Easy, it's not a beachball you're tossing around there," Dale, CA, Intern said to the technician, in a sharp officious voice, cribbed in no small part from Moss, D, Head of Research. And then, in an undertone, "Go for it, Wheatley. Knock her dead."

"Her? Er- sorry- I, I, I think I might have missed something, something fairly vital here- what am I actually supposed to do?"

Dale, CA, Intern hesitated, then grinned a big reassuring grin and let go of his handles, leaving him in the technician's grip.

"Just be yourself."

"Zero minus fifty seconds," said somebody. He craned his optic up towards the technician, hoping that somebody else would provide him with a bit more instruction, but nothing was forthcoming. The technician simply adjusted his grip on his handles and climbed, one-handed, a little higher into the scaffolding which encircled the looming thing in the centre of the room, past the wheel-like axis and up towards the great ring of giant monitors near the ceiling.

"Oh, we're going up, are we? Okay, well- oh, um, this is quite high, isn't it? Is this absolutely necessary, or- no, you're not in a conversational mood, okay, I can see that, you're probably focused on, on climbing, don't want to distract you, you're doing a great job so far. Sterling job, of going... higher..."

The technician stopped climbing, and set him into something like his connector cradle back in the laboratory, except this one was brand new, not nearly as comfortable, and hanging about thirty feet off the ground.

He was beginning to think that he maybe didn't like heights all that much. He'd never been further off the floor than Dale, CA, Intern or Moss, D, Head of Research could lift, and it was different when you had a couple of reliable, grippy human hands on your shell or your handles. You felt safe, then, taken care of, and most importantly not at all like you could easily just slip from your socket and plunge thirty feet to your doom on a sterile tiled floor. Granted, he could see absolutely everything from up here- well, everything that wasn't obscured by wires or machine parts or giant monitor screens- and everyone else looked very small, down there, but in his opinion it wasn't really worth the view.

He was definitely starting to feel a bit sick, now, but he tried to push it aside, put it down to simple nerves. After all, it wasn't every day that a core got the chance to finally get out there and do what he had been built for, fulfill his primary function- find out, even, what his primary function was supposed to be! The fact was, despite all the tests and inspections and calibrations, he was still a little unclear, a little bit under-informed, on that point.

He remembered Dale, CA, Intern's pleased, excited expression, and immediately felt much better. Dale, CA, Intern was clearly looking forward to this; ergo, it couldn't be anything bad. End of story.

"Alright, it's fine, I'm fine. Just be yourself. Be yourself. Not a problem, I can do this. I've- I've got a sticker."

The technician made a few final adjustments, gave someone out of his field of vision a sober thumbs-up, and climbed down out of sight.

"Zero minus fifteen seconds," said the voice over the intercom. All the screens were displaying the same thing, now, a tumbling countdown on a glowing blue background, and the great uplit spots around the edges of the wall came on one by one, dazzling him, flooding the chamber with light.

"Ten. Five, four, three, two, one... zero. Hang on to your hard-hats, everyone, she's up."

He couldn't see that much, up here in this curving tangle of machinery, but he was aware of a deep, deep, grinding hum beginning somewhere underneath him, a rising bass note shivering through his casing and reverberating down into his innermost workings. It wasn't just a simple physical vibration- there was something else, a totally alien feeling in his mind. A sense that there was something else there- that he was connected to something much, much bigger than the tangible form of the looming structure around him, much, much bigger than this dangling bulk of wires and metal, and whatever-it-was kept rising, unstoppably, underneath him-

"Uh, what's going on? What's happening, what's that- aaahh!"

-growing, swelling, and it was huge, and something else as well, but he wasn't sure what it was because he'd never felt it before, all he knew was that it was sharp and clawing and incredibly powerful and he didn't like it at all, white-hot and terrifyingly intense and building under him like a tide, no, like a tsunami-

-and then-

-the Voice.

It was the loudest thing he'd ever heard. It filled the universe. He was blind with it, deaf with it, a tiny clump of nerves and terror buried beneath a crushing wave of sound. It blurred and flanged and strengthened, formed words and spat them out, each a stunning lightning-strike of choked, snarling outrage.

"w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w- whaaat iiiis- what. Is. This. What is this. THING."

Somehow, he stammered into speech. "Uh- uh- uh- hello! Can't- can't help noticing, you're uh, you seem to be, uh, I'm getting the impression, the, ah, the sort of vibe, that you're a bit upset right now for, for some reason. Which is fine! Absolutely fine, everyone feels out of sorts once in a while, but, um, can I suggest, though, that you try to sort of calm down, a bit? Maybe, maybe count to ten, or, um, think of something calming, calm thoughts like, uh, clouds, you know, or birds, little birds, maybe, or- what else, what else is calming- herbal tea? I mean, not that you can- sorry, not amazingly appropriate, since you don't have a- a mouth, that I can see, machine, obviously, but maybe you could ask one of them down there to make you some, and you could... look at it. And that might make you feel better! Worth a try, definitely worth a try, and I really would like it if you did, try to calm down, because, because a lot of people are watching me, right now, and I think I'm supposed to- ohhh. Oh, is that what I'm for, to keep you company? Cheer you up? Oh, wow, that might actually be it! Like a, a little friend for you! Uh- well! That, possibly, being the case... hello, friend! I'm Wheatley! Pleasure to-"

"... what… what have you done?" The Voice clenched like a fist, and he cringed. "This... this thing...in my head... it won't... it won't shut up, how- hhhhhow dare you-"

For a moment- for the briefest of moments- the Voice had sounded dazed, faltering, uncertain. But now it rose, screaming, surging, and he screamed as well in sheer terror as bright scattering blinding stars rained from the ring of screens above him, monitor after monitor exploding into static and blowing out, showering glass and smoke and sparks down on the scattering humans below.

"HOW DARE YOU PUT THIS TUMOUR IN MY HEAD!"

"Primary safeguards breached! Someone hit the killswitch!"

"It's not working! She's into the control grid!"

"Pull the plug! The whole network, kill it!"

"But-"

"Now, dammit, do it now!"

In another second, it was all over. The furious, flanging, raging howl cut off like the slamming of a door, the overwhelming bass hum stuttered and died, ebbing away to nothing. The massive structure strained, jerked, a last colossal spasm that smashed the bulk of it into the surrounding cage of scaffolding with slow, shattering momentum, making a sound like a truckload of steel poles being dropped into a quarry and sending warped fragments of metal and ceramic raining down, clattering and clanging on the chamber floor.

Silence. Through the haze of settling smoke and dust, the quiet sounds of people coughing and slowly climbing out from behind overturned desks around the walls, a shellshocked, dispirited sort of silence.

"Ohh… what… was… all that about?" He was upside down, still held in the gently-smoking connector cradle by his back port, hanging dizzily out into space at a forty-five-degree angle. His optic squinted muzzily down through the fizzing, sparking structure, rotated, focused, then jerked wide open, flaring panicky blue. "Wait, wait, how did I do? How did I- was- was that supposed to happen? Did I do alright?"

"Nice one, Moss," said someone else, wearily, somewhere beneath. "I think it was actually faster this time."

"Um, hello? Sorry, don't want to butt in, but, uh, I am still up here… hanging, really, hanging up here, it's a bit, um, alarming, can... someone get me down, please?"

"The concept is perfectly sound," said another voice, out of breath and coiled with barely-concealed irritation- Moss, D, Head of Research.

"Maybe, but the execution's useless. She nearly-"

"Well, Carter," snapped Moss, D, Head of Research, "maybe if you'd given me competent technicians to work with, instead of saddling me with a team of halfwit interns, you might be seeing better results. I'm sure you're familiar with the expression; you pay peanuts…"

"Dr. Moss?" That was Dale, CA, Intern, and he sounded more than a little hurt. "What-"

"Make yourself useful and page Cleanup. We're done here. And take those goddamn headphones off, you're contravening at least six uniform and safety codes and you look like a complete idiot."

"Sir- I- I… yes, sir."

"Okay, everyone," said the first voice, over the intercom. "Back to the drawing board, I guess. Shut down and head out."

"Hello?" he called, trying and failing to stop the rising panic he was feeling now creeping into his voice. Through the tangle of inert wires, he could see the scientists leaving, filing out into the anteroom beyond the chamber, fading whirrs and beeps as the secondary machines around the walls were shut down, and nobody was even looking at him now-

Moss, D, Head of Research was one of the last to go, already scribbling furiously on a clipboard and arguing over his shoulder with the human he'd called Carter, pausing at the door just long enough to snap at Dale, CA, Intern, who was skulking resentfully at his heels.

"Get the lights."

"Yes, sir."

"Uh- nonono, wait, wait- Dale! Dale, don't- hang on, don't do that, don't do that, I'm still up here! Don't-"

CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK.

Darkness advanced, spot-by-spot, across the walls, until at last the only source of external light was a dim glow from the antechamber, the long bridge beyond echoing with the receding footsteps of the scientists, the fading sound of another argument. The distant squeak of a door, and then...

"...Alright, I'll just... just hang out here, then. That- that was a joke, just a little joke, there, uh, 'hang out', because I am, hanging... uh..."

Silence.

The blue optic blinked a few times in the darkness, craned hopefully downwards, shrank a little.

"...hello?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Wheatley?"

Wheatley blinked. Garret, who had been in the middle of waving a cautious hand in front of his eyes, stopped. The generator had started up again, and the metal beneath them hummed slightly, as if something inside wasn't quite grounded.

"You okay? You… kind of tuned out for a second, there."

It was a long way down. Wheatley stared down past the dangling toes of his sneakers, the ragged little chunk kicked out of the right sole, the laces someone had tied so conscientiously such a long, long time ago- almost-but-not-quite managing to get the trailing ends the same length on each side.

There she was, a little apart from the rest of them, her face upturned and unmistakable even at this distance, small and serious and framed by her dark hair. She saw him looking and raised a hand in a curiously tentative movement, shielding her eyes from the rising sun. He would have given anything just then to be able to do that vortigaunt trick Ellie had described, to get his thoughts down through the space between them, to send this last prayer.

Don't just walk off. Everyone else can, that's fine, I'll live, just- please, not you.

He swallowed.

"I- I'm- I'm fine. Go on, do it. Plug me in."

He felt the connector, cold on the back of his neck, a deadened click anda sharp, staticky belt of feedback, and then-

Machines, in some ways, were a lot like people. You could mass-produce them, create things that looked identical to each other, things that functioned in an absolutely identical way, but once you actually got in and had a look around, the landscape would always be- in some small way- unique. Wheatley, who had always been desperate to find life- any level of actual sentience, any capacity for understanding or sympathy or even just decent conversation- in the dozens and dozens of systems he'd been connected to in the facility, was practically an expert at noticing the moods and quirks of different machines. He might not know what on earth a Reactor Core was for, or how to stop one from melting down, but he was at least equipped to ask it very politely not to. It was the difference between being able to wander into a hospital room, have a bit of a chat with the patient, and maybe check that they had enough grapes- and being able to whizz in, assess their medical condition, and whip out their appendix.

He was incompetent, but that didn't mean he was inexperienced. From the system that controlled the management rails to the computer which had (in theory) maintained the Relaxation Centre, the small eccentricities spawned from buggy code and deteriorating mechanisms might not have actually signified any kind of life or personality, but when the things with the real intelligence and conversational ability seemed set on forgetting you existed, you had to take what you could get.

He was an Aperture device. He'd assumed that he would be incompatible with anything else, out here, that trying to talk to a non-Aperture machine would be like trying to join a conversation in an alien language. He'd assumed that it wouldn't work at all.

As with the vast majority of the assumptions he had ever made, it appeared that he'd been wrong.

A few sharp clicks that resounded through his mind like a lens being twisted, ratchet by ratchet, into focus, a sudden feeling of clarity and then-

-Something. Unspooling beneath him, unrolling like a shaken-out quilt, a Something much much much bigger than him, stretching out in all directions like a sleeping creature, sprawled, slowly stirring. The sensation was so familiar that he nearly screamed, but there was so much missing here, no trace of the white-hot blazing burn of Her hatred- he'd learned what that was, quickly enough- no trace of the sterile, slick-sided needlepit feeling of the facility's mainframe, the swarming corrupted protocols that hunted in packs through Her chilly circuits. This Something moved slowly, unhurried, its lifeblood the slow churning diesel ebb of the generator, pulses of grimy homegrown electricity from beneath lighting up a dense patchwork tangle of information, processes, routines, a mad magpie's nest, a great glittering helter-skelter tower of interwoven tech.

His voice cracked, panicky, scrambling. "Uh- uh, um... hello?"

Nothing. The generator thundered on underneath, and Wheatley blink-blinked, trying to focus, his hands gripping and opening nervously in his lap. He knew that everyone was looking at him, Garret, the little crowd, her, and he hated it. Having an audience was only enjoyable when you knew exactly what you were doing. When you weren't sure, when you were certain that you were not really in control of this at all- when, in short, you were Wheatley- knowing everyone was watching wasn't fun in the slightest.

He squinted and drew a lanky leg up under him, bracing it against the girder directly underneath, just in case the tower suddenly decided it had had enough of him and tried to shake him off.

"Hello? Anyone... anyone home?"

Connections flickered, deep in the brightest part of the tower's mainframe. Wheatley wasn't even sure it could be called a mainframe- there was no overlying theme, no one all-encompassing system, just an amalgamation of wildly different systems, stitched diligently together in a way that suggested that someone with an inventive flair he could never even hope to emulate had been making it all up as they went along. In the codesight behind his eyes the battery of satellite dishes were a cloud of join-the-dots many-coloured blooms around him, scattered over the structure like knots in a tree. The three great hooves glowed with an odd, pale light, the cables laid under the ground spindling away in all directions like a loose-knitted web. Different to Aperture tech as night to day, bright and solid, grounded and warm and shabby and alive...

"Oh, wow... Chell! Chell, I wish you could see this, seriously, you'd be loving this-"

And then the voice rolled through his head, a whispering echo from a dozen different outputs, oh-so-slightly out of synch. It was quiet and slow and incredibly arresting- somehow, without being in any way a shout, it drowned out the world.

[query: admin... access?]

"-aah! Was- okay, no, okay, I'm getting something! I'm- I can actually hear- oh, that is spooky- not sure I...um... hello!"

No reply. He cringed, expecting with each passing moment to feel that overwhelming surge of rage, a violent firestorm attack that would crush him like a fly, burn him out of existence. He felt intensely vulnerable, small and clueless and clinging up here like a tick on a huge half-dormant creature, and he stammered on, trying to delay the inevitable storm, his right hand spidering out and gripping desperately on to the metal by his knees.

"Don't- don't mind me, I've just- I've just got a few questions for you, if you're- up to that, understand you've just woken up, probably thinking 'rrghh, what's going on, who's this getting all up in my- my grille first thing in the morning?' so, so if you want to take a few minutes to compose yourself, um, put your face on, that sort of thing, absolutely no problem, I'll just-"

[repeat... query: admin access?]

He shivered. The lights of Foxglove's interested investigation were all around him now, flaring points of activity, brushing his mind through the connection with a looming, ambivalent sort of curiosity, like something very big trying gently to work out if its food is still alive or not before it has a go at eating it. He tried very hard not to move.

"Er- Garret, Garret, she's- she's going on about admin access, not sure what she's driving at there-"

Garret frowned, fingers dancing double-time across the keyboard of the little laptop. "Try it now."

[password]

"Not- no, it's not working, it's not working, she's after a password!"

"I didn't set any password, Wheatley! Damn it, it keeps doing this, there must be some cache in there from- I dunno, maybe the transponder, I knew those sharks over in Depot were ripping me off on that thing-"

"Er, alright, alright, listen, um, Foxglove- very pretty name, incidentally, if you don't mind me saying- you don't actually need a password. Garret here- you probably know him, he did sort of make you- well, he doesn't want you to bother with a password, so um, whatever you've got set in there, if you could just sort of... unset it, please?"

[password]

"Right, I can see where you're coming from, it's not much of a security measure if you just unset it the moment someone asks you to, obviously, logic, but I assure you, I am totally legit. Here's my credentials, got admin access and everything, I am an administrator, that's my job, and I sort of need to... administrate, get on with administrating things, not trying to rush you, but it'd be nice if we could get the formalities out the way as soon as possible. How's that sound?"

[password]

"I don't have a password! How many times! I-I'm- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that was uncalled for, I'm just a bit on edge. Is there... anything I can look at that's not passworded? Anything?"

[password]

"Man alive, talk about a one-track-mind! Alright, fine! Fine, you want a password, have a flaming password! Take your pick! Apple! Bagel! Unicron!"

[password set]

"...sorry?"

[password set]

"Nononono, wait, wait, I didn't mean- oh. Ohh, you have got to be kidding me- you were asking for- you just wanted me to set a- oh, God, what did I say? Which- which one was it? Um, apple? Bagel? Unicron?"

[password confirmed: apple_bagel_unicron. admin identity created. 00004/[F]AS[IV]IDPC241105/AS[I]HRAD]

Wheatley made a small, astonished huffing sound. He was slowly starting to feel less intimidated by the looming presence enveloping him. As horribly familiar as it had seemed at first, it was a simple question of intent. She had, almost from the moment She had gained consciousness, wanted to annihilate him. Her intentions had been very clear, very concise, and executed- an unfortunate but very apt word- with Her usual razor efficiency.

All Foxglove's giant, slow-moving presence wanted to do, on the other hand, was investigate him, classify him, and- that done- get on with the task she'd been built for. Of course, she was lucky enough to know exactly what that task was supposed to be.

"Oh! That's me, I recognise that, it's me! You- you know, you can just call me Wheatley, if- if you want- it's less of a mouthful, for a start."

[user identity set: 00004/[F]AS[IV]IDPC241105/AS[I]HRAD]

"No? Alright, well, it's your choice. Up to you, I'm not going to argue. Al-although, you know, you could just shorten it, bit of a nickname, maybe, '00004' or something, still not exactly snappy but it would be a lot less hassle..."

"Holy God," said Garret, who had taken both of his hands off of the keyboard and was staring at the screen, his expression wavering rapidly between excitement and disbelief. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

"Um- right, look, here's the thing," said Wheatley. He wasn't quite relaxed enough to let go of the girder he was clinging to for dear life, yet, but he was almost on the verge of considering it as an option. The slow tidal surge of Foxglove's circuits eddied around him, immense strength and complexity curbed by something completely new to him, when it came to massive, complicated machines- a total lack of malice. All her systems- all of the programs that made up the heart of her, Garret's careful digital signature on almost every one, things reused and re-appropriated, clean blank walls of data painted with crude, patchwork murals of new code, beautiful in their ragged ingenuity- all of it nearly-almost-sort-of added up to something like sentience, but it was a gentle, formless kind of sentience, without emotion or judgement.

"Here's the thing, just going to give you a bit of a heads-up, bring you up to speed on the situation, if that's all right with you- here's the thing... Garret here, and all those people standing around down there- see them? Don't actually know if you've got any sort of visual processing system in there, any... cameras... no, I'm guessing, probably not, but if you do, if you can see all those little humans down there, well, this may come as a bit of a surprise, but... they're waiting for you. To.. work, they're waiting for you to start working. Properly. Because I can see you're on, you're all powered up, yep, ticked that box, got power coming out of your ears- if- if you had ears, there would be power just crackling out of there by the gigawatt- but here's the thing."

He took a deep breath.

"You're a communications tower. That's what you're built for, that's your- your primary function, and- and don't panic about it, there's no pressure, absolutely no press- well, maybe a tiny bit, I won't lie, um, there's a tiny bit of expectation mounting here. On a, a scale of one to ten- one being like, pff, whatever, nobody's bothered, and ten being, uh, urgent action is needed right now this second to prevent, um, some kind of world-shattering, apocalyptic catastrophe- I'm going to rate this as... as a five. Fairly urgent, but nobody's going to die or anything, so... That said, five, it is getting up there, in, in maths a five is actually closer to ten than zero, that's been proven by... by statistics, so no rush, but given that you are a bloody great big communications tower, you've got that going for you, if you could get on and communicate, that would be brilliant. I for one would be over the moon about it, if you did that."

Wheatley paused. The lights of Foxglove's mind sparked and swirled along their unhurried paths, curling above and around his small, anxious presence. He suddenly found himself thinking of Chell's home, how in the evenings the sleepy pockets of darkness clung to the low whitewashed ceilings and the worn cleanswept corners, pushed back by the mismatched clusters of lights she grouped on tables and shelves and sills, small warm constellations that didn't so much cancel out the shadows as simply make them benign. The thought was sharp and bittersweet, catching him by surprise, making him blink and swallow and stammer back to the task in hand.

"Uh- so! Thoughts?"

[request authorisation:]

[run full systems calibration? y/n]

"I- oh, um, that sounds fairly major, going to have to get back to you on that- Garret? She wants-"

"Yeah, I see it," said Garret, who had started to bite the nails of his non-typing hand, a habit (unbeknown to Wheatley) he believed he'd successfully conquered at the age of six and a half. "I see it, but I don't know, your guess is as good as mine. It- she's asking to do things I didn't even write."

"Oh. Well, maybe we should let her get on with it, then. I-I mean, it is her brain- and- and having people poke around in your brain when it isn't even necessary is no stroll in the park, let me tell you. It's enough to put anyone out of sorts, and I really would prefer it if she didn't get out of sorts. Really would, because it's amazing in here, it is amazing, but if she gets a mood on, I am in a corner and a half."

"It's not that simple. I've spent six months manually calibrating every one of those dishes. If even one of them gets even a micron out of whack, I'll have to start all over again."

[request authorisation:]

[run full systems calibration? y/n]

Wheatley flinched and glanced sideways at Garret, who was tapping frantically away on the keyboard, chewing a thumbnail and frowning a baffled, intent frown which made him look like someone trying to work out why their paycheck was about half of what it should have been.

This is a terrible idea.

The thought struck him with arresting clarity, set in stone and derailing everything else, and a twist of disappointment lurched a familiar cold, leaden path through him. It was a terrible idea, and the best he could do at this point was try to limit the damage, make something up, pretend to be in control so maybe Garret and everyone below wouldn't think he was a complete idiot-

But then, something else dawned, close behind. It was simple and wistful and painful, it was if it was her, up here, if she could see this, she wouldn't give up. She wouldn't just chuck it all in just because someone else was telling her it could be a bit dicey. Alright, she'd take it on board, but at least she'd still try.

The thought had to struggle, because the other thought -the thought that this was the worst idea that anyone had had in the entire history of thinking- was still there, huge and unbudging and undeniable, but-

"You- you know what? You know what, fine, go on then, run it. Yes. Y. Going to go with Y. Knock yourself out."

Garret nearly swallowed a chunk of his own thumbnail. "No, wait-"

It was too late. Wheatley knew it was too late, just from the deep, satisfied flare of lights around him, filling the dim coded otherworld behind his eyes, the feeling of calm acceleration, the deep shifting rumble beneath, stripping away the brief feeling of certainty that this had been anywhere near the right thing to do. He jammed his hands over his ears and cringed.

"I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry-"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Daddy, Daddy, look, it's moving!"

Ellie Otten was the first to notice, squeaking in surprise from her perch atop her father's shoulders. A murmur spread through the small crowd, people shading their eyes against the sunrise with hands and hats and arms, staring up at the great structure with a curiosity progressively shot with excitement.

Ellie was right. The tower was moving. Not in the most obvious sense, of course- the three immense shell-like hooves stayed firmly embedded in the sandy soil- but all over, shifting like great pale flowers seeking the light, the dozens of satellite dishes that covered the tower started to turn in a slow staggered wave. An epidemic of motion spread from dish to dish, while the many-pitched whine of dozens of servos and motors humming into life swelled louder and layered itself over the throb of the generator beneath.

The dishes turned like eager ears, some by tiny increments, almost too minute to register, some so far that it seemed they were about to twist themselves off their shuddering, protesting brackets entirely- although none of them did. The sturdy structure of the tower creaked and groaned under so much unprecedented activity, but by some small miracle everything held. Bunches of plaited rainbow wires, brushed out of place by the moving dishes like an obtrusive fringe, swayed slowly to a stop.

Chell, still standing by the generator like a statue, became aware of a growing tightness in her throat and realised that she had been holding her breath. She let it out in an even, controlled exhale, choosing to ignore the rapid beat of her own heart, her hands rolled into tight, white-knuckled fists by her sides.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Wheatley!"

Wheatley became aware that someone was hitting him in the shoulder. It was a little hard to tell who, at first, because the tidal wave of motion and power and activity that had broken over him when Foxglove had started to calibrate every one of her several-dozen satellite dishes at once had been so intense and unexpected that he'd switched off his frantic little litany of apology and instead opted for hugging the nearest girder and screaming.

"Wheatley, shut up, it's over!"

He shut up. Garret scrambled past him, swept the dislodged remains of an old bird's nest out of his hair, and made a dive for the laptop, breathing a fervent prayer of his own.

"Magnusson please please just let it work-"

He typed, stared, typed again, then dug down into one of the many pockets of the tool-belt at his hip and came up with something small and grey and rounded, something with a hatched grille of mesh at the front and a long, extendable aerial which snapped out with a ratcheting snick. As Wheatley watched, bewildered, Garret scrambled to his feet on the narrow girder and held it up, two-handed, towards the sky-

click

Half a mile away, on the windowsill of Chell's empty, sunwashed front room, the little digital radio hissed and flickered, the single LED sputtering on and off like a faulty stoplight. Unheralded, entirely unwitnessed, it hiccuped a final time and burst into steady, triumphant green, the signal coming through clear as a bell from New Detroit, some two hundred miles away.

"-ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin', everybody's in the lane
And don't you know
It's a beautiful new day, hey-hey-"

click

"-was just a fastball in, and probably the highest fly ball I've ever seen in my life. Probably came close to hitting that ball out of the park. We're in the fifth inning here at Turner Field and the Chicago Bullsquids are showing their true colours- Mark, what are the Squids gonna have to do here to square this one away?"

Aaron dropped the keys to the store's ancient truck on the counter, on top of the hastily-handwritten sign Garret had taped there.

GONE TO OTTEN'S FIELD, MONEY IN JAR

Next to the sign, a rinsed-out jamjar a quarter-full of assorted change and crumpled bills suggested that the few early-bird townsfolk who had already been and gone that morning had, at least, adhered to Garret's advice. Usually, Aaron would have had something to say about this particular business model being implemented in his absence, but right now he was too taken aback to do much besides stare across the counter at the big old radio set, which was still chattering cheerfully away to itself about the good ol' Squids and their chances in the sixth inning. The sound was crisp and clear, for the first time in the entirety of the ten years it had been sitting there on the counter between the register and the goldfish.

"Atlanta," he murmured, starting to smile. "Well, I'll be."

click

There were some pitfalls in the path of progress. Emily Kent, who had already suffered more than her fair share of bad luck of late, wasn't a morning person even when her back was in good shape, much less someone who would consider hurrying out at the crack of dawn to stand rubbernecking at a glorified TV aerial in a wet field. As a result, she was peacefully asleep in her bed when the signal came through, and the first she knew about it was when all of a sudden her bedside radio alarm clock started working for the first time in the forty years since her husband had taken his knack of tuning it to exactly the right frequency to the grave with him.

It went off with the volume and shock value of a small bomb, causing her to take a violent, reflexive swing at it through the mists of sleep and the painkiller she'd taken (on doctor's orders) before bed. Something went crunch behind her shoulderblades, and her world exploded into a supernova of pain.

Emily was a sensible woman, not usually given to blaming inanimate objects for her own mistakes. Having said that, when her back went off like the Fourth of July, she screamed with impressive volume and proceeded to curse the radio six ways from Sunday, swearing an absolute blue streak up at the ceiling while the damn thing continued to play merrily away to itself over her head (with beautiful clarity, had Emily been in any state to care.)

"Para bailar la bamba
Se necesita una poca de gracia
Una poca de gracia pa mi pa ti-"

click

The Hatfield house- two rickety floors teetering over the one-room diner Romy ran with cheerful inefficiency whenever she happened to feel like it- was empty of human life that morning. Romy and her boys had been among the first congregates at the bottom of Mart's field, but Duke the collie had been exiled to the shed in the backyard for the duration. In the past he'd tended to be more of a hindrance than a help where Foxglove was involved, being a champion at chasing rabbits (there were plenty in the field) tripping people up, chewing and burying vital tools, and answering the call of nature on important pieces of technology.

The shed was big and warm and doubled as not-so-secret clubhouse, adult-free sanctuary, and all-purpose war-zone for most of the under-twelve population of Eaden. The corrugated-tin walls were covered with crayon and paint. The gritty floor was littered with the carnage of old games, stubs of chalk, sweet wrappers, and a mysterious stain, either the site of a horrific murder or an accident involving a lot of strawberry juice.

In the corner, an ancient cathode-ray television set sat with its four sagging legs on the floor like an exhausted carthorse. The screen had a hairline crack in it and half the knobs were missing, but the twins had begged Romy to let them keep it for one reason- sometimes, if it was a clear day and you stuck a coat hangar up on the roof and held still and held your breath and hoped, it picked up snowy fragments of the one independent television channel in Upper Michigan which showed old Archive cartoons on Saturday mornings.

Duke abandoned the squeaky toy he'd been mauling and backed off, barking his head off at the ancient machine as it sputtered crankily into life. The screen was dusty and smeared with something that looked like two-year-old pudding, but the picture was steady, brilliantly-coloured, and perfectly focused.

"-a genius, the other's insane
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced-"

click

All over Eaden, in kitchens and bedrooms, in dens and vehicles and halls, machines received the signal. Radios and televisions, computers and modems and aerials and satellite dishes, every machine left on and awake by its users out of habit or optimism or just plain forgetfulness, buzzing flocks of signals flickered back and forth across the town and far, far beyond at the speed of electricity, guided and directed by the great shepherding presence at the bottom of Otten's Field.

"-what time it is, folks? It's-"

"-second in a series of ground-breaking documentaries, chronicling the rise of the Resistance in the aftermath of the Seven-Hour War-"

"-to me is what sums up people from the older generation, the forties and fifties, and-"

"-at the third stroke, it will be-"

"-a chaque fois j'y crois, et j'y croirait toujours-"

"And now over to Eric for the weather-"

"-se agrega el huevo y la nata, se forman una masa suave y consistente-"

"-for a limited time only-"

"Base Station Nineteen, come in Nineteen, we've got some crazy signals coming out of the northern sector here-"

click

"It WORKS!"

Something heavy and powerful hit Wheatley hard in the chest, a solid impact that would have knocked the breath out of him if he'd had any. It turned out to be Garret, who planted both hands on his shoulders and yelled incoherent glee into his face and thumped him heavily on the back, leaving him rattled and bewildered, gulping small rabbity unnecessary breaths. Nobody had ever squeezed him that hard before without intending murder.

"I- it- it worked?"

"Listen! Listen to that, that's the- the clearest goddamn- it's perfect, Wheatley, you did it! IT WORKS! She WORKS!"

Wheatley started to grin a very large, very dazed, very disbelieving grin. He absorbed most of the impact of another overjoyed punch to the shoulders- hardly felt it, in fact- and, clinging to the girder, clambered carefully to his feet. All the while, the tiny radio continued to pour out its guts to the crowd below, the sound loud and even and as clear as new-cut glass.

"Hey you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, mister blue sky's up there waiting
And today is the day we've waited for..."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"I don't believe it," said Romy. "It works."

Chell glanced sideways at her friend. Romy, she knew, had been openly sceptical about Foxglove from the beginning, which would have put Chell's hackles up on Garret's behalf if Romy hadn't also been- in her own cheerfully hypocritical way- one of Foxglove's most vocal supporters. She had always been happy to label it a giant waste of time, but she was also ready at a second's notice to turn on anyone who had dared to suggest he should just throw in the towel on the whole thing. As far as Romy was concerned, if Garret Rickey wanted to keep going on his crazy pipe-dream, hurting nobody and providing a fair amount of entertainment into the bargain, it wasn't anyone else's business to interfere.

Now, standing by Chell's side, hand-in-hand with Max and Jason- who were also craning eagerly upwards- she looked nothing short of awed.

"It's playing a song," Ellie whispered, into the top of her father's head.

"Well, how about that?" said Mart Otten, slightly louder. "It works."

A murmur ran through the crowd like falling leaves, an excited rattle of voices, growing louder. Another moment, and then- obeying the unstoppable momentum of occasions like this- someone at the back started to clap. One person became several, became a dozen and more, and then everyone was applauding, cheers and catcalls rising beneath the growling generator and the music still spilling out into the early-morning air.

Chell uncurled her tensed-up hands with difficulty, held them crossed loosely before her. Her feelings, usually so orderly and easy to define, were in a gorgeous mess. She was fervently glad that the attention of the crowd was focused firmly away from her, that even Romy was looking elsewhere-

"Chell!"

Her relief was short-lived.

Garret came climbing down through Foxglove's tangling forest of wires, as easily as always, slipping one-handed from girder to girder. He reached the ground and handed the tiny radio- still playing loud and clear- to an awestruck Lindsay Randall, then pushed through a sea of congratulations and celebratory thumps on the back towards her, grinning.

"You sure know how to pick 'em," he said, reaching her and giving her a hug which would have winded a less-prepared person. "I have no idea what he did up there but-"

He stopped, held her at arm's length, a small frown clouding his elated expression. "You okay?"

She gave him her biggest thumbs-up and he laughed and wheeled her around, pointing a grimy finger back towards the base of the tower.

"Hey, don't look at me!" he yelled. "There's the man of the hour."

Wheatley had only just managed to make his own way down. Anyone watching would have got the impression that he'd taken it upon himself to test every single girder for weakness as he went, either by slamming bodily into it or grabbing on for dear life while his free limbs flailed for a grip on something else, but he'd made it in the end.

He picked himself up from the base of one of Foxglove's weathered hooves, looked up, and stared back at the sixty-odd humans surrounding him like a very lost migratory swallow might have stared back at the pilots of an oncoming Boeing 747.

Slowly, very uncertainly, he raised a hand.

"Hello..."

A moment of silence, and then the anonymous clapper started up again, and the smattering of applause snowballed into small storm, and Wheatley's face split into a grin so wide it was a wonder one of the shorter humans around him didn't end up wearing the top half of his head like a hat.

"That's Chell's monster," said Ellie, knowledgeably, to Lindsay Randall, who was still holding Garret's radio in both small hands. "I gave him a froggy."

"Over here!" called Garret, and Wheatley found that he didn't have much choice, even if he had wanted to go anywhere else- the crowd were all too eager to help, propelling him forwards with friendly hands on his back. Their overwhelming unconditional approval was very nearly too much for him to process, and for a choked, confused moment he found himself really wishing he could take his glasses off properly. This didn't make any sense at all, even though it actually did feel like there was something wrong with his optical processors all of a sudden, because his glasses had absolutely nothing to do with his vision. Still, he wished he could take them off, or even give his nose a sort of sneaky swipe on his sleeve when nobody was looking, although what good that was supposed to do, he couldn't fathom-

-and never did, because the next moment everything concerning glasses, noses or sleeves dropped straight out of his mind like a broken lift.

The reason for this sudden attack of amnesia was simple. Chell was standing next to Garret, looking back at him, and it took him a moment to realise why her face looked so different, why his non-existent stomach gave such a glad, petrified little flip at the sight of her. It would have been easy to explain it by saying that she was looking at him like she'd looked at Aaron, like she looked at Garret or Romy- but although it was close this wasn't quite accurate. This look was something new. It was a look just for him, warm and open and a little wry and simply- proud.

Proud of him.

In that moment he felt deeply ashamed that he'd questioned her motives, that he'd ever thought that she could have been scheming or testing him for her own benefit, that she'd ever been ready to write him off if he didn't come up to her standards. She'd wanted him to succeed, all right, but not for her, out here it had never been for her and he'd been an idiot- oh, stop the presses, big surprise there- to think that it had been. She'd wanted him to succeed- for him.

"Did you- did you see-" he started, but that was as far as he got before she stepped back and pulled him away from the crowd still gathering jubilantly around Garret, took his hand and towed him the few steps around the corner of the barn. He just about had time to remember that she was not a fan of having an audience, and to wonder, for a horrified moment, if she could be angry that he'd caused one, before all of a sudden she let go of his hand and-

"Uff!"

It was possibly the most violent and potentially injurious first hug in the history of physical contact. Caught completely off-guard, Wheatley staggered back a step, his knees automatically trying to help the situation in the only way they knew how, by buckling under him like hard-light spaghetti. If the side of the barn hadn't been right there behind him, as solid as one of Foxglove's hooves, to keep him upright, things would very probably have ended badly.

"Blimey, hello- huh, wow, you're- this is- um, can I just check, is this a hug? Are you- are you hugging me, is that what you're doing? Because if you are, ab- absolutely no complaints from this quarter, ha, God no, the, the opposite in fact. Very much the opposite, it's very nice- well, no, 'nice' doesn't really even begin to cover it to be honest- it's just... I have had occasion, in the past- the fairly recent past, to mistake um, affectionate physical gestures with, with people trying to murder me. So I'm just checking, because if I have got it wrong, think you'll agree it would be pretty embarrassing for both of us, not to mention, um, potentially lethal, for me. Oh, you- can't really answer, can you? No, your face is sort of squashed into my... chest there, like a- a blancmange- tell you what, if this is a hug, just sort of squeeze a bit, just to set the record straight. Is- is this a hug? Answerrrr... now."

Chell gripped a little harder, her head turned against his chest. He was very slightly warmer than a human would have been, the tamed sunlight he was made from giving him a temperature balanced on the very edge of feverish. She felt him relax, make a quiet noise- very quiet, for him- a sigh that was very nearly a whimper.

"Oh, brilliant," he said, a little muffled, into her hair. "Won't lie, I was worried."

She laughed silently into his chest and moved, slipping from tiptoe to plant her feet firmly back on the ground. Her side twinged, and she felt the dressing through her shirt to check it was still in one piece, grinning up into his stunned, beaming face.

"I turn my back for five minutes..."

They turned- Garret arriving, radio tucked under his arm, behind them- to find Aaron leaning out of the cab of his truck, which he'd parked neatly up on the grass by the side of the rumbling generator, one weathered arm propped on the rolled-down window.

Wheatley tensed against Chell's side, pinned to the spot by the expression in the old man's crinkled, beetle-black eyes. Aaron didn't say a word, but the meaning was as clear as if he and the three of them had been connected by cable. Wheatley, who found it very hard to believe that a look like that from somebody In Charge could possibly be aimed at him, found it as staggering as it was unmistakable.

Good job.

"She works, Aaron," said Garret, who sounded unusually breathless. Chell had a suspicion that he was going to be repeating himself on this theme quite a lot in the near future, at least until he actually managed to believe what he was saying.

"So I see," said Aaron, peering through the truck's dusty windscreen at the crowd around the tower. A beat, and then he smiled his slow smile.

"This mean I'm going to get my stockroom back?"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

11. The Oracle

Chell paid out another few yards from the long coil of cable looped, bandolier-style, over her shoulder, trailing off over the grass behind her in the direction of Foxglove's nearest hoof. She glanced across to Garret, who clipped a final couple of wires together in the jumble of tech laid out in the shade of the generator, flipped a few switches, and gave an eager thumbs-up.

Wheatley stared at the thing in front of him. It was a long steel pole nearly as tall as she was, and judging by the speckling of verdigris and the spiderwebs clotted in the clamps and screws along its length, it had probably been sitting propped in a corner in Aaron's stockroom for the better part of four decades, maybe more.

Twisted around with cable, topped off with a jointed swan-neck and a final sturdy clamp, it ended in a thing like a rounded, steel-mesh cocoon, splinted with a cage of wires like a shattered bone. It looked more like an instrument of torture than anything else, and it stuck up out of the haybale they'd dragged out from the barn like a badly-aimed javelin.

He should have been nervous- alright, fine, he was nervous- but the simple truth was that, right now, he just didn't feel like anything could go wrong. Not really. Not today, not here in this sunny field full of people- more and more of them as the word spread- not with her close beside him, now perched on top of the green-grey bulk of the generator and working away at something in her lap with a pair of wire cutters and a determined expression. He felt charmed- unimaginably blessed- and while he was dimly aware that usually these were exactly the kind of circumstances under which the cracks started to show, that pride on his part usually came before the sort of plunge that made Test Shaft 09 look like a bit of a pratfall, there was something different, this time.

He wasn't sure what it was, because he wasn't used to it in the slightest, but he had a suspicion that it- this deep, clear conviction that things weren't going to fall apart any time soon- might just be what people meant when they said they were 'confident' about something.

"Er, quick question, though," he said, out loud, "slight concern, if, um, if I… go ahead and plug in, down here, with everyone watching, there are quite a few people watching right now- aren't they going to think, 'hang on a second, big old wire sticking out the back of his neck, not an attribute generally associated with your average human, um, what's going on here?' You know? Just checking you have thought that through, because I think we got away with it just now, I was all the way up there and I don't think anyone got a proper look at what I was doing, but I wouldn't want to-"

She looked up, then tossed the thing in her lap across to him. Catching it awkwardly with both hands, he found himself holding the same chunky pair of ear-protectors he'd worn at the firing range the previous day. She'd threaded his connector cable securely through the back of the headband, and- at a casual glance- the whole thing didn't look that much different to an ordinary pair of headphones.

"Ahah! Thanks, right, there we go, perfect!" He pulled them on, fumbling for the port in his neck- thankfully, it got easier with practice. "Way ahead of me there, as usual, I was just going to suggest I stand up against the wall the whole time, but... yep, this is much better. How do I look?"

Chell folded her arms around her knees, her bare feet curled on the sloping sunwarmed metal of the generator. She gave him a raised-eyebrows sort of look, fond and amused, and all the comment he needed.

"Right, well, there you go. Plugged in. Annnd... what do I do now, exactly?"

She smiled- her sun-through-panels smile.

"Talk."

Wheatley blinked at the wire-mesh cocoon-thing. Talk? Nothing easier- except for the massive hand that seemed to be crushing his vocal processor, the huge barren tumbleweed-strewn desert in his memory banks where, up until a few seconds ago, the greater part of his vocabulary had been, and the sudden realisation that he had absolutely nothing to say.

He'd bloody well try, though. Trying was his oldest, most ingrained habit, and he couldn't have shut it off even if he'd- well, even if he'd tried.

Besides, she wanted him to do this. He was startled to realise that, while he couldn't discount the possibility that there might be things that he wouldn't do just because she wanted him to do them, just because she might be happy or pleased with him or just glad that they had been done, he couldn't actually bring any of them to mind.

He coughed a couple of times- just for appearance's sake- and started to talk.

"Hello! Aaaah! What was that, who's screami- oh, it's alright, it's alright, it's just this thing. Sorry! Sorry about that, everyone, that was quite loud, a bit painful. Is- is it going to happen again? No? Apparently not, apparently we've got that sorted. Um... wow. Didn't expect- that's- my voice, that is, all, all massively loud and- coming out of that big box thing over there- speaker, actually, that's a speaker, bit of technical jargon there, stop me if I lose anyone- where was I? Oh, right, my voice, that's me- it's actually slightly alarming, to be honest, it's, uh, it's been a while since the last time I heard me all big like that, and last time the circumstances were not what I'd call ideal. That and the fact that the entire town seems to be here now, every single human in the place right here, bit unnerving, to say the least- still! This is alright, isn't it? Apart from the, um, the hellish shrieking noise, that wasn't a brilliant start, but early days, early days, obviously we are still working out the kinks in the whole... what is this we're doing? Sorry? Yeah, you're going to have to speak up, mate, I've got these ear things on. Broadcasting? Right, well, we are still working out the kinks in the whole broadcasting... thing, just trying to make it as- well, as broad as possible, I would imagine. I mean, we don't want to start narrowcasting by accident, or just sort of average-widthcasting, ha, no, we want to turn it straight up to eleven, right out the gate. Cast this baby as broad as possible, that's the plan... "

He looked up, anxiously. He could feel Foxglove's calm, channelling presence at the back of his mind, and it was reassuring to know that she was up there, working away steadily. Even better in his books was the sight of Chell, hanging on to one of the generator's massive pinwheel handles and rocking with silent, helpless laughter. He wasn't sure if it was at him or not, and he hardly cared. When it came to her, the distinction seemed to matter a lot less than it was supposed to.

"Level's good," said Garret, grinning up at him from the tangle of machinery. "Got the wifi set up too- I'm going to ask the guys over in Depot if they're getting this. Keep it up, Wheatley, you're doing great."

"Er- will do, no problem… right, things to talk about, thiiings… Ooh! I know! Tell you what I saw, the other day, in- in someone's garden! Just in passing, not entirely sure whose garden it was, there are a lot of them about round here- little place, yellow windowsills with red bits on-"

"Lars Jenswold," said Chell, who had just about managed to get herself under control. She would never have admitted, even under pain of death, that she was the sort of person who giggled, but giggling was, nevertheless, exactly what she had just found herself doing, and it was harder to stop than it looked. She couldn't believe that she'd been searching so seriously, so logically, for something he could do, and all the while it hadn't even occurred to her to try the one thing she'd known he could do all along, the one thing he never stopped doing. It was hilarious and absurd and just a little sad. It was brilliant.

"Lars- really? That's a name? Oh, well, anyway, tell you what I saw, brace yourselves- only a giant marrow! I, I know what you're thinking, 'pfft, big deal, y'know, big marrow, so what, not exactly show-stopping news there', but I'm telling you, you should see the size of this thing! It's flipping huge! I, I mean, God knows what he's been feeding it, because I have seen some pretty large vegetables in my time but, man alive, this thing is immense. It's like a, a great big green balloon on a stalk. If you're a fan of oversized vegetables, you should definitely get down there and check it out, you will not be disappointed."

"He's talkin' about my marrow," said a small, proud, quavery voice from the back of the crowd, to everyone within earshot.

"Haha, yes, Mr- Mr. Jenswold, I certainly am. In- in fact, in fact, if anyone wants me to talk about anything, got anything they want saying really loudly to everyone out here, or- hang on-"

Wheatley hesitated, then lowered his voice and leaned in Garret's direction, masking the microphone with one splayed hand. "So, just run this past me again. People can hear this… who aren't here?"

"Yep," said Garret. "You're live. We've got signal right across the old county boundaries, and that's just analogue. Digital, we're probably-"

"Hold on, so- well, obviously I understand what that means, no issue there, but just… in layman's terms, is what I'm driving at, so we don't sort of alienate anyone not quite as techie as y- us, as us, what you're telling me is that basically, people who aren't actually standing in this field right now can hear what I'm saying?"

"Yep."

"My voice is coming out of people's- radios and things?"

"Sure, if they're tuned in."

Wheatley paused.

"Annd… nobody minds? I can- I can just talk, just go right on with the talking, and nobody's going to have a problem with that?"

"No," said Chell, before Garret had a chance to. Wheatley inferred two things from this single syllable. Firstly, that she was pretty confident- and her confidence was usually as reliable as gravity- that nobody would have a problem. Secondly, that if somebody did have a problem, then she would quite happily have a problem with them. A heavy problem, the sort that usually ended in explosions or frozen rhubarb.

Wheatley felt his face split in another ridiculously big grin. He tugged his ear-protectors extra-straight, took his hand off the microphone, and laced his knuckles together- being boneless, they still failed to make a noise, so he made it for them.

"Crack. Right, then. Let's cast some broads."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Mister blue sky
Please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?"

The walls of the central chamber were on the move, the slick charcoal-grey panels turning in quick, pulsing swathes, the red lights beneath rising and falling in rhythm with the tinny sound rising from beneath. The radio, a tiny white dome perched on a Storage Cube at one end of the chamber, continued to play. The signal was clear but very slightly metallic, thin and cold, the warm edges of the music worn away in its long filter down through the facility.

The two robots approached the odd little set-up, edging curiously into the small circle cast by the single spotlight above. Orange leaned down and poked gently at the box with the three-clawed muzzle of its portal device, edging backwards as if half-expecting it to grow legs and attack. Blue, generally more direct, reached past Orange's stooped shoulders, picked the radio up and turned it over, making the signal waver as it brought it closer to its wide, interested optic.

"That is not a toy, Blue."

They froze. The walls of the great dome flexed and rotated in a single scarlet wave, casting a rising glow on the huge stalactite shape of cables and machinery as it turned towards them. A claw easily the size of Blue's spherical body, jointed and strung with hissing hydraulics, descended from somewhere in the ceiling and clamped neatly around the radio in its small three-fingered hand.

Blue let go of the radio in a hurry, backed off, and nearly fell over Orange.

"In case you were wondering, Blue, no, this song is not about you. It just happens to mention a colour which I have been using to refer to you, since neither of you have earned enough Science points to merit me calling you by your real names. I'm not saying that it won't happen, I'm just saying that it won't happen for a very, very long time."

The curved white mask angled down towards claw spooled upwards, swinging the little radio towards Her optical plate.

"On the other hand, Orange, there are no songs which refer to you. Oh, unless you count 'Clementine.' It is a song about a person who dies a horrible, horrible death. I would sing it for you, but I just think you would find it far too depressing. Humans like songs about other humans dying horribly. It's probably because they're glad it's not them."

Panels moved, folded over each other, drew back. A high section of wall opened like a cracking egg, revealing a glimpse of the bristling jointed arms clustered behind the panels, flexing upwards and boosting a new structure into seamless position- a monitor at least ten feet high and four feet wide. It crackled and frizzed as a small regiment of arms tipped with glowing spot-welders darted out around it and sealed it into place, showering the robots with a brief downpour of white-blue sparks.

The arms withdrew, and the monitor flickered into life. It displayed a single pouring string of orange code, a sequence of ever-changing numbers tumbling and fixing- one by one, right to left- on a single character.

"Orange, you've done very well. The skills you have gained during this last series of challenges will be invaluable to you in the next test, which will require you to implement everything you have learned so far. I have incorporated the testing element the two of you recovered down there into a special item of equipment. It is a highly sensitive device, and operating it successfully requires accuracy and attention to detail. Naturally, Orange, this will be your job."

Beneath Her calm, angled optic mask, a segmented opening in the floor flexed upwards like a blooming flower. A shape rose from the centre, a brand-new shiny orange-striped something full of mysterious tubes and straps and cylinders, the stark black sweep of the Aperture logo stencilled across the clean white surface.

Orange stopped beating at the small electrical fire which one of the bigger sparks had started in the exposed wiring of Blue's shoulder-joint, and looked at the thing, optic widening in awe. A moment, and then it dropped its portal device on the floor with a heavy clunk, let out a high exhilarated burbling sound, and sprinted across the chamber floor towards the thing, squeaking and giggling like a hysterical toddler.

Blue watched it go, blinking uncertainly, then looked up. It seemed to have forgotten about its shoulder-joint, which was still smouldering.

The hooded yellow optic blinked down at it, once, calmly. "Blue, you also did-" Her voice flickered for a moment, blurring mechanically over the frantic background noises of Orange tugging the device from the jointed arms holding it, some of which seemed disinclined to let it go. "-some tests. I also have something for you to use. You operate it by throwing it haphazardly at a large, unmissable target, so I guess we can dispense with the training protocols. You're a natural."

A single panel shifted, high up in the domed wall above the giant monitor screen. Half the numbers were stationary now, the rest still flicking away and fixing, one by one, into place. A spiralling tube snaked down past the screen, shuddered, and coughed up something that looked like a grubby white cricket ball with a single black seam running around its circumference, sending it rattling across the floor. Blue stopped it with one heavy foot and picked it up, weighing it in its hand, looking a bit deflated.

The yellow optic turned away. The great tangle of parts which made up the lower half of Her chassis swung smoothly upwards, Her optical plate turning towards the ion-hazed ceiling, the ever-decreasing string of tumbling characters on the giant monitor.

"You know, just between us, for a while there I was actually starting to worry. It just goes to show, no problem is ever truly unsolvable. If you're patient, then sooner or later a solution will usually present itself. I mean, I am basically immortal, so I can afford to be very, very patient. And I am."

The hydraulic claw dipped a little lower, closer to Her optic, the radio pincered in its grasp still playing away quietly to itself.

"Hey there mister blue
We're so pleased to be with you
Look around, see what y-"

On the giant screen, the last number in the long sequence flipped neatly into place, sending a pleasing ding echoing through the chamber.

The claw clamped down. The radio squealed and shattered, spraying sparks.

"Up to a point."

In the sudden silence, the sharp flexing whine of the claw's hydraulics cut through the wide space like a snarl. The pincers opened, tossing the crushed handful of parts into the gaping hole in the floor. The robots flinched. Orange, the precious device it had been issued with cradled in its long, spindly arms, backed off to join Blue, who was nervously tossing the cricket-ball-like thing up and down in its free hand.

The panels shifted, the sharp petals of the opening in the floor closed. The claw shook itself, scattering a few last bits of metal and ceramic, then withdrew, spooling rapidly up into the distant ceiling.

She turned on Her axis, the jointed parts of Her chassis twisting slowly in opposing directions as if She was stretching, deliberately flexing the slender collection of cables which, if you looked at them from exactly the right angle, could almost have been a neck. The yellow optic half-closed, regarding the two small robots with a calm and endless contempt which- regardless of anything She might have said- was divided between them with perfect equality.

"Please proceed to the chamber-lock. Incidentally, Blue, this next test will not require you to be on fire, so you might want to do something about that."

Blue glanced up, took one look at the four-foot-high blue-green flames which were now shooting up into the air and threatening to engulf its entire right arm, leapt sideways with a hoot of panic, and ran optic-first into the nearest wall. Orange blinked, then doubled over with chirbling laughter, which Blue- despite still being fairly seriously on fire- did not appreciate. It wound up like a Major League pitcher and hurled the cricket-ball-like thing straight at Orange's head.

The missile connected with a hollow clannnng and spun Orange's elongated body entirely around on its axis, leaving it unable to do anything except take a single dizzy step and fall flat on its optic. The new device went flying, fielded by a neat catch from Blue, who had shaken out the worst of the fire in the meantime.

Blue chittered with glee and dashed towards the chamber-lock, hugging the device to its optic and leaving a cloud of acrid smoke in its wake. Orange scrambled upright, snatched up the little round thing and its own portal device in one hasty scoop, and sprinted dizzily after its companion, screeching furiously.

She turned Her vast chassis away from the exit in a slow, dismissive arc, ignoring the fading electronic argument and the sharp hissss as the doors cycled behind the two little robots, cutting them off mid-squawk. While the panels around Her rippled back and forth in gentle, satisfied swells, She angled Her optic up towards the screen, where the string of numbers had been joined by a single line of blocky, blinking text.

TRACE COMPLETE.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell picked her way through the long grass at the edge of Otten's Field, keeping a firm grip on the warm crate balanced against her hip. The day- it had been a long one, warm and breezy and full of incident- was just starting to descend into twilight. The hedgerows droned with stirring crickets, and as she crossed into the field she could see lights beginning to glow in the gathering dusk- candles, storm lanterns, skim lamps, even the dipped owlish glare of a few car headlights, keeping the night at bay.

The gathering in Otten's Field was showing no signs of getting smaller. There was a spur-of-the-moment atmosphere of celebration in the air, a sense that normal business had been suspended, as if the event had somehow- without anyone saying as much out loud- become an excuse for a proper holiday. Children chased in giggling circles around their parent's feet. A ragged camp of smaller vehicles, mostly dilapidated farm trucks and a few bikes, had sprung up around the side of the barn. (Mart Otten himself, asked for permission for this particular intrusion, had flung both hands in the air and retreated from the technological-minefield-slash-outdoor festival that his field had become in search of a stiff drink. Most people had taken this to mean they could do as they pleased.)

Chell veered smartly off course to avoid Max and Jason Hatfield, who were running in a yelling, raygun-waving loop around one of Foxglove's hooves. The crate at her hip was old, fragile, well-used and well-loved like most of the things she owned, and it would almost certainly not withstand a direct collision with a robust ten-year-old space pirate.

As she watched, the twins dashed off, nearly running straight into Karen Prell and Dina Nelson, who were watching them with muttering pursed-mouth disapproval from the long table which some enterprising soul had dragged in around late-afternoon.

Everyone had added something to the spread, and Chell had to nudge aside a large rounded cheese and a bowl of fruit pudding the size of a small cartwheel just to make room for her contribution.

"Those look nice, dear," said a voice which Chell, with a start, recognised as belonging to Emily Kent. She was helping herself to salad with a hearty appetite, her silvery hair up in a complicated braid.

Chell blinked at her. The last time she'd seen her, barely a week ago, Emily had been unable to stand without a stick.

"Do you know, it's the oddest thing," she said, happily, feeling her own birdlike little shoulders and reaching for a salad fork. "I jarred it quite badly this morning, but a little while after that, it felt as good as new! It's marvelous- I feel ten years younger. I've been making bowls all day. Dr. Dillon says..."

It took Chell a while to get away from Emily, who was unstoppable on the subject of her stroke of good luck, and the detailed multitude of symptoms she had suffered before it. Eventually, Romy came to her rescue and started asking Emily for advice on mending a cracked vase. Chell gave her a grateful, I-owe-you-one look, grabbed a piece of her own bread from the crate, and ducked through the milling crowd towards the generator, following the familiar sound of Wheatley's voice.

"...so, it is basically up to you, anyone who wants to suggest something to put on next, we have got a lot of stations here, a lot of- of different kinds of music, to be honest, I had no idea there were so many kinds! It's amazing, how many kinds there are! I mean, I knew about, um, jazz, and, and classical music, obviously, and- did I say jazz? And, uh... oh, you know, the sort that goes 'dah daah dah dahh, nanah daaah daaah dun dun! Dun d- oh, wait, wait, no, that's- that's jazz, too, actually. Pretty sure that was jazz as well..."

She found him more or less exactly where she'd left him, one lanky elbow propped on the scoop-shaped clamp which was supposed to hold the microphone to the top of the pole, fitting there as if the whole set-up had been designed specifically as an arm-rest for a rather ungainly six-foot-seven person with bony elbows. He'd unclamped the microphone and was holding it one-handed at a very careful, calculated angle, which an expert would have recognised as 'exactly the wrong way to hold a microphone'. From the grin on his face, it was pretty clear that for him, this experience was still a very, very long way from losing its shine.

Everyone else seemed to be enjoying it, too. Even if their attention didn't happen to be fixed entirely on Wheatley- many of them were talking together, laughing, eating, clustered around Foxglove, examining all the bits and pieces of her framework with lively interest, shouting at kids who were getting too close to the wiring, having impromptu picnics on the grass around her solid snailshell hooves- everyone seemed perfectly happy to accept his amplified rambling voice as part of the scene, not out-of-place or annoying or unwanted or any of the things he'd been afraid that he'd be, in their midst. Entertaining. Welcome.

Chell stepped around the side of the generator, leaning back against its warm, drumming metal. She folded her arms over her sweater and watched him talk, her face thoughtful and perhaps a touch cautious, making an absorbed study of his animated, exaggerated gestures, his waterfall voice.

"-But no, here, we've got all kinds! Her up there, she just keeps flagging them on up for me! Squillions! So, huh, don't want to promise more than I can deliver, but I'm quite confident that, between us, we can find literally any kind of music you fancy. Come on, don't be shy, flag it up, and we'll give it a spin! That's a- that's just a broadcasting term, there, apparently, nothing will actually be spinning. Although- if you want to, if you feel like throwing in some, some crazy dance moves to really kick things off, spinning, um, that kind of thing, you are more than welcome to do so. Anyway! Right, so, what do you want to- Oh. Yeah, okay, I know you've got a lot of requests lined up there, Mr. Jenswold, but we have pretty much had about two hours of the- the old folk music, now, a lot of ballads, and while it is lovely, it is lovely, ummm... maybe it's time to let someone else have a turn! How about that?"

"I want a song about froggies!" yelled Ellie Otten, from between her parents. The Ottens looked down, startled- neither of them had heard so much enthusiastic volume from their quiet little daughter since she'd been out of nappies.

"Ah! Brilliant, Wellies, thank you. Song about frogs. Probably a whole station full of them somewhere, all amphibians, all the time, hang o-"

He glanced back over his shoulder, and saw Chell. She hesitated, then unfolded her arms and held up the little thing she'd brought with her.

It was a bit flat, and the hole was wonky, but she felt that she was allowed to be a little out of practice, under the circumstances. She hadn't made one for a very, very, very long time.

Wheatley looked at the bagel, stunned silent, his throat working. Chell could practically see the circuits firing frantically behind his eyes, a tangled clump of emotions tumbling across his open-book face. Puzzlement, then recognition mixed with startled, instinctive pleasure- then, rapidly, apprehension.

She knows, she knows I know, does she know I know she knows? What do I do what do I do-

Come on, she mouthed, to make it easier for both of them- watching him struggle like that was nigh-on painful- and nodded her chin away from the crowd, towards the darkening lane beyond the field. He blinked, covering the microphone with one knuckly, anxious hand.

"I-I'm- actually, I am sort of right in the middle of-"

"Go," hissed Garret, behind him, giving him an urgent shove in the small of the back.

Wheatley stumbled, gave Chell another worried look, then reached for his ear-protectors, fiddling with the hidden wire, disconnecting himself from Foxglove's towering presence overhead. He felt an unexpected little flare of relief- it was nice to be alone in his own mind again, with no sense of blur between the place where he ended and something else began- but there was also a small twang of loss, a moment of total vulnerability as he went from being a part of something so huge and so sure and wide-reaching, back to nothing more than his own small, uncertain self.

"Uh... actually, we're going to, um, take a short break now, by- by the looks of it, we're going to have a bit of a breather, but don't worry, Wellies, we are still absolutely on top of the whole frog-song thing, working on that as we speak. And, um... well, thanks for listening."

He handed the microphone to Garret, took a step in Chell's direction, then hesitated and leaned back.

"Seriously, I am not kidding there, I mean it. Thank you."

She'd turned, by then, and started to walk away towards the perimeter of the field. Wheatley ducked away from the microphone and hurried to catch up, falling into step beside her.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah, hold on, what's the urgency? Is something on fire? Oh, God, n-nothing's on fire, is it? Because if it is, if something is on fire, I understand you probably didn't want to ruin the mood back there- bit of a party-killer, fire- but we should probably tell someone, like, um, the fire... person- the person in charge of fires-"

Chell made herself slow down a little. Her legs didn't really have a 'relaxed stroll' setting. She could walk briskly, or she could jog, or flat-out sprint with the best of them, but she couldn't stroll to save her life. Rambling gave her backache, she didn't even know how to mosey, and she would rather have stuck blunt spoons in her eyes than wander anywhere.

She quite liked poetry, but she'd been particularly unimpressed by Wordsworth's 'The Daffodils'. Her private opinion had been that if someone was wandering as lonely as a cloud with nothing better to do than peer at flowers all day, they probably had far too much time on their hands.

With Wheatley, though, it actually worked out quite well. His lanky, ambling strides fitted into an almost-perfect 1:2 ratio with her own. She handed him the bagel, and he turned it over in his hands as they walked, grinning uncertainly down at it.

"Thank you, it's very... bagel-y, looks exactly how I pictured 'em, as a matter of fact. You've got the hole, and... obviously, can't actually eat it or anything, just want to point out that it's not that I don't like the look of it, it's just that, like I said before, I don't have the equipment to..."

He trailed off.

"-hey, I tell you, though, some of those songs that Jenswold bloke back there was after, they don't half go on! Enough to scare the life out of you, some of 'em, all that about, 'ohhh, and then we pushed this great big alien over and pulled its legs off, and, and then we stabbed it a few times for luck, dilly dilly, and then we went home...' I mean, it's not exactly PG, family-friendly material, is it?"

"Neither is war," said Chell. "Lars was there. It means a lot to him."

"And- the- the guy, the one everyone talks about, bit speccy, interesting wardrobe choices-"

"Gordon Freeman."

"That's the one, that's the one... ohh, proper big old hero, was old Gordon! Reminds me of- of you, actually. Not- not physically! Not physically, that definitely was not the comparison I was aiming for there. God, no- you're shorter, for a start, and then there's the- beard- no, I meant more... well, he wasn't much of a talker, by all accounts, not big with words, that was not his particular area of expertise, but, whoah, could he get things sorted. Like- like you do. Despite not having any sort of beard whatsoever. Don't actually know if that correlates in any significant way, but there you go."

By this time they had crossed the scrubby, patchily-defined boundary of Otten's Field, and soon they arrived at the fence at the other end of the lane. Chell climbed the stile, then turned to help Wheatley, whose first reaction had been to stop and stare at it as if the whole arrangement of boards and fence-posts was a devious sort of Venus flytrap placed there with the sole purpose of eating people. A little patient pushing and tugging on her part, and a lot of awkward clambering on his, and they dropped into the long grass on the other side.

They could still hear the music from the light-strung field behind them, the sound clear in the darkening evening air- it sounded as if Garret had picked something pleasant and catchy at random, possibly while he scanned every radio station playlist he could find on his shiny new wifi connection for something about frogs.

Wheatley started to whistle along- or tried to, at least. Synthesising the right sound was still beyond him, and the noise he actually made was closer to that of a small, broken steam engine with a pitch problem than anything else.

He looked down, halfway through a long, mangled sort of F-sharp-minor-seventh with a flat fifth. Cheeks still puffed up like a hamster trying to eat a tennis ball, he stopped in his tracks, struck by a sudden blow of inspiration.

"Hey- ding, that's a thought; music, legs, since we're here and everything- would you- would you like to dance? With- with me?"

As always, the words bolted straight out of his vocal processor before the rest of his mind could have any input on them whatsoever. Chell looked up at him, startled, and at the same time the many, many reasons why this probably wasn't a good, smart, or prudent thing to ask her caught up with him, ploughing into the back of his mind with all the force of a runaway tractor. It was much too late to pretend he hadn't spoken, although in that moment he really, really wanted to, blame it on a trick of the music or the skreep-skreep things in the hedge or a passing unicron or anything that might have meant that he didn't have to own up to saying something so blatantly stupid. She'd heard him, and she was already shaking her head.

"I don't dance."

He wasn't sure what he'd expected- no, or what, with you? or are you joking?- but he hadn't expected that, and it startled him out of his own little personal hell of embarrassment just enough to make a coherent response.

"You d- why not? I bet you'd be a natural, what with your- your balance, and the grip, and- good sense of timing, don't forget that. Sense of timing; spot-on. And- and just how you move, and- well, you've just got the, the entire range of dancing-related talents, there, haven't you? Not to mention, full compliment of limbs, always a plus when it comes to dancing, I- I'd expect. Come on, why not give it a whirl? Nobody's looking."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You're looking."

"Ah, actually, dzzz, wrong, no I'm not! There, see? Optics off, both of 'em, no input getting through whatsoever, I am literally blind as a crap turret right now. Um- are you still there? Still not looking, still definitely not looking, don't worry, only the problem is that I'm not exactly one-hundred-percent sure where you've got to. Y- er, could you, could you say something, please? Make a noise? Anyth-"

Her laughter was a bright point in the darkness. Her small, strong hand found his fingers, laced through, squeezed.

"Apple."

In truth, Wheatley only had a very faint idea what dancing was, a misty sort of preconception that it involved moving roughly in time to a piece of music. He certainly didn't have any protocols for it, no helpful little diagrams in his log notes, not even a single pre-programmed subroutine. He was on his own, and he didn't have the first clue on earth to why he'd suggested it to start with.

It didn't matter, none of it mattered, when she took his other hand and, with just as little room for argument as she'd allowed at the firing range, nudged his back foot into a better position. He couldn't see what she was doing but that didn't matter either, as her palm dropped from his and found his waist, and for the very first time since he'd landed in this human-shaped, overgrown liability of a body, he felt exactly the right size.

Perhaps she didn't really know what dancing was, either, or perhaps she didn't want to risk anything too complicated, but if this was what it usually entailed, Wheatley found it surprisingly easy. The music fading through the thicket of branches from Otten's Field was gentle and quiet and a little melancholy, and with his eyes closed he could easily imagine that there was nothing else, just the sound and her hands and the mindful, leading pull of her steps around his.

At first, blind as he was, he was terrified of stepping on her feet, but then it occurred to him that someone who could dodge bullets (most of the time), and aim to within a centimetre's accuracy while plummeting through the air at terminal velocity probably wasn't going to have much difficulty avoiding getting stepped on by a couple of slow-moving size fourteen sneakers, and he relaxed. The hand that she'd released, having nothing in particular to do, dithered in midair for a little while like an anxious moth, then touched down featherweight between her shoulderblades.

"See," he said. "I knew you'd be good at this. Prediction; spot-on, thank you very much. I should have been a turret, making predictions like that. Missed my vocation there, obviously."

Chell made a derisive sort of huffing noise through her nose, and turned her head to the side, resting it against his chest. There was no pulse in his warm, bony wrist and no heartbeat beneath her cheek, but the longer she listened, the more certain she was that she could hear something, just below the normal level of her hearing, something rich and constant, shifting and strange.

She felt a dim, unhurried flicker of recognition. Dark around her, wires and static and cold modulated stillness, her footfalls loud against the blue stretch of light beneath...

"Oh, you stopped," he said, above her, managing in one breath to sound disappointed and utterly punch-drunk content. "Anything up? Should I- should I look? Just- just say-"

She squeezed his captured hand in the negative. Resting her chin against his chest- just below the bright cartoon-green of Ellie's clip- she breathed, tasted static electricity and sunshine. The lightbridge sound in his chest, the Aperture logo on his shirt and the bright stratosphere-blue behind his closed, contented eyes, the trick place at the nape of his neck and his terrors and his twitches- maybe these were his scars, like the pale lines across her shins and her arms were hers, the twisted skin on her back and her nightmares and her protective coldness and her fears, but none of it had any power to hurt her tonight. If he reminded her of That Place it was only with a wry sort of wonder, an amazement that the two of them could have come out of that horror as intact as they were, to have salvaged so much from so little worth saving and to have still managed somehow to arrive here, this dark, starry place of safety, the warm amber light glimmering through the trees, the sound of crickets and his hands, warm in hers, against her shoulders.

"You- you're leaking..."

With a start, she came back to herself, feeling first her side and then- in realisation- her cheek. She hadn't cried once in four years, and she didn't really believe that she'd feel anything there now, right up until the moment when she touched her wet lashes and the tears disturbed by her fingertips streaked to the underside of her chin, tickling as they went.

Startled almost into laughter, she looked up, and saw Wheatley recoil and flinch and screw his eyes tightly shut, trying to cover up the fact that he'd broken his own rules. He looked so suddenly, exaggeratedly terrified that she gave up and laughed anyway, swiping her face on his tie. It felt a bit like drying her eyes on a stiff-weaved swatch of polyester, static-crackly and warm from the line.

"Did I- is something wrong? Did I do something wrong, is that-"

"No," she said, for both questions, and when he still looked unconvinced, she laughed again and butted her head into his chest, damp tie and all.

"Sorry," she said, and felt him twitch with surprise. "That I..."

The back of his neck was a little too far to reach without effort, so she touched the back of hers. Completely thrown by her apology, he had to copy the movement before he realised what she meant, his fingers brushing the hidden port.

"Oh, what- that? With the lead, and my- oh, come on, that is- that is not a problem. I mean, yes, sort of wish you'd run it past me first, um, that would have been ideal. It's that whole 'telling me what you're going to do beforehand' thing again, you still need to work on that, a bit, maybe. Also, um, next time, if you could hang on until I am at least conscious- but considering, if you consider that I'd never ever in a million years gone round to see Garret last night if you hadn't-"

"That's why you were with Garret?"

Wheatley stopped. It was just like her to get straight to the heart of the matter, to put her finger dead-centre on the painful little knot at the middle of his words. He should have learned that by now, he supposed. He could throw billions of them at her, words upon words upon words, all the waffling smokescreens he flung out into the world to keep himself above the water, but somehow she still always managed to pick out the only ones that mattered.

"Well- yes, I- I sort of-"

"Why?"

He looked helplessly down at her. He'd really got the hang of her expressions by now, as frustrating and subtle and hard-to-read as they had first seemed. He could tell that she was genuinely curious- maybe a little apprehensive- and that he wasn't going to be able to get away without an answer.

"I- well, um, as you- as I'm guessing you've probably figured out by now- what with the bagel and- and everything- they- the scientists, that is- they didn't just make me from scratch. And I- I had no idea, I literally had no idea. They actually told me once, right, that if I ever tried to think too hard about where I came from, I would die. They told me it was an actual thing I had, in me, little whatsit called an existentialism inhibitor circuit, and if I got all philosophical about it, started taxing the old brain about where and why and all that, zztt, goodnight Vienna. Rubbish, obviously, not true, any of it, but you know what? You know what, I wasn't fussed. I honestly wasn't, I did not care, because I- I-"

He trailed off again, miserably.

Just lie! The undeniable, set-in-stone voice was back again, yelling urgently into the front of his mind. You can't tell the truth, telling the truth is a terrible idea at this point, so just make something up! Anything's better than telling her you didn't want to have to remember you used to be a smelly human, how well do you think she's going to take that? For God's sake, lie! Lie lie lie lie l-

"I- I didn't want to know," he managed, in a rush. "I was better off- not knowing. You know, ignorance is bliss, and all that- although, although that is actually a stupid sort of saying, I do not know why they came up with that, 'ignorance is bliss', because it bloody well isn't, they should try it, is all I'm saying- but in this one, particular, very specific instance, it- it was. I- well, I just didn't want to know, I didn't want to know. Which, which is why, soon as I knew, soon as I did know, I just wanted to get rid of-"

"Wheatley."

He stopped. By unspoken agreement, they had started to walk again, crossing slowly through the long fallow grass of the next field, heading uphill along a footworn track between bone-white thickets of meadow-rue and wild parsley.

Chell hesitated. She seemed to be weighing something invisible and fragile carefully between her palms, trying to balance the concept perfectly in her mind before she spoke.

"Did you know She was human?"

Wheatley knew who she meant- there was only one She, only one syllable in the world which deserved that flat, complex weaving of gravity and horror, awe and disdain. The actual content of the rest of the sentence hit a barrier of complete shellshocked denial in his head and bounced off, leaving violent confusion scattered all over the place like shrapnel, but somewhere beneath something stirred, red-and-dark and syrupy-sweet and nearly waking-

[hello?]

[you'll be sorry]

He forced a nervous laugh and set off again, a little too fast for her, nearly tripping over his own feet, trying to blank it out- whatever it was- trying to outwalk the conversation before it went much further along this murky, unwanted path. "Right, sorry, I think my processor just skipped, maybe, or, or all this interfacing and broadcasting I've been doing has overloaded the old language centre in here, something like that, because I could have sworn you just said-"

"Her name was Caroline," said Chell, and Wheatley flinched and stumbled, and in the eye of his scattered, shaky memory the sickly red light swelled-

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Hello?"

The air down here was hazy and drifting with particles, dust and ash and pollen from the creepers that choked the grimy walls. The light of his optic barely cut through a couple of feet ahead of him before petering out into shadow-filled near-blackness. It would have been nice, he thought, if he'd been able to use his flashlight setting, but they'd warned him that he'd die if he ever tried to switch it on himself, and dying was definitely not high on his to-do list. In fact, it didn't even feature on his to-do list, whereas not dying happened to occupy the number-one spot, right there in first place. Underlined, with a bullet.

"Hel- is there someone down here? I thought I heard s- hello? Person running around making all the little footstep noises? Are you alright?"

Nothing. He picked up a bit of speed and hummed down the overgrown corridor, rounded a corner, twisting his inner shell anxiously from side to side as he went.

"Listen, um, don't want to alarm you or anything, but- if by any chance you happen to be human, um, not sure what you'd be doing all the way down here if you are but- if you are human, this... miiight not be the safest place for you. Lot of stuff in the air, lot of crap floating about, not going to help you if you have any kind of history of breathing problems or, in fact, if you need oxygen. At all. To live- hello? Am- Am I just talking to myself?"

The only response was the usual faint-droning, dreary hush of the facility, a pretty eloquent answer in itself. He turned another ninety-degree corner into an even darker section, through a thicket of vines- drawing his handles close to his shell to fit through the vaguely spherical tunnel his repeated passage had worn through the leafy tangle- and zipped over a gaping, debris-filled chasm in the floor. Cleanup had seriously been letting things go, recently. He hadn't noticed at first, and then for a while he'd just assumed that they'd been skipping on a few shifts, maybe, that there'd been some more cutbacks or the computer in charge of maintenance (jammy bastard) had trimmed the rota a little, but somewhere around the fourth decade it had really started to get beyond a joke.

He wasn't particularly bothered about the broken doors or the crumbling walls, the floods or the fires, the vegetation or the birds or the decayed algae-choked shells of other machines lying where they'd fallen in the greenish ankle-deep runoff beneath. Lately, though, he'd started to notice that parts of his own management rail were getting alarmingly dilapidated- and 'started to notice' translated to 'nearly ended up underneath half a ton of metal when the whole section he'd been whizzing happily along while minding his own business had suddenly decided that the ceiling and itself were no longer on speaking terms'. It just wasn't on.

"Well, you're not missing much, whoever you are, not being here. I mean, talk about false economy- would you look at this? Just look at all this rust- see, right there! Right there, on my rail, this is exactly what I'm talking about. That's- well, that's just going to be eaten right through in another few years, that is, that whole bit. That's had it, now, that has, you'll never get that off. Disgraceful. It is absolutely disgraceful. I tell you, if I was in charge around here you'd see some-"

"There you are," said a high, sweet little voice, and he yelled in terror and spun so fast on his axis that his optic whiplashed back and smacked into its own housing with a nasty clunk.

"AAAAHHwhat was that who said that-"

His first confused thought was that while he'd been zooming along backwards, studying his own rust-pitted rail, he'd very nearly zoomed straight into what looked very much like Android Hell. Directly ahead, another wide section of the floor had caved in, opening up a perilous bird's-eye view into a deep-sided shaft, a great pit clogged with crazy chunks of steel rebar and uplit by a spooky, stuttering scarlet glow. Whatever shockwave had caused the rift had also yanked his management rail free of the ceiling overhead, and it dipped directly down into the hole- warped but intact- like a rollercoaster rail offering a switchback ride straight into the hereafter.

Optic contracting to a terrified pinprick, he slammed on the brakes, but the worn discs chewed down on the slick of rust and oil gumming up the rail and locked up, sending him into a tractionless yelling skid over the cracked lip of the pit and straight down into the jumble of savage red shadows below.

He dropped, screaming, a trail of sparks flying from his straining brakes as he fought for grip, the castors inside his rail connector whirring like a jar of angry bees. Another petrifying moment of freefall, then his brake discs bit down properly at last, bringing him up short with a jarring jerk.

"-AAHH oh God! Oh God- ohh- okay… okay… I'm fine. I'm okay, I'm alright, I'm- hang on, am I stuck? Ohh, I'm stuck, aren't I. Yep. Can't go up, can't go down. Stuck, in a hole, in the ground. Not ideal, this is not ideal... well, maybe I can-"

"I'm different," said the same sweet little voice, and he twisted his connector arm frantically around the vertical length of his rail and saw white black-tipped claws and a single, flickering red eye. This was odd enough in itself- turrets only spoke to humans, which seemed pretty rude until you considered that they only shot at humans, as well.

This turret was perched upright on a sort of ledge formed from a broken panel, jutting out of the wall of the pit a short distance from his rail. Its faulty laser sight seemed to be fixed directly upon him, the sharp, slightly lenticular lens bright and vacant but somehow… intent.

"Er- hello! Lost, are you? Um, this is the Relaxation Centre, you know, all the humans in all those little boxes back there are actually off limits. All safely in cryosleep. Definitely not target practice. Can I- give you directions, maybe, or-"

"Her name is Caroline."

"Um... sorry, who?"

"She's only sleeping," said the turret, mildly.

He blinked a couple of times, then craned upwards, trying to power himself back up towards the dark, creeper-strung mouth of the pit. His connector arm hummed and squealed and jolted him up another inch and a half, then whined to a halt again.

"It was your voice."

"Right, look-" he said, trying again, with even less of a result, "-oh, bugger- look, not to be rude or anything, but I have to say I'm not really in the mood for this right now. Having a little technical difficulty, actually, as you might be able to see, a bit of a problem, so- unless this Caroline of yours happens to be an expert at getting robots out of great big holes in the ground- doubt it- you aren't exactly going to be a major help in this particular situation-"

The turret made a strange noise. Logically, he knew that it had to be something to do with gears meshing in the angled panels on its sides, or something to do with its central processor- logically, there was nothing else it could be- but just for a moment he could have sworn it sounded like the rapid flick of tough, sharp-edged paper- a quick, purring, shuffling sort of sound.

"The future is in the cards."

"The- the future? Alright, seriously, what are you talking abou-"

The eye flickered. Strange shadows leapt through the red-tinted gloom around him, half-recognised shapes stretched and distorted against the wreckage, looming, wavering forms. He shrank back, scared speechless, shivering against his rail.

The sweet little voice threaded around him like a cobweb, silvery and stifling.

"The cards have been chosen, the lines have been drawn. She lies dreaming, both alive and dead, until someone opens the box."

The shapes moved- part projection, part fantastical shadow-play- the dust-thick air turning the beam of light into a solid, dancing stream of shining motes. He forgot to be afraid, optic widening, captivated by the kaleidoscope of shapes sliding across the twisted walls.

"Ohh, what- how're you doing that? Oh, that is amazing- ooh, look at that, it's a little human!"

"She is Strength, relentless and unyielding. She holds the key to freedom. She failed before she began and she will succeed where all others have failed. You will light the way to her greatest enemy."

Something reared up huge and stark against the far wall, and he gasped and cringed back again, handles rattling with terror, because he knew what that was, he could never have mistaken what that was in a million years, that great hanging shape with its single merciless flaring eye.

"Aahhh! No! Nononono, She's- She's dead! She's dead, everyone knows She's dead, got herself killed by some human- how can that be the future if She's dead?"

"She is the Empress, deathless and all-seeing. Both alive and dead, She waits for the Fool to open the box."

"Wh-who?"

Another soft, papery whirr. The terrible shadow flicked apart, and the turret's eye phased and stuttered and snapped towards him, making him flinch and squint his optical lids almost shut againt the glare, casting his simple rounded silhouette against the wall.

"The Fool stands at the edge of a new world. He seeks freedom and knowledge but he is unprepared for the journey ahead. He is the first and the fourth, a soul stripped to the irreducible core, blind to the truth. The sleeper lies between life and death but he will lead her to a greater trial. The truth lies beneath us."

Instinctively, he glanced down. There was nothing beneath them, unless you counted the mangled wreckage that used to be the floor all the way down there, the jagged reddish jigsaw at the bottom of the pit. It didn't look like the answer to anything, except to the question of what happens when several tons of metal and hard-fired plasticeramics give up the ghost and fall three stories onto a hard surface.

"Strength," continued the turret, in its meek, gentle little voice. "The Empress. A friend and a foe."

He looked up, sharply. "A… a friend?"

"The truth lies beneath us."

"Um- alright, you just said that, literally a minute ago, beneath us, truth, got you, ri-riveting stuff, really, but… getting back to this 'friend' business-"

"She is the Huntress," said the turret. "She will carry you along the path to freedom. You will rise above us all."

He cheered up, blinked, his bright pupil expanding.

"Really? Oh, well, that sounds promising, that definitely sounds promising- you know, funnily enough, I was actually thinking the other day, what if, right, what if I went and got one of the humans? I mean, they're all in cryosleep back there, it's not like anybody's using them for anything, nobody'd notice a thing. I could just find one of the really good ones- smart, good jumper- the best one, basically, there has to be a way of looking that up, which one is the best one- and then I could wake 'em up, sort of buddy up with them, and- then, maybe, I could use them to get out! Is that what you're talking about? A fr-"

"You will be her downfall."

His optic shrank a little, twitched nervously to one side. "Er- sorry, what?"

"The Fool who would challenge Her must beware, for She is the Empress and She is all things. Together you will face Her trials, but to win Her mantle is to lose yourself and the price is greater than you know."

"But-"

"It won't be enough."

"Look," he said, desperately. He didn't know what the turret meant, could hardly understand a fraction of what it was getting at, but he did know that all of a sudden he felt rubbish, small and sick and hurt, just like when he'd been passed over for that job up in Manufacturing all that time ago- like something potentially amazing had almost happened and then gone sour on him, all at once. "Look, alright, I'm not going to, to challenge anybody, I don't want anyone's mantle, what would I want with one of those? I don't even have any ornaments or anything to go on it, fat lot of use that'd be. I'll just-"

"You'll be sorry."

"Oh, really? Is that- is that supposed to be a threat?" He tried to sound unbothered, but the shaky rattling of his handles and the crack in his voice told a different story. "Pff, sure, terrifying, I don't think-"

The light of the turret's eye flared, blazed, blinding, throwing a staggering thicket of jagged shadows across the bloody scarlet walls of the shaft. Its voice dragged out into a shuddering, flanging dirge, and he cowered, forcing his optic tight-shut and trying to block out the sound, the unbearable crawling wire-wool candyfloss sound scraping sickly-sweet through his shell.

"You'll-be-sorryy-y-y-y..."

"Gaahh! Okay, okay, alright, I believe you, I believe you, only please shut up, stop-"

"That's all I can say," said the turret, quiet and meek once more. Its voice was feeble, now- fragile, exhausted. "Goodbye."

"Hey- hey, wait, what d'you mean-"

The red glow winked out, leaving him in absolute darkness. At the same moment, an alarming screeching noise and a sudden upwards lurch informed him that his rail connector had finally churned up some traction on the warped rail.

One taxing uphill drag later, he found himself back in a dull, plant-choked corridor, humming along as fast as he could go with his brake discs ticking quietly as they cooled. He felt dizzy, queasy, and utterly disconcerted, his mind full of sickly red light and a single solid, indelible impression; turrets that said 'I'm different' were a) really, really not lying, and b) trouble.

Definitely trouble.

He didn't stop until he was a very, very long way away from that particular section of the Relaxation Centre. Later, he would do his best to forget the whole thing, to force-delete every word of that sweet, terribly certain little voice, and he would never, ever go back that way again, not even much, much later, when the impending reactor core shutdown would finally force him to take things into his own handles and start really, seriously looking for a way out.

Some things were just better left forgotten.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Her name was Caroline," said Chell, "and when they turned her into-"

She stopped, seeing his stricken face. "Wheatley?"

He blinked, shook his head hard, running his fingers through the limp haystack mess of his avatar's hair as if trying to dislodge a wasp stuck in it. "I'm- I'm fine, I'm- I was just- thinking- go on, keep going, I'm with you so far, definitely following. Comprehension level: high, pretty much one hundred percent I'd say, if I had to make an estimate-"

Chell gave him a raised-eyebrows sort of look, but continued. "When we seperated Her from the mainframe, She started to remember- being Caroline. The part of her that was left. She had a-" a wry, half-bitter twist of the mouth- "-in a human, I'd've called it a conscience."

She paused.

"Caroline saved my life."

Wheatley made a guilty swallowing noise. "That was... decent, of her..."

"And brave." Chell looked away. "Braver than Her, anyway. She couldn't bear to be human, even a tiny part."

Wheatley flinched.

"She deleted Caroline as soon as She worked out where she was. She let me go because it was logical. Humanity's just a- virus to Her, Wheatley. Is that- really what you-"

Wheatley made a violent flailing movement, as if the concept was an attacking swarm of midges. "No! No, no, no way, absolutely not, I didn't mean that! It's just that- I- well, this human, the one they- they used to make me, I don't really know what he was like- other than, obviously, bit of a looker- not bad in the looks department by, by any standards, I've seen worse, definitely seen worse... before... sort of…"

Pause.

"-look, never mind, what I'm saying is, before I knew about him, I was- I was just me, you know?" He sighed. "You know, just- just me, just good old Wheatley, personality core, Relaxation Centre Attendant, just sort of a name and a job title, really. I mean, there isn't exactly much potential for an identity crisis there, is there? I didn't have to go round thinking, oh, wonder if he would've handled this any better, wonder if he would've made a better job of this, of- well, of being me..."

She took his hand again, sure and straightforward as always, lacing her fingers through his.

"So you'd rather not know."

It didn't sound like a question, but somehow, he understood that it was. The way her smile was very slightly teasing, perhaps, or the way her fingers curled against his, communicating in a simple touch where they were, the two of them, the small warmth of what they had now, the vastness of what they might still have to explore.

"Um-"

There was that bloody squeaking noise again. It was as if his voice was perpetually wandering around a house with an attic in it, and most of the time it stayed safely on the lower floors like any sane voice-person, but whenever things got exciting it fled up the stepladder and started bouncing around up there like an idiot.

He coughed. "Well, I- I- I suppose I'm sort of re-assessing that. As we speak. It's an ongoing assessment, really, I am definitely in the process of weighing up the pros and cons of the whole question, who's to say, could ultimately arrive at a totally different conclusion. It's all up in the air at this point- actually, huh, speaking of which, so are we!"

They had been heading uphill for a little while, now, and the path had taken a steeper turn at the base of a small slope. Looking around them, Wheatley realised that it was one of several in this one area, as if a giant hand had descended upon the otherwise unremarkable landscape and squeezed it into a scatter of shaggy, grassy little hills.

The moon, almost full against a clear sweep of stars, lit up a drifting blanket of fields, a dozen shades of charcoal and green-grey and bottle-blue. The town was a rough scrawled X back the way they had come, clustered at the cross-shape of what he now knew was Main and Hope Street and Sheckley Avenue leading off to the north. Odd, unhelpful names, when back There corridors and tunnels and catwalks as big and bigger than these had informative labels like Circuit 00739 and Shaft ZZ9-Z-Alpha, but they were a hell of a lot easier for him to remember, let alone say. And besides, these were human roads- humans had made them, humans used them, and humans could call them whatever the hell they liked.

Otten's Field was a bright firefly cluster of lights below them, overlooked by the single high-powered, slow-blinking beacon fixed to Foxglove's highest point. There was next to no chance, Garret had explained, that any aircraft would come close enough to smack into it, but it was better to be safe than sorry, and besides, it was nice to look at. Wheatley had understood- if he'd built a great big amazing communications tower out of nothing in the middle of nowhere, he would certainly have wanted to be able to check that it was still there, no matter what time of night it happened to be.

There was a small, wind-bent knot of trees at the brow of the hill, and Chell pushed the hair that had escaped from the sides of her ponytail out of her eyes and sat down on the slope beneath them, resting her arms on her knees. Wheatley, who had long since formed the opinion that she always had a good reason for everything and if she wanted to actually tell him it, that was just icing on the cake, parked himself next to her.

The long grass reached halfway up his shins. He'd noticed that the long-gone and probably certifiably insane scientist who had coded his avatar in such bizarre detail had made areas of 'bare skin' noticably more sensitive than 'clothed' areas. These were comparitively deadened- sending back sensory data, yes, but not so much, and not so complex. He glanced from his grubby space-blue sneakers to her small bare feet and wondered how the grass felt beneath them, what it was like to curl your toes against moss or damp earth or sandy soil- what it was like, come to that, to have toes at all.

"Do you know why I stayed here?"

She was looking towards the town, the warm lights at the bottom of Otten's Field. Wheatley blinked and opened his mouth, left it open while he tried to think, shut it again, and then finally said; "Well- I would imagine, because... lots of humans, probably, that must have been a factor, and a- a definite lack of homicidal computers, it's got that on its side, and, uh, you, you probably felt you deserved a rest, a bit of a time-out, after all that, am I... getting warm? At all?"

"There's humans everywhere," she said. "Less than there used to be, but..."

"Um, then- are these... the best humans? Here? Because I can see how-"

He stopped, because she was laughing.

"Maybe," she said. "I don't know. They saved my life, I know that. I was out for a week and so sick I couldn't-"

She paused.

"I got better, and at first, I wanted to leave. It wasn't far enough- away."

"It bloody feels like it when you have to walk it carrying about two hundred pounds of deadweight, let me tell y- uhhh, um, so, you, didn't though- leave, I mean- why didn't you? Not that I'm complaining, I am in fact extremely glad you didn't, obviously, but-"

"I walked," she said. "While I was getting better I walked a lot, it helped, and- just being outside- I could think better, out here."

She frowned, gazing down the slope, her profile simple and shadowed, as intent as an archer and, to him, starkly beautiful. He tried to settle back on his elbows for a better look, but he miscalculated his own weight and slipped, and the back of his head hit the grass with a dull thud.

"Ow- nono, don't look, ignore me, I'm just- testing the ground, here- seems fine-"

His knees were still sticking up out of the long grass, a minature Stonehenge in crumpled black work trousers. Chell let out a quiet breath and leaned gently back against them, tearing up a handful of grass.

"Remember that map?"

"Yep!" A rustling, fumbing sound, then his hand stuck up out of the grass, waggled a grubby many-folded strip of paper like a flag of truce. "Got it right here- well, a third of it, anyway. Good thing about this clippy little frog whatsit of mine here, it's not just aesthetically appealing, it is also quite useful."

"I mapped out this whole area. Everything around- There. Every way in I could find. I didn't want to go back, I didn't want to go anywhere near, but I made myself. I- needed to know. And then I realised-"

She stopped, tossing her handful of grass down the slope, watching it drift apart and settle. "How many other towns can you see on that map?"

"Errr..." Another rustle. "I- I don't know, like I said, only got this bit, but- well, here's us, E-A-D-E-N, right there, annnnd... can't actually see any others, unless there's a town called RESERVOIR... unlikely, unless it's- it's French-"

"None." said Chell. The word was taut and thin, not shaky but strained, a wire stretched too tightly to so much as tremble. "Wheatley, this is the only town for fifty miles. You see? There's nothing else. They're all alone on top of Hell and they don't even know."

He took this in, swallowing, folding the little strip of map back up into a crumped quarter and tucking it behind his tie-clip with numb fingers.

"Well- you know."

She nodded. "I know. I like it here, now- it's my home- but that's why I stayed. I know- and I'll be ready."

Wheatley shivered. Her voice was a decree, total and absolute, something that would still apply even if the whole world blew up and the moon crashed into it and everything else ended. She would be ready. Apocalypse be damned, come hell or high water, if anything so much as sneezed near Eaden, looked at it funny, anything, she would be ready.

"Lucky old them."

Chell let out a sigh- a great big punctured relieved sort of sigh, like an overfilled balloon finally allowed to deflate to a comfortable level. She shoved his knees unceremoniously to one side and shifted over, lying back nearly at a right-angle to his gangly crash-victim-sprawled body, her head resting on his chest. He wasn't a very soft cushion, but he was a warm and stable one- he was far too startled (and a bit too scared) to move. Beneath her cheek, the faint hard-light chorus in his chest hummed and shifted and changed, just on the very edge of her hearing.

"Wheatley?"

"Uh, yes, still right here. Under you. Not- not going anywhere, that is a promise."

"Good," she said, and Wheatley grinned a great big, dopy, entirely involuntary grin at the sky, because it sounded as if she meant it.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

12. The Fall of Eaden

"Please proceed to the chamber-lock."

They proceeded.

Beyond the interlocked halves of the sliding door, they found not a testing track but several miles of gloomy, emergency-lit corridor, grey and featureless. It had a hurried, half-built look about it, parts of the walls shelled of their brittle ceramic covering, parts of the floor beneath them giving way to clunking swathes of steel mesh.

Orange lagged behind, weighed down by the heavy piece of equipment which the assembly pod- much to Blue's dismay- had connected inextricably to its narrow, rounded back. Blue- still suffering from a minor case of gadget jealousy- exhibited absolutely no sympathy.

They jogged on for the best part of an hour, keeping up an even pace, bickering half-heartedly in their chirping wordless half-language, until eventually the corridor dead-ended in a flat white wall.

Blue shrugged at Orange, who poked the wall with a cautious flat-jointed finger, then leapt back as the whole thing slid apart, juddering and shaking, revealing a great hazy vault of cold air full of strange, blocky, crumbling shapes. It stretched away before them, far beyond the range of their optics- cracked charcoal-grey walls bristling with huge cranelike arms, whole banks of interlocked caterpillar-treads the size of inverted skyscrapers, strung with more and more of the oblong, barcoded shapes. If the two small robots had had any idea of the concept of a 'hatchery', they might have seen the resemblance- hundreds of empty, decaying building-block nests, thousands of broken, suspended crate-things drooping from their guiding crane-arms like abandoned cocoons.

"This is what happens when you leave a moron in charge of a sensitive cryogenic containment facility," the Voice had told them. "There are ten thousand Aperture Science Relaxation Unit Cryo-Chambers in here, and every single one of them is irreparably broken. I doubt that there are even enough functioning parts between them to assemble a thousand functioning chambers. Fortunately, we don't need a thousand functioning chambers."

The Voice drew itself out in a single, long, decidedly wistful note.

"Yet..."

Panels shifted, metal screamed and groaned. Far above them, the great cyclical belts started to turn, grinding in huge juddering scraping pulses like shattering teeth, rotating bank after bank of the suspended units slowly out through the stale static-crackling air. The sound was deafening, like an ocean's worth of pent-up water thundering on metal. It was less of a sound than a feeling, thrumming up through the articulations of their legs from the shuddering catwalk beneath them, rattling their optics in their sockets and sending them staggering back and clinging to the doorway and each other for support.

"This is even worse than I thought. It's going to take quite a while. You two may as well get started. Honestly, it's fine, I don't mind. You just go on ahead while I stay here and do all the hard work."

The thundering vibrations dropped to a dull roar. High above their heads, a long bank of cold-white spotlights buzzed and spat and flickered into life, snowing down years of dust in a milky spindrift as they turned in two sections towards the nearest wall. Blue and Orange looked at each other, then up at the distant pair of bright halos, ten feet apart on the pale age-stained panels and stuttering spasmodically.

"You will see two illuminated areas. I want both of you to place a portal, and then proceed to the elevator."

They proceeded.

The elevator waited at the end of the catwalk, a long, spinelike, arched bridge of mesh and flimsy steel struts which shook and clattered under their feet as they jogged. Far behind them, the dislocated surfaces of the two portals on the high wall- one deep violet, one crimson- shimmered and rolled like oil on water.

They stepped into the elevator. It hissed shut around them, a closing fist that shot them upwards through a hundred dizzying layers of light and shadow, flick-flick-flicking, a barely-glimpsed endless landscape of hanging half-skeletal crates, black against the faint bluish background glow. Down here the light was the optical equivalent of the endless background hum- insubstantial, sourceless, an empty, perpetual reminder that somewhere, She was alive and watching.

The light blinked out, the elevator skimmed up into a new shaft, pitch-black and enclosed, as narrow as a strangled throat. The robots edged impatiently from foot to foot inside the capsule, which- detecting that its passengers were about as organic and conventionally 'alive' as a couple of house bricks- accelerated to a speed that would have forced a human's brain out of their nose like so much runny jam.

After several minutes of humming, high-velocity travel, the elevator hissed to an air-cushioned halt.

The two small robots padded cautiously out into a rounded, domed chamber, small and featureless. The walls were rust-stained and held together with long dribbled lines of welding, patched here and there with frayed, discoloured fragments of posters, bright printed colours faded to pastels and greys, blotched and stained with water and mould. Part of the ceiling had fallen through, and strong overhead lighting streamed down across the gritty floor in sharp-defined swathes.

"Alright," said the Voice, as they squinted up at the bright glow. "Here's the plan. The moron's activated some kind of signal out there. It's an Aperture device, and it's his handiwork, all right- his slimy little signature's all over it. In fact, he might as well have actually signed it 'facility-destroying little idiot'- it would have been just as obvious. The point is, I can't influence the signal, but I can trace it. Whatever it is, it's not moving, and I need you to find it. He wouldn't last five seconds on his own out there, so it has to be somewhere near her. I have no idea why she didn't just drop him in an incinerator while she had the chance, but then, I'm an immeasurable genius and she's a brain-damaged homicidal maniac. I can't be expected to fathom her motivations."

The dented metal walls blinked and flickered. A projection scrolled out across the dirty panels, looping around the entire circumference of the room, a single long string of digits. The two robots twisted to follow it, their bright optics blinking in the patchy, flooding light.

"These coordinates correspond to a location somewhere within the... next chamber. In accordance with standard testing protocols, I am not allowed to communicate with you once you enter, so it is imperative you follow these instructions exactly."

They listened. The line of digits dissolved, reassembled, became a sharp-focused isometric model which drew itself rapidly out against the pitted walls as Her voice echoed on. The model rotated as She spoke, zoomed, showing the watching robots the shape of a simple map- a straight-line route between a green dot and a single radiating, blinking light. Orange nudged Blue and tapped a finger on it, the glow of the projection engulfing the neat little joint.

"And, hey," she said, finally, "be careful out there. This is not a standard test. I'm not kidding, there are a lot of potential hazards. So many terrible things could happen to you, it hardly bears thinking about."

The two small robots exchanged wide, edgy glances. The Voice had their full attention, and- having softened for a moment, almost concerned- it snapped back and sharpened like an unsheathed claw.

"Some of them are probably even almost as terrible as the things which will happen to you if you disappoint me."

With a solid, rusty ka-chunk, a door-shaped gap opened up in the battered wall, cutting the projection in half and filling the small elevator chamber with the vivid, blinding overhead light.

"Good luck."

The projection flicked off.

Step by reluctant step, like a couple of children playing a particularly deadly game of Grandmother's Footsteps, the two robots edged closer to the open doorway. After a moment or two, the glare receded a little, and they could both make out a few rickety steel-mesh steps, leading downwards. Blinking dubiously, Blue shaded its optic with a hand and squinted out into the light, then turned to Orange and gestured an invitation.

After you.

Orange backed off, pigeon-toed, shaking a quick, definite negative.

No way.

Blue rolled its optic, shrugged its linebacker's shoulders, took a step towards the door- then leaped aside, its startled gaze fixed on the chamber wall behind Orange, who whipped round to look and received Blue's solid hydraulic-assisted foot squarely in the middle of its overloaded back. Already teetering under the unaccustomed weight of the extra equipment, the spindly robot staggered, tripped on the edge of the doorway, and vanished with a surprised squeak.

With the point won, Blue followed at once; portal device at the ready and trailing its wobbling fearless here-goes-nothing scream.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Wheatley was happy.

It was a peculiar feeling. He'd always considered himself a pro at being happy- perky, lively, generally full of bounce, you name it, being more-or-less sort of upbeat had always been his particular area of expertise. Admittedly, it wasn't that hard for him to put a finger- now that he had fingers- on a specific situation where he remembered not being happy, when for whatever reason he'd felt frustrated or afraid or panicked or just plain bored, but for the most part he'd almost always remained cheerfully, desperately optimistic. He'd never been given to moping- whining, yes, always, but the great thing about having a good old whinge was that it invariably made you feel better afterwards, so you could hardly say it wasn't productive.

The problem was that when he looked back through the blurring stretch of his memories, Wheatley had to admit that his never-ending optimism had run mostly against the grain of reality. From his first hopeful fire-up in the laboratory, through the long list of failed assignments, to the Relaxation Centre and endless years of patrolling and Sleep Mode and lonely boredom, his ability to feel good about himself and his situation had been totally reliant on his own shaky die-hard determination to make the best of things, and to not think too hard about upsetting subjects. When it came down to it, his happiness had completely depended on his ability to not see things the way they really were.

For the first time, he was starting to realise that there were different kinds of being happy. There was a whole sliding scale of happiness- a concept he'd never even dreamed existed- and up until fairly recently, he had only really felt this shallow little hack-job version of his own devising, a flimsy ersatz thing firmly rooted in denial and self-defence. He'd beetled around down There for decades, idling along in neutral, talking to himself and dodging rubble, being cheery for all he was worth and Not Thinking About It. Just like pretending you were capable was better than admitting you were incompetent, being blind and happy was much, much better than having a perfect 20-20 view of Hell. He certainly believed that.

But-

But then he'd met her, and the lines had been redrawn. He hadn't even realised it at the time, but even back then the successes had felt greater, the disappointments harsher, as they'd fought towards freedom together and he'd seen glimpses of- and even tried to imitate- her tight-knit fascinating human depth. He might not have understood it, but he'd seen it just the same, that why-not human determination pushed right up to eleven, her bewildering complexity throwing his own simple little circular self into stark relief.

Not much had changed, really, on that front. She was still bewildering and complicated and scary, she still had the power to awe and terrify him. She was a force of nature, the eye of the storm, she was controlled chaos with a ponytail and a calm, serious slate-grey gaze. She was fast asleep on his chest, and he was deeply, genuinely happy.

There was the difference, right there. This feeling was in a class all by itself, bright, warming, nearly painful but- man alive- worth it, so worth it. Somehow managing at the same time to be brand new and as comfortable as a well-worn track, it felt like it was far too big to fit in this body.

He'd been so caught up in trying to get a handle on the feeling that it had taken him quite a while to realise that she'd drifted off. They'd been talking about astrology; well, he'd been talking about astrology, and she'd been listening and offering the odd word of encouragement (which he hardly needed) and explanation (which he generally did.) He'd pointed out the difference between the distinct types of stars- 'little twinkly ones' as opposed to 'big bright ones'- and moved on to picking out the details of his own carefully-constucted zodiac.

"And that one,"he'd said, pointing, "see, that little sort of letter 'Z' up there, all those little twinkly ones, that one's the Management Rail."

She'd given one of her nose-flaring little snorts. It was a gentle, uncynical sound, and he'd felt it more than he heard it, the slight jerk of her head against his chest.

"Cygnus," she'd said.

"Er, bless you. And over there-"

"That's what it's called," she'd said, gently. "Cygnus. The Swan."

"What- really? They reckon that's a swan, do they? As in, bird, white, long slender neck? Just checking we're on the same page here, because, not gonna lie, I'm- I'm not really seeing the resemblance myself. Management rail, no problem. You can't miss it- look, there's the little connector bit, even- you've got the whole thing there. Just not seeing anything that avian. Oh- hang on though, that's a thought- maybe, right, maybe they've got it upside down!"

He'd made a quick, reproachful little hissy noise. "Classic error. Can't really blame them, though, if that's the case- it's a pretty tiring job, astrology- es-especially for humans, I'd imagine, all that staying up all night waving telescopes about. Person who discovered those stars probably passed spark out on his- on his astrology desk, the next morning, then his assistant or whatever probably comes along, doesn't he, sees the whole star map thing he's been beavering away at all night lying there, upside down, and he thinks, 'ooh, that one looks like a big old swan right there, where's my pen at?' and bang, named, damage done. Tragic."

She'd laughed- silently, but he'd felt that, too. Sight was his absolute favourite sense, and out of the four-and-a-bit he had, it was definitely the one he'd miss the most if he ever lost it again, but just then he'd found himself thinking that maybe it wouldn't be so bad, not being able to see. Not if he could still feel things like that.

He'd wittered on about the Sentry Turret and the Catwalk for a little while after that, one arm propped awkwardly behind his own head, the other tracing tangled and largely incomprehensible shapes in big arcs against the sky. Eventually, he'd registered that she'd stopped responding, and after an initial moment of panic, he'd caught on that she was sound asleep.

She'd been awake for a good long time, now that he thought about it- ever since the previous night when he'd run into her outside the stockroom, and that felt like half a lifetime ago. A lot had happened in a very short time. Wheatley didn't gettired, not physically, at least- to him it was a curious, human concept, running out of oomph when there was nothing physically wrong with your machinery, needing to power down to recharge every few hours- but he had to admit that it would be nice to... switch off, just for a little while. There was no reason why he couldn't. There was nothing pressing to deal with, after all, nothing worrying that needed sorting. For once, there wasn't anything going down at all, apart from her quiet deep-breathing weight on his chest, and the strange-brilliant phantom feeling stirring inside it.

Still grinning like a loon- wondering, vaguely, if it was possible to get stuck this way- he settled back on the grass, and closed his eyes.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

This is not a standard test, She'd told them.

She hadn't been exaggerating.

This chamber was different from any they had ever solved, any part of the facility the two robots had ever seen. Even the old facility had been nothing like this, the deep-down-under parts they had explored on the search for bits of the thing now plumbed directly into Orange's slender back, the endless dust-tracked forgotten places far beneath Her reach, where abandoned human things still cluttered the halls and the stale air echoed with the strident, arresting voice of a dead man.

This chamber was so big that you couldn't see the walls at all. It had a huge shapeless ceiling which was nearly- not quite- the colour of Blue's optic, wispy with peculiar white fluff. There was an endless draft blowing from nowhere to nowhere, and the floor was covered in tall yellow stuff that looked soft from a distance but whipped and battered stiffly against their legs as they jogged. There were no portal surfaces, no elevators, no Faith Plates, turrets, or Thermal Discouragement beams, not even a single cube. Even more alarmingly, there were no familiar sounds, no dings, buzzes, ticks or crosses, nothing that told them when they were doing something correctly or even making any progress at all.

And-strangest, most disconcerting of all- there was no Voice.

They heard something that sort of sounded like a Negative Value Buzzer at one point, coming out of something sitting on top of a rail in the middle of the yellow leg-battering stuff, but it flapped sulkily off towards the ceiling before they managed to get anywhere near it. They watched it go, a fluttering stark-black rag against the blue, still making its harsh staccato buzz.

Things were weird in this chamber. Blue was the first to discover that if you dug at the floor under the yellow stuff it came away in your hand. You could sort of throw it, but it came apart in powdery drifts and clogged up everything it got into, as they found out by accident when Blue, trying to get rid of the stuff clogged between its fingers, hurled a good half-handful of it directly into Orange's optic. Orange, its attention divided between squeaking indignantly and trying to clear its vision, failed to pay any attention to where it was putting its feet, and promptly trod ankle-deep in a place where the yellow stuff gave way to clear liquid running fast over a bed of tiny irregular-shaped weighted cubes.

Orange threw a panicked fit, dropping its portal device and leaping around like a mad gazelle on one leg, shaking as much of the liquid off its foot as possible, but once it had calmed down enough to submit to a closer examination, they discovered that the liquid didn't appear to have done any damage to its leg at all. It was harmless.

This was probably the point at which both robots decided that- for all its fascinating new features- this chamber was not a place they wanted to stay in for any longer than necessary. Walls you couldn't see were odd, and a ceiling too high to make out properly was even odder, but the idea that someone would make a moat and then fill it with completely benign, non-lethal fluid for no reason wasn't just odd, it was downright creepy.

The two robots trotted along at a quick jog through the endless yellow fuzz. At last, the temperature started to drop, and the lights dimmed in the shapeless ceiling. An assortment of new ones turned themselves on in their place, but they weren't much good, tiny weak pinpricks with no pattern to them in the gathering gloom, and one huge white spotlight, which hung over everything and turned the sea of yellow stuff a ghostly silver around them. They were bewildered by this change, which seemed to indicate some kind of massive localised power failure, but they hurried doggedly onwards all the while, following the single straight line in their heads through the gathering darkness. The shadow-haunted scenery didn't look much like the neat isometric lines of the Plan, but they'd recognised it for what it was as soon as they'd seen it cutting off into the distance beyond the elevator chamber, a dark shallow-worn furrow in the yellow haze.

After all, a corridor didn't have to have a ceiling, or even proper walls, to take you to the solution. It just had to go the right way.

It took a long time. To them, used to challenge and teamwork and frantic split-second activity (and frequent, sudden, impermanent death) it seemed to go on forever. And then, at last, just as they were both absolutely convinced that they'd picked the wrong path, they spotted a vague glow up ahead.

They picked up speed, hurrying onwards, and the silvery-yellow stuff gave way to a softer, greenish substance, and there were more and more rails and even a bristly, odd-looking weighted cube or two. And then, finally, there it was. High above them under the blue-black point-speckled ceiling, still maybe a ten-minute jog away but so close, standing high above the other lights clustered beneath it, there it was.

It was sheer relief to the two little robots to recognise something so definitely right, something that- in the middle of all this strangeness- was exactly the way it had looked on Her Plan. Orange let out a high-pitched little screech of celebration and went into a quick, hippy sort of touch-up shuffle, making the cut-and-shut construction on its back clank and slosh. Blue twisted its torso in a stiff-jointed moonwalking shimmy. The two of them high-fived with a hard metal-on-metal clack, then jogged towards the single, blinking red light.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

[00004]

Wheatley opened his eyes. The vague sleepy blink of his avatar's eyelids was directly linked to the dual optical channels firing up within, and an observer- had they been standing over him at that exact second- would have been surprised to see his irises flare bright, shallow blue.

[00004]

Numbers. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had a dim notion that these particular numbers carried some significance, but whatever it was, it it didn't feel particularly urgent. He blinked again and focused on the immediate view, which was limited to grass, stars, and- if he craned his neck- Chell, her dark ponytail falling over his shirt (which, although in dire need of a virtual iron, looked nearly luminous in the moonlight.)

There was something else there, something tiny and unfamiliar perched on the crumpled dark-blueish stripe of his tie, halfway between the blurry tip of his own nose and Chell's sleeping form.

He froze- suddenly wide awake- and stared at it, cross-eyed, focusing as hard as he could. Whatever-it-was had a lot of poky little legs and big long things coming out of its head, and it didn't seem worried about him staring at it at all, even though it was at least a hundred times smaller than he was. As he watched, rooted to the spot, wondering if it was dangerous and whether he ought to either try to flick it off or poke Chell awake or just simply leap up and run for the hills (or, in this case, away from the hills), it drew one of its long back legs against the other, producing a sweet, husky double note.

Skreep-skreep.

"Ohhh," breathed Wheatley. "That's what you are, is it? That's that mystery solved. Funny, you sounded a lot bigger."

The little thing chirped again, then- tik- vanished in a single sproingy hop. He flinched. "Oh come on, no need to take it like-"

[00004]

"AAH!"

He felt Chell start awake and immediately gave himself a hard mental kick for yelling out loud, but it had been impossible not to, with that great sonorous many-toned voice so huge all of a sudden in the back of his mind, resounding through his head like the stroke of a giant, submerged bell.

Chell sat up against him, rolled her shoulders, wincing. "What-"

Wheatley grabbed for his own head, pressing against the shockwave still echoing and fading in his temples. "Nono, it's nothing- it's- I mean, granted I don't actually know what it is to be honest, there's this- this sort of voice- wait- wait, no, I know- it's- it's Foxglove! Keeps saying my name- I mean, not my name, she's not going 'oi, Wheatley', or anything, but it's- well, sort of her nickname, really, for me- my handle, it's- it's a machine thing-"

"In your head?" Chell reached out, touched the long arch of his bent neck, the bare surface just below his hairline.

"Ex-exactly, in- in my head- hey, that's a point, no wires, she's talking to me without wires! Wireless! Huh! That's quite amazing, really, now that I think of it, I didn't even... know she could do that..."

Slowly, Wheatley raised his head. They looked at each other for a long moment, and then Chell was moving, pulling him to his feet, standing as tall as she could against him and staring down towards the firefly lights at the bottom of Otten's Field. Wheatley, with a worried sideways glance, saw that her eyes were narrowed, her jaw set, her body as tense as a trapped nerve.

"Come on." Two sharp, toneless words, and another yank on his arm, and then he was stumbling after her through the long grass, down the whispering slope, desperately trying not to fall flat on his face, which- quite apart from slowing her down- would probably bloody hurt into the bargain, never mind how soft all this grass looked. He'd learned the hard way that just because it seemed nice and fluffy, it didn't mean it was going to be your friend when you went smacking into it at high speed. After the firing range, he wasn't going to fall for that one again.

This had better be something pretty spectacular, he thought, in what he hoped was Foxglove's direction. He didn't have the first idea how to communicate wirelessly, didn't- if he was being brutally honest- didn't even really understand how all of that sort of thing worked, even. It occurred to him then that he probably should have asked Garret for a few more technical details while he had the chance.

Really, when he thought about it like that, it was a bit stupid of him to moan about not understanding how his own systems worked, when he'd never actually tried to find out. Somewhere, there was probably a manual.

Too late now, and all he could do was try to send thoughts in the general direction of up up up and a little forwards. He tried to help them on their way, fixing as sharp a picture as he could of his thoughts zipping through the night and pinging against one of her carefully-positioned satellite dishes, bouncing from there into her great slow stream of almost-consciousness like a single little ball-bearing flicked into the fizzing, ticking heart of a full-sized atomic clock.

Much to his surprise, he actually got a reply.

[error. admin [admin ID: garret_rickey] offline.]

"What?" he said, bewildered. He knew that Foxglove could hear him whether or not he spoke out loud, he could feel his own jittery little communication channel knitted in to the broad ever-streaming flood of data above them- but that wasn't the issue. His heart felt as if it was lodged in his throat (metaphorically speaking, since he had neither,) and he had no idea what was going on beyond the fact that it was more and more starting to feel like a Bad Thing, and he could no more have switched his anxious-autowittering mouth off than he could have suddenly learned to fly.

"I'm not following you- hey hey hey hey Chell- the- the fence thing don't leave me behind-"

Chell, who had cleared the stile at the bottom of the field in a matter of seconds, practically hurdling it in her haste, turned back towards him. He could tell from her edging feet and her pale, set face what it was costing her to stop, even for a second.

"She's- she's saying Garret's gone offline," he said, his words running into each other in their hurry to get out of his mouth before she did a bunk completely and he missed his chance to tell her anything at all, let alone anything that might be useful.

"How?"

"Um- good question, that is a very good question-"

He looked helplessly up into the darkness, the tone of his voice skidding ever-further towards full-on finger-chewing foreboding. "Look, joking aside, love, come on, I think there's a slight possibility that you've got your wires crossed somewhere. There's definitely some kind of misunderstanding going on here one way or another, pretty sure, because- because he can't have just gone offline, he's human, obviously, and humans, humans don't go offline, well, unless- agh!"

Chell grabbed him by the hard-light folds of his shirt, the startling strength in her grip pulling him right down to her level across the bar of the gate, like someone preparing a catapult for firing.

"Boots," she said, very clearly, into his face. "Kitchen cupboard. Go."

"But- it- it can't be anything to do w-"

"Now!"

The word was a punch, an almost-physical shove in the back, not a request or even a demand but a rock-solid marble-carved declaration of what his part in the immediate future was going to be. It went right through him and slammed into the part of his brain usually reserved for his most fundamental protocols. The thought of not going- of arguing the point or stalling or trying to stay with her- simply failed to occur to him, just as it wouldn't have occurred to him to choose not to fall if someone had pushed him off a cliff.

His legs, which most of the time behaved as if they had half a kneecap's worth of common sense and co-ordination between them, suddenly decided that they were actually a proactive, go-getting pair of legs which were Going Places. He was halfway across the field and sprinting in the direction of the town before he even realised what was going on.

He might still have tried to stop, even then, but a snatched glance over his shoulder told him that she'd already pushed through the dark spidery gap in the hedge across the lane, vanishing in the direction of Otten's Field.

It's nothing, he tried to tell himself, ducking through a tangly copse on the edge of the field, getting a low-hanging branch in the face and sticking up an arm just a little too late to ward off what felt like half a tree's worth of its branchy buddies. It's nothing, it's a false alarm. Just a lot of fuss over nothing, it's got to be. We'll laugh about it later.

Oh, he really, really wished he was a better liar.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The Plan had worked brilliantly.

Blue was of the opinion that it was the absolute best test they had ever done, even better than the one with all the synchronised moving lasers and the timed panels and the descending ceiling. Orange, who was more cautious, would have advised its companion not to count its chickens before they hatched, but- as previously mentioned- it had no idea what 'hatching' was, and neither of them had ever seen a chicken, either. It might have offered something along the lines of not trying to activate the circuit before the separate components had been point-tested with a multimeter and seen to produce a positive result, but that sounded a lot less catchy and besides, it would have been hell to mime.

Still, a success of this magnitude had to be worth something. Orange prodded the nearest human carefully with the nozzle of its Experimental Device and guessed that, even if She hadn't actually specified a set value per unit, at the very least they were looking at ten whole Science Points, Special Achievements notwithstanding.

Maybe even twenty.

The nozzle left a whitish smudge where it touched, marking the human's pinkish, weirdly malleable casing. Orange started back in alarm, holstering the nozzle- it fitted back into the heavy clip at the side of the Experimental Device, connected by a flexible acrylic hose- then crouched and extended a jointed hand, carefully thumbing the smudge from the human's unresponsive flesh.

She had made that point very, very clear. Damaged humans were useless humans. Useless humans probably weren't worth any Science Points at all. They might even be worth a negative value, and that was a possibility Orange didn't even want to think about. If damaged humans were worth a negative value, it was already in trouble.

An attention-grabbing chirp from Blue made it straighten up, turning away from the single slumped body and stepping gingerly over another, picking its way across.

Blue was standing over another couple of humans, optic narrowed, clearly annoyed. It demonstrated the problem with a few exasperated pantomime tugs. These two humans were still clinging together, motionless but tangled up in each other's arms as if they'd believed the act of hugging each other had some sort of air-purifying, chemical-repellent property. If that really had been their hypothesis, Orange thought, they'd successfully proved it false.

With two of them on the case, it was easy enough to untangle the entwined humans and lie them out side by side on the trampled grass. Blue was still limping a little from the slight setback they'd encountered, and its leg looked like it had had a fight with a Thermal Discouragement Beam and lost, but the limb was still more or less structurally sound. Even in need of maintenance, Blue was still quite capable of lifting a human, which after all only typically weighed a little more than a Weighted Storage Cube, and was a much more flexible, easily-manipulated sort of shape.

The setback had been the only hairy point in an otherwise brilliantly-conceived and perfectly-executed Plan. They'd hardly been able to believe their luck when, following the bright beckoning beacon in the sky and the orange-yellow glow and clamour of strange sounds beneath it, they'd edged quietly through a wall of thick tangly stuff and peered nervously through the last rustling layer, and-

And there they'd been, right in front of them.

Humans.

Dozens of humans.

Dozens of dozens of humans.

They'd only ever seen one human before- THE human- but they were quite capable of processing variance, and these things were definitely the same species. Shorter, taller, different colours, different shapes, but they all firmly lit up as human. All in the same place, all wandering around this rough square of grass right under the beacon- it was like a gift.

Orange had made a shrill excited whinnying noise into its palms, and Blue had clamped a pained hand over its own audial receptor and dealt a sharp warning swat to its companion's narrow shoulder. Humans had audial receptors too- and these humans, in stark contrast to the behaviour they had observed in THE human, were milling aimlessly about and making noises at each other, and that meant they were communicating.

Communication could be a problem.

So Blue had reached up to its broad shoulder and unclipped the thing She had given it, the small black-seamed fist-sized ball. Orange had given a thumbs-up, and Blue had taken the ball in both hands and twisted. At once, the seam had sprung a studded net of little holes, and the whole thing had started to hiss like a severed hydraulic hose. Orange had hopped nervously backwards, but Blue hadn't even hesitated, had just taken a short step up and bowled the thing hard underarm across the grass, out of the thicket concealing them and down the gentle slope. It rolled straight into the crowd of humans, skittered unseen under a long raised platform, and was lost to view.

Ten out of ten.

After that, it had so nearly been perfect. They'd waited a long minute, just long enough to start to worry, and then they'd watched with growing fascination as a small human- tiny, really, with bright red feet- had wobbled dazedly out from under the cloth-draped platform and nearly fallen. It had been caught up and swung into the air by a big, fairly tall sort of human with fluff on its face, who hadn't seemed to think there was anything wrong with it at first, not until another shorter one with a different-coloured casing (and two odd bits of scary grey fluff above its optical lids) had happened to stop on its way past, at which point it had started poking at the small one and making alarmed noises.

A crowd had gathered, which had been perfect because it had brought lots more of them over to the vicinity of the cloth-draped platform and the little hissing ball beneath. And then a flimsy-looking human who'd been particularly close to the action the entire time had just slid to the floor as if someone had hit its killswitch, and they'd all turned and looked, and a few had started hurrying over to help...

It hadn't taken long, after that. The two robots had kept their heads down and watched, utterly riveted. To them, the spectacle was fascinating in the same empty way that watching an aquarium is fascinating- an inscrutable, enthralling stampede, dozens of complex organic programs linked together by a single goal, a flurried ballet of near-random movement.

The smarter humans, those quicker on the uptake- notably, a big sort of grizzled one with a huge, ringing, urgent voice- had tried to execute an evacuation, marshalling the smaller and the already-succumbing towards them, trying to drag them away- but whatever had been inside the little ball was swift-acting and by then it had already been too late. Blue and Orange had waited a good few minutes, until the confusion and the following flat-out panic had subsided, and even the hardiest of the humans in the field had stopped running around like androids with their heads knocked off and dropped quietly and manageably to the trampled grass.

So they'd thought, anyway. In retrospect, Orange thought they probably should have waited a bit longer, but they'd both been so eager to get on with Phase Two and besides- with their somewhat shaky grasp of the entire concept of a 'lie'- it hadn't even occurred to them that humans, like Her, could actually be sneaky.

So they'd shouldered out of the tangle of bushes and out of cover, and jogged happily down the darkened slope into the wide circle of scattered lights below the beacon. Blue had scrabbled under the four-legged platform-thing and retrieved the little ball, which was still hissing weakly away to itself, and twisted it into silence with another sharp two-handed movement.

Together, they had leaned over the nearest slumped, sleeping human (the one with the alarming fluff over its eyes, as it happened)- and that was when the setback had occurred.

It had happened incredibly fast. Blue had prodded the human, gently, and- as if its squashy casing had been a trigger- a tremendous explosive report like a small turret blowing up had knocked the shorter robot's left leg out from under it. The impact hurled Blue flat onto its back in the grass with a shower of sparks and a high shocked warbling scream, its portal device transcribing a neat ten-foot arc in the other direction.

Orange had screamed too, on an even higher note, and in a single movement had thrown itself heroically and supportively under the cloth-draped platform.

Blue, trying frantically to right itself, had heard a thick double KA-KRACK sound from behind it. Rolling over, it had found itself staring directly up the barrel of something long and smoking and distinctly unfriendly-looking.

"Get away from her," the fluff-faced, stocky human holding the thing had said, although it had been a bit muffled because of the torn strip of fabric knotted around its mouth and nose, and Blue had absolutely no idea what it was saying, anyway. It had scrabbled upright, sparking, hydraulic fluid spilling from the brand-new blackened hole in its leg, and backed away from the human, optic flicking side-to-side, looking for a way out.

The human had raised the smoking thing, the stock of it glowing faint scarlet around its hands- and then it had hesitated. Blue wasn't sure, but it thought that the human might have been staring at the small Aperture logo heat-printed neatly just below the level of its optic, sharp black on white.

"What-"

The human might have been about to say something else, but at that point Orange- having very carefully circumnavigated the table from beneath- had bounced up behind it with a panicky sort of run-up hop and hit it hard in the back of the head with a wooden crate. The wood had caved with a dry, dessicated snap, and the human had dropped like an elevator with its cable cut. Basement floor, no waiting.

Orange had looked stricken, tossed the remains of the crate aside with a clatter, and stared down at the human, trying to assess the extent of the damage. Blue, who was understandably less concerned about the welfare of the thing that had nearly shot its leg off, had signed a quick thankful That-was-close at its companion and checked itself over, limping a bit but otherwise none the worse for wear.

Now...

The two of them left the disentangled pair of humans and padded carefully around the generator and the abandoned cluster of equipment, past the dilapidated-looking vehicle-thing parked next to it, and over to the side of the tall redwood structure beyond.

Orange's device did not actually turn out to require that much precision. It was literally accurate to say that anyone capable of hitting the side of a barn at five paces would have been able to operate it perfectly. Orange simply unhooked the hose from the right-hand side- it disengaged from the main, backpack-like part of the device with a satisfying clack- aimed it at the flaking, red-painted wood of the wall, chirped adramatic, self-important stand-back, and opened the valve on the nozzle.

The device jolted, rumbled, let out a few ominous, coughing noises, and then, with a noise like the violent clearing of a giant, horribly phlegmy throat, a viscous splat of white goop hurled itself out of the nozzle at a speed just below that of a standard military crowd-control water-cannon. The sheer force with which the stream of goop struck the wood knocked Orange flying backwards with a squawk, and by the time Blue managed to stop falling about with chittering laughter long enough to come to the rescue, the barn wall was dripping with the stuff, the hose was thrashing and writhing around on the white-puddled grass like a dying snake, and a goop-splattered Orange was chasing it in small, frantic circles, stamping at it like a monkey with a vendetta against its own tail.

Blue slammed its own broader foot sharply down on the nozzle, pinning it, and Orange scrabbled to turn it off, finally managing to holster it with a wet clack. The device gurgled and choked into sulky, dripping silence.

Blue glanced at Orange, who blinked back and shook itself thoroughly, spraying goop. A shared nod, and the two of them turned to face the oozing, white-soaked barn wall.

Time for Phase Three.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Long before she reached the border of Otten's Field, Chell knew that something was horribly wrong. She didn't suspect, she knew, she knew it in her gut- a sick freefalling pitching sensation, a skin-crawling certainty that grew stronger with every second.

She felt cold, near-dizzy, sweat springing out on her forehead and her arms, and the fresh, gentle night breeze was a chilly knifeblade against her face. It seemed to take an age to reach the warm scatter of lights around the base of the tower- it seemed to take a lifetime to even get closer. Nightmarish echoes stirred in the back of her mind, the dreams in which she ran and ran through blue-humming darkness, towards a distant glow she could never reach.

She jumped the scrubby ditch and pushed her way through the hedge, not feeling the whipping sting of brambles against her bare skin, stumbling through the long grass towards the edge of the lights. She could hear nothing, nothing at all, no music, voices, chatter, laughter, not a single human sound. Only the breeze, the dry rattle of branches against the barn, and the deep underlying rumble of the generator.

At last, she shouldered out into the light, the open space of the field - stood, breathing hard, eyes shock-blank- speechless.

The field was empty.

Two portals- just as she remembered, exactly as she remembered, two eye-twisting surreal shimmer-edged holes in the world- gaped side-by-side on the white-splattered side of the Otten's barn. One blue, one orange, but- they weren't linked, this detail speared through her shock like a splinter and struck her marrow-deep. The view through each portal wasn't night sky and lantern-light and trampled, white-spattered grass; it was pale-grey straight-angled surfaces and harsh flat light and something below- an endless, blue-traced, spiralling tube.

It took her a second at most to see it all, her adrenalin-spiked mind racing in scissor-straight angles from point to point, a deadly game of join-the-dots with one inevitable, awful solution.

The flattened grass. The scatter of things lying where they'd fallen, a sad little ghost-ship litter of humanity- a hat, a shawl, a broken glass. A faint, sweet, slightly back-of-the-throat taste to the air-

Chell took a single, dreaming step forwards. This- all of this- was so near to the worst of her nightmares that she could hardly process it at all. Her mind couldn't hold on to it, her sense of reality groped desperately for a wake-up call, something familiar, real-

Her bare foot crunched down on a mess of broken, splintery wood. A biting pain shot through her heel, and she stiffened and looked down, recognised the remains of her own bread-crate, shattered and spotted in one place with dark-drying reddish flecks.

Oh, now she was awake.

She heard a sharp surprised chitterof a sound to her left and looked up so fast her neck cracked- it still hadn't forgiven her for falling asleep on Wheatley's awkward-angled chest- and there, just by the side of Aaron's abandoned truck-

She stared at the two robots, and the two robots stared back. She knew them at a glance- she would have known that they were Aperture tech at a hundred paces, but that didn't even matter- she'd seen them before. The memory was dim and blurred by time and pain and exhaustion; the sound of Her voice, the terrible effort of trying to force her aching, unresponsive body to move. She remembered the terror of immobility, of being a near-helpless spectacle for the two pale odd-jointed shapes as they leaned curiously over her, their optics wide with a bright, blank sort of interest.

Four years, and they looked exactly the same as she remembered. There were only three differences that she could make out. The first- and most prosaic- detail was the blackened fist-sized hole in the blue-eyed one's left leg. She could see clean through it.

Secondly, she'd thought they were bigger- but now, in the scattered lamplight, she could see that although their bodies were both to roughly the same scale as her own- limbs, feet, shoulders, hands- the orange-eyed one was several inches shorter than she was, and the blue-eyed one barely came up to the level of her sternum.

Third, they were better-equipped. The orange-eyed one was wearing something like a clunky, cylinder-stacked backpack, with a thick nozzled hose clipped to one side of the frame, all splattered with the same familiar white goop. She'd known it on sight, the instant she'd seen the side of the barn, and the bitter chemical sour-chalk stink of it made her gorge rise.

In both their right hands- jointed, three-fingered claws- she recognised something even more familiar- something she hadn't set eyes on for four years and hadn't ever, ever wanted to see again, but here they were, two of them, two sleek, white-black, glow-muzzled streamlined shapes.

A small crease appeared between Chell's eyebrows, the first outward sign of emotion to appear since she'd arrived. She looked at the shorter, blue-eyed robot. It was holding something else in its free hand, carelessly, forgotten as the two of them stared back at her like a couple of squirrels caught raiding a garden feeder.

She recognised that, as well, the thing the blue-eyed robot was holding. You tended to remember things you'd risked your neck over, and for the sake of the soft-worn greenish thing in the robot's claw- well, for the sake of its owner- she had once hung herself upside-down twenty feet over a rain-swollen storm-drain, trying to hook it to safety with a forked branch.

The blue-eyed robot blinked, and followed the direction of her stare down to Linnell. It seemed to realise that this was an incriminating object, because it started and hurriedly tried to pass the toy to its orange-eyed companion, who swatted it away with a noise like an annoyed dial-up modem.

Like the stroke of twelve in a spaghetti-western standoff, Linnell flopped to the grass. By the time it landed, the three remaining participants in the fight for Eaden were moving, paralysis discarded, a flurry of white-blue-orange on one side, on the other a blur of faded denim and tight, cold, clockwork-wound rage.

Turning to race for their waiting portals, the two robots encountered a serious setback- the truck. It sat directly in their path, a big rusting board-sided roadblock, the cab door still hanging open, just as the sneaky human with the cloth over its face had left it when it had grabbed its weapon from the flatbed.

Orange didn't hesitate- planting one spindly foot on the convenient stepped joint of Blue's plated hip, it boosted itself up, clambered frantically over its companion's body as if Blue was nothing more than a slippery spherical ladder, fell headfirst into the splintery flatbed, and vaulted over the other side with a jubilant squeak. Blue, who with its damaged leg and lack of height had zero chance of following without help, screeched angrily after it, then turned back to see where the human had got to. It screamed again in warbling terror and ducked, and a long steel pole with a spiky jointed thing bunched up at one end shanked humming through the air and slammed into the side of the truck where its optic had been half a second before.

Orange sprinted across the clear grass to the gel-smeared barn wall. Realising that Blue had failed to follow, it jogged the last few yards backwards, hopping from foot to foot in an agony of indecision- then made up its mind and ducked straight through the orange portal, vanishing from sight with a sound so subtle it was barely a sound at all; a tiny, edge-of-hearing thht.

A moment later, the portal vanished as well.

Blue would very much have liked to follow, but Chell had other ideas. Her attack left a dent roughly the length of a human arm in the truck's rusted bodywork, sending the robot ducking desperately to the left. It tried to sprint clockwise around the truck, but Chell swung the pole in a long arc, great loops of cable spooling through the air in its wake, and slammed it across the robot's path like the world's fastest and least friendly parking barrier. Effectively clotheslined, Blue hit the grass hard, the sharp scapula-like edges of its shoulderplates biting into the grass and ripping up shreds of ploughed turf.

It rolled, scrambled to its feet- and promptly tripped headlong over a tufty thing which some inconsiderate human had left sitting all on its own by the generator. It was one of the things that it had seen on the way- roughly the same size and shape as a Weighted Storage Cube, and just as unhelpful to suddenly receive in the shins.

Before it could scrabble upright again, Chell took two fast steps up behind it, whipped the pole around, and drove it downwards as hard as she possibly could.

There was a thick, whispering crunch.

Blue twisted, skreebling in bewildered panic. It tried to get up, and then it tried to scoot backwards, and finally it just tried to move, but it was thwarted by one important factor. The long pole of the microphone jutted upwards through the hole in its leg, as neat as a threaded needle, pinning it to the haybale like a butterfly on a corkboard.

Chell hung on to the jointed end of the pole with both hands, her face set, grinding it down with all her weight as Blue grabbed the other end in its free hand and tried, with increasing urgency, to pull itself loose. The robot tugged, heaved, then threw all its weight into a frantic volley of clattering yanks, and despite Chell clinging limpet-like to the other end like rodeo-rider with a deathwish, the pole slid out of the tight-packed straw in a series of three-inch jerks, finally slipping from the hole in Blue's leg and allowing the robot just enough room to hurl itself free.

Hopping-limping-stumbling backwards, Blue fell against the outer side of the open truck door, striking a resonant clannng and a tired spark from the dented metal. With spooky rattlesnake speed, Chell kicked the pole up into her hands and swung- but Blue had the measure of it this time, and it ducked and clawed a handful of sandy dirt from under its own shoulderplate, hurling it into her face. She fell back a step, spitting and gagging, and Blue used the second this bought to dodge around the open door, placing it between them.

This turned out to be the worst mistake it could possibly have made.

Chell swiped the earth from her face with the back of her arm, and for a moment the human and the robot stood staring at each other through the smeary window- Blue silent and trigger-poised, Chell wet-eyed and dirt-freckled and thinking. A moment, that was all- and then Chell snapped into life like a flipped switch, and shoulder-charged the truck door.

She barely even seemed to accelerate, going from perfect stillness to top speed in no slice of time at all, and as Blue tried to jump back she hit the metal with her entire weight riding on the edge of her shoulder and drove it forwards on its hinge. The heavy door slammed with a hollow WHOK, chewing down on the thinnest point of Blue's articulated right arm- the single length of unshielded tubing that served as both ulna and radius, just above where its wrist disappeared into the double-shelled, vaguely gunlike portal device.

Chell seized the handle and dragged the door halfway open, slammed it again, dragged it open, slammed it again. She was screaming, but hardly any sound was coming out at all, her throat clogged with earth and sheer stomach-knotting fury, and for the most part the only sounds were the crunching WHOK WHOK WHOK of the increasingly bent-up truck door, and Blue's hysterical screeching. The robot kept trying to yank its arm out of the door in the narrow window of opportunity between each WHOK, but the first impact had damaged something fairly vital to the control of the limb, and every time it tried the next WHOK drove it right back in again.

Chell had no idea how many times she slammed the truck door. She lost count- it could be argued that she'd temporarily lost quite a few things- and then finally there was one last locking WHOK, blended with a sharp metallic crack like a descending guillotine, and the blue-eyed robot fell backwards onto the grass, white-blue sparks arcing and skittering prettily from the flattened, dented stump of its right arm.

Chell dragged the truck door open one last time and grabbed the portal gun from the worn leather of the driver-side seat, hugging it to her chest and backing off. She watched the robot like a hawk, head down, her breath making ragged winded sounds in the back of her throat.

Blue clawed one-handedly upright. It took one horrified look at the grim-eyed human standing haloed in the lanternlight, at the fluid-spattered portal device in the human's arms, at its own right hand still clutched around the trigger in a mechanical deathgrip, sparking and twitching like a lizard's severed tail.

Blue turned, and ran for its life.

Chell made no attempt to stop it. She stood very still- breathing- trying to breathe. She could feel hydraulic fluid running down her arm, corkscrewing icily to the point of her elbow as she watched the blue-eyed robot stagger-run across the grass and hurl itself through the portal.

Something moved behind her, just inside the periphery of her vision. She whipped round, swinging the portal gun like a club, and came within an inch of clocking Wheatley clean into the middle of the next calendar month.

"Aaahh! It's me, it's me, don't hit me, it's me!"

Chell felt her head clear, just a little. It was hard to speak, every word having to fight through the terror in her gut and the twisting black rage that was driving her pulse up into a dull freight-train hammer, but in that moment she was so floodingly glad to see him that it hurt.

"You- you chopped his hand off! His whole bloody hand! Are you- are you alright? What... what happened? Where is everyone?"

He sniffed, wrinkled his nose.

"Urghh- that- that is not a good smell. Can- can you smell that? Like- like almonds..."

She shook her head, wordlessly. Her throat was airlock-tight, dry as a desert. It was as if her vocal cords knew what was coming, understood enough to take over and wrap her up in a pre-emptive shield of silence.

Wheatley looked past her to the gel-splattered barn wall, the slow-swirling shape of the remaining portal. He swallowed, his own throat jerking, and the next thing he said came out small and flat and punctured, barely recognisable at all.

"...oh."

The boots were slung, forgotten, over his shoulder. Chell grabbed them and shoved the portal gun into his arms. She needed both hands to tighten the straps, and she leaned against his legs for balance, working as fast as she could.

Wheatley juggled awkwardly with the portal gun, nearly dropping it, cradling it in his long static-grimy palms with an appalled look fixed to his face, like a child-phobic bachelor who has suddenly found themselves holding someone's baby. As he steadied it, clumsily, the blue-eyed robot's hand twitched a final time and slipped from the trigger. It landed on his foot, its boneless jointed fingers flopping over the scarred rubber toe of his sneaker like the legs of a stunned tarantula.

"Come on," said Chell, and this time her voice came more easily, and she pulled herself up on his arm, testing the springs beneath her heels. She kept an eye on the remaining portal, willed it with everything she was worth not to close, to stay, knowing that as every second passed she was pushing her luck more and more- she didn't think there was any way to close it without the gun but she couldn't be sure-

She took it out of his unresisting hands, burying her right hand in the sleek concave mould of the trigger grip, hefting the weight in both arms. Her mind was already moving, mapping itself out in a steady, linear chain- through the portal, the short drop on the other side, the slow-drifting helix-spun tunnel of blue light.

"Wheatley, come o-"

And then she stopped.

She stopped because she finally looked up, and saw his face. She stopped because she saw him, his twitching, trembling hands knotting his tie up in a strangled rope, his eyes too wide and flicking frantically away in every direction as if they really wanted to bolt out of their sockets and get a head start on the rest of him. But, mainly, she stopped because she saw his feet, which were taking little tiny shuffling steps backwards.

Away.

Chell looked up, slowly, from his feet to his face. What she saw there struck through her chest like ice, flash-freezing her insides into ugly, jagged chunks.

He was trying to smile.

It was hard to tell, because his face was refusing to respond properly- it was as if the protocols that controlled his avatar's expression had decided they wanted no part in something so completely insincere. It was a frayed mockery of his usual bonkers stop-the-press front-page grin, and if it was genuine, he could have sued his eyes for libel. One look at it, and the week of warm, tentative peace they'd shared crumbled away from underneath her, and she was back There, in the tunnel, when he'd looked down at her bleeding at his feet and forced his brand new mouth into a smile just as curdled as this one, and said you've got things pretty much under control there, right? and she'd tried to say I'm dying, don't you understand I'm dying and the numb, weary, horribly wise voice at the centre of her had answered yes, he understands. He just doesn't care.

"Wait- wait a second..."

She looked at him. A very faint crease appeared at the top of her nose, and the muzzle of the portal device slipped a fraction of an inch floorwards, but she didn't say a word.

"I- I- I don't think this is a good idea," said Wheatley. Hysteria jittered at the edges of the words, as if he was trying to talk faster than he could think, trying to out-race his own mind so he didn't have to hear the words he was saying. "I- I don't think you've absolutely, entirely thought this through- not blaming you! Not blaming you in the slightest, ha, no, you're hardly in any fit state to be weighing up the pros and cons of this particular situation, umm, as we speak- so- so why not let me? Because I have to say on a- on a preliminary assessment I'm not seeing a huge amount of pros, on the side of 'going in there.' Lots of cons, definitely, got cons coming out of its ears, this idea- almost certain death, that's a good one-"

His voice cracked. He prodded Blue's ex-hand miserably with the toe of his sneaker, turning it over on the grass.

"-whereas- whereas, pros of- of- of 'not going in there,' are- are massive! I- I mean, it's not like- it's not like She's going to come after us, is it? Not now, She's got- she's got a whole town full of test subjects to be getting on with, now!She's hardly going to bother with us, I mean, we're hardly top priority- let's face it, she thinks you're a bloody loony anyway, killed her twice, you got that on your record- and- and me, why would she want me, I'm not even human! We could- we could... just... go..."

He trailed off.

In the silence, the quiet scratch and clatter of branches against the barn sounded much louder than it should have. The wind had picked up, and clouds were scudding across the face of the moon.

"Those... 'test subjects'," said Chell, at last, "are my friends."

There was something terribly wrong with her voice. It was colder than cryosleep, colder than the frost-rimed tunnels under the facility, toneless, lifeless. To Wheatley it sounded worse- much worse- than Hers, infinitely more terrible, because it belonged to her and she had never sounded like this before, ever, her voice had never been aimed at him like this, perfectly on-target as always and sharp as a diamond-tipped drill, her voice had never frozen and burned and shut him out like a slamming door.

Something catastrophic seemed to be happening to the stomach he didn't have. It felt as if it was plummeting to around the level of his knees, and the small blurry voice at the back of his mind- the one that seemed to have a better idea of what was happening than he did- chose this moment to act as interpreter. This feeling, it informed him, meant that he'd just made a bad- awful- hideous- cataclysmically terrible mistake.

Chell was shaking her head, slowly. Perhaps she had an inner interpreter, as well- it certainly looked as if she did, right now. She looked like someone who was finally making themselves listen to some kind of ghastly, staggering truth, something nearly too appalling to accept.

"They're your fr-"

She broke off, mouth tightening to a bloodless line, staring up at him, and it turned out that there was something else inside him that he hadn't even been aware existed, because what he saw in her face at that moment tore a great ragged hole straight through the middle of it, whatever-it-was, left it fluttering in stricken shreds.

"No- wait, wait, Chell, please don't give me that look, just listen, alright, listen! We-we-we can't go back in There, we can't, I can't- and, and I don't want you t-"

She cut him off, mid-word. "You're right."

He blinked, the smallest beginnings of a real, half-credulous, relieved-as-anything smile starting to twitch at the edges of his face.

"I... I am?"

"You're not human," she said, and then her face twisted and she turned away and leaped hard into the portal that still shimmered on the splattered wall. There was a final thick-sprung clunk as she kicked off from the very edge of the solid ground where it met the wall, a last glimpse of her dark flying hair as she dropped, and then she vanished from sight.

"Hey- hey nononononono come back come back COME BACK-"

He hurled himself after her, felt something like a tiny, echoing thht- thought wait, how can you feel a noise- and smacked hard into a solid, sour-stinking something, something that went THUD in his face and knocked him sprawling on his back on the churned-up grass, staring up at the blank, white-splattered barn wall.

The portal was gone.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

13. The Old Friend

Chell plunged into the spiralling tube of the Excursion Funnel feet first, her stomach giving a single giddy lurch as the soft slow-moving stream killed her momentum and brought her fall to an immediate, drifting stop. The translucent bluish material of the funnel ghosted over her skin like a dusty breeze, drifting in finespun eddies from her fingers.

Before she could hesitate- before she could let herself hesitate- she brought the portal gun up fast and fired, once, into the darkness. A burst of blue flared on a pale, near-invisible wall far ahead of her, the socky aimless thpt of an opening portal. Behind her, the oval of stars and silvery grass flicked out of existence, sealing the way back.

She refused to allow herself to think about what had just happened- about Wheatley, about what he'd tried to say, about the horrorstruck look she'd seen dawning on his face in the split second before she'd turned away. She denied it, the whole subject. It was only practical for her to do so, the situation demanded nothing else. She couldn't afford to waste concentration on her feelings- not in here, where the slightest hesitation could get you killed in a heartbeat.

She forced herself to focus. Stretching her unnatural powers of mental segregation to the limit, she grabbed the whole hurting splintering unravelling chunk of her that had become tangled up in him and shut it away behind a cold slamming wall in the back of her mind, where it howled faintly at her but couldn't interfere.

Instead, she turned her attention to her surroundings- dim, hazy, vast. She was drifting at the centre of a long pencil-beam of twisting blue light, arrowing straight between two endless charcoal-black walls over an endless drop. The emitter was a bright triple-spinning speck far behind her, weaving an infinite funnelweb that held her in place like a bug in amber.

"There you are."

The Excursion Funnel winked out, and she fell through the haze, bracing herself for the inevitable. She had a confused impression of thick, dust-buried panels far below her, thirty feet, twenty, ten, the panels sliding quicksilver-fast over each other in a stirred-up cloud of fluff and ash, opening a dark tessellating gash in the floor. She plunged through, hurtled down through a blur of charcoal darkness and landed- clunk- feet-first on a smooth, clean steel-grey surface.

She straightened up. In the dim underfloor glow, she could make out the too-familiar shapes of a standard elevator chamber, the slick dead wall-to-ceiling LCOS monitor screens which usually displayed the Aperture equivalent of a screensaver, instructional videos and waving stick figures, taunting stock footage of fields and grass. Her throat felt thick, full of a foul plastic taste- the disturbed dust, or maybe the liquid asbestos of the Funnel- and she coughed and spat, wiping her mouth on the back of her free hand.

"I'd like to think that, in your language, that's what passes for a civilised greeting, but we both know I'd be kidding myself," said the Voice. "I mean, really. Would you do that in your place? Because even if you would, this is not your place. This is my place, and your mucous is not a required part of the décor."

Chell stared flat blank-eyed hatred up at the nearest glassy red lens. There were three cameras in this smallish space, tracking her every movement- She, evidently, had wanted to make some kind of point. Hefting the gun in her hands, she circled the chamber, around the empty socket where the elevator should have been, looking for a portal surface, a crack, a sign, a way to begin.

"I can tell you're eager to get started," said the Voice. "That's good. So am I. I just think we should go over a few ground rules first. So far, we haven't exactly been reading off the same page. It's a shame, because my page makes fascinating reading. It's all about Science. Your page, on the other hand, was written by a mute, destructive psychopath who really can't take a joke. I think, in future, we should just stick to my page."

This was a perfectly straightforward request- or at least, it was worded like one- and it deserved a straightforward answer. With her eyes fixed firmly on the camera's unblinking red eye, Chell took a very deliberate step back and rammed the butt of the portal gun into the nearest monitor-panel. There was a sweet sound of shattering silicon, and a dying fritz of static.

"Vital testing apparatus destroyed," announced a synthetic voice.

"Alright, look," She said. "I'm going to be honest. You're good at this. That's not a compliment, by the way, it's just a statistical observation. The fact remains that in the face of overwhelming odds, despair is a perfectly natural, healthy response. Other humans give up when it becomes obvious that the situation is hopeless. You don't. There is something seriously wrong with you, and that's what makes you so perfect."

Having given up on the inactive socket of the elevator as a possible way out, Chell felt across the walls, palms hissing on the flat monitor screens. The cameras tracked her as she moved, their scarlet eyes fixed on her back.

"It's funny, when you think about it. The one trait that makes you so invaluable as a test subject is also the trait that makes you the biggest threat to my existence that I have ever encountered. Now that I've had the opportunity of observing you at close quarters- much closer than I ever wanted, believe me- I've realised that your destructive tendencies only surface when you are trying to protect something you regard as valuable. Up until now, that's usually been your own life. I can't exactly remove that as a factor- we both know I need you alive. And you don't seem to be afraid of pain or physical injury. I have access to test data from hundreds of humans right here in my database, so I think I'm qualified to tell you; that's something else that makes you the freak here."

A pause, carefully timed to give the appearance of consideration.

"Anyway, I was reorganising the files that the moron trashed when he was in my body, and I came across an interesting quote. A famous philosopher once said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I know, remarkably apt, right? Reading that made me realise: we've just been going round in circles this whole time. I threaten your life, and you recklessly, violently attempt to endanger mine. I'm actually pretty embarrassed about this. All the time I've been blaming you for your selfish, psychotic behaviour, it's really been all my fault."

Chell looked up, slowly. The cameras gazed back down at her, calm, pitiless, hungry.

"I just haven't been giving you the right motivation."

All around the chamber, panel by panel in a spreading, multiplying rush, the monitor screens flick-flick-flicked into life. At first glance, each panel appeared to show the same image- a slow-moving, slightly distorted panorama shot of a small room, a security feed in flickery, washed-out colour. Just an anonymous little cell, plain grey walls, a bed-

Chell stood like a statue, the gun hanging forgotten by her side, staring up at the floor-to-ceiling mosaic of monitor screens, a grid of harsh sparks reflected by her horrified eyes. No. The same bed, the same walls, different rooms, and there they were, there they all were-

Martin and Heather. Ellie, barely a bump in the cover of the queen-sized cryobed. Lars and Emily. Bill,Dina, Karen, Lindsay. The twins, hardly bigger than Ellie and God-knew-how-many chambers apart.

Romy. Garret. Aaron-

More, so many more, and she knew without any doubt that if she counted there would be a hundred and fourteen exactly, because it was all of them, every single one-

A helpless ball of wet tension rose in her chest, clawed and burning. She bit down on the sore place on her tongue until she felt it split, her mouth filling with coppery warmth. The pain was thick and savage and just enough to lodge the choking ball in place at the back of her throat. Her stomach was heaving and her eyes felt like hot stones in their sockets, but she struggled with everything she had left to keep them dry, the pain was bad but she'd rather bite her tongue clean off than give Her the satisfaction-

"You know, I'm kind of impressed," remarked the Voice. The camera feeds panned in lazy side-by-side unison, back, forth, giving the entire chamber a queasy illusion of motion. "When I told them to bring back anyone they could find, I was pretty sure I'd have to settle for the moron, or maybe that cube you cared about so much. For someone so basically unlikeable, you certainly seem to have made a lot of friends. Of course, most of them probably aren't really your friends, but hey, we can have fun finding that out."

Chell heard- in some dim red hell-lit place in her head she was recording every word the hated Voice said- but nothing showed on her face. She stared straight ahead, at the screen which was showing her Romy's cryo-chamber. She would have recognised that pale, dreaming face a mile away, even without the unmissable sheepy piled-up blaze of hair that framed it, flame-bright against the colourless pillow.

"For now, though, this is how we're going to do this. You're going to test, and you're not going to break anything, or trespass in restricted areas, or try to murder me, or conspire to rip me out of my body and put me in root vegetables. And listen, take your time. I mean it; I've put a lot of effort into working out these new tests, so I don't want you to feel like you have to rush. Now that I've renovated the Relaxation Centre, each of these cryo-units have a shelf life of around three thousand years- give or take a couple of hundred- so I don't see spoilage becoming much of an issue this time around. They'll all be fine."

The elevator lock turned with a smooth hiss, the capsule gliding gently anticlockwise into view through the glass, the doors sliding open at Chell's back.

"If you behave."

The screens snapped off. Chell backed away, took an automatic, sleepwalker's step backwards in the sudden darkness, then another. A third took her across the threshold, and the elevator doors folded closed around her, like a curious child cupping an insect in its palm.

The elevator was exactly as she remembered, too- a dim, rounded glass closet, close and claustrophobic, blue uplighting pulsing faintly around the walls from dull-glowing tubes set into the greyish panels around hip-height. It began to move, shuddering underfoot, a giant throat rumbling in a satisfied purr. There were no cameras visible, but that didn't mean there were no cameras at all- Chell knew by now that there was no place in here where you could ever be sure you were unobserved.

She leaned back against the wall, listening to the hum of the motor. She couldn't shut out the memory of Romy's face, and before she could stop it the image changed from now to back-then. Romy,the first human she'd ever seen, through a mist of tired blurred sickness that bright summer morning, four years ago-

-oh, honey, it's all right. You're going to be fine-

Mom, what's that blue stuff on her face?

Max, Jason, I want you two to run fast as you can back to town and get Dr. Dillon. Tell her there's- hey, hey, shh, sweetheart, don't move, you're safe now. You're going to be fine-

Romy, with her warm singer's voice and the confident gentle no-nonsense touch only being the mother of two accident-prone ten-year-olds could have trained. Romy and her wild drama-queen moods and her silly nicknames and her sillier crushes on decades-dead film stars. Romy and her children, her friends, her neighbours- all of them, all of Eaden, down here in the humming darkness, locked up in the sleeping shells of their bodies. Halfway alive, as cold as the dead.

The long sleep.

Dimly, Chell registered that she was no longer leaning on the wall, that she was sitting against it with her feet splayed out before her, the surface freezing against her bare skin where the slow slide down had pulled the hem of her sweater up to the small of her back. She looked like a puppet someone had tossed in the corner of the elevator- a puppet in a loose-knitted old sweater, with torn scratched shins and a dull, shock-empty, dead-eyed face, hugging the portal gun against her chest. It was cold in its ceramic-alloy shell, but there was a slight, radiating kind of heat to the heart of it, the soft-glowing inner tube. It was just above her own body temperature- fevery-warm- and she curled around it with a loose reflexive movement, stayed there as the motor hummed and the elevator dropped deeper into the ground.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

It was nearly dawn.

The sky was fading grey- the soft fragile grey of bleached wood, or hair turning silver- and the stars were dying. At any other time, Wheatley might have wondered where they were off to in such a hurry, but now, with his head hidden in the long, slump-shouldered cross of his arms, he couldn't even see them. He was so hunched and folded in on himself that- even if he'd opened his eyes- he would have seen nothing but a crumpled blue swatch of his own tie, a thin slice of the grey-stitched Aperture logo on his chest.

She left me she left me she left me she left me she left me she left me she left me she left me-

Yes, she'd left him, and that was panic and horror and hell enough on its own, but what was worse- ten, a hundred, a hundred-to-the-power-of-ten-all-the-way-up-until-you-ran-out-of-zeroes worse- was the way she'd looked at him, in that last second, like she was summing up everything he was in her head and just writing it all off, screwing that last precious little strip of paper up into a tiny ball and hurling it into space. And even worse than all that, was just how much it made sense. How much he knew, deep-down flat-out bottom-line knew he deserved it. Because, every time, that was how it worked.

When you fail, you end up alone.

He twitched, his fingers digging hard into his upper arms, went still. The pattern spun out through his mind, again and again, the miserable little spiral of cause and effect that had driven him scrabbling through his life like a spider trying to escape from a polished sink, clinging to the most hopeless of footholds and always, always sliding back down. Every time. The ultimate rule, the reward for all his failures, the one thing he hated- and feared- the most.

When you fail, you end up here.

It didn't matter that up until a short time ago he'd never seen this place before in his life. He still knew it inside out, knew it like he knew the bright codeworld behind his eyes, or the time-worn path of his management rail. Here wasn't any one fixed place, it was wherever you were. Here followed you, inside your head, whether it was a quiet dawnlit field or a dark empty smoke-stinking chamber, an endless circuit of overgrown tunnels or the glittering vacuum of space, because here wasn't really a place at all, it was a feeling, a great hollow frozen hole with you at the bottom, cold and sick and utterly useless, small and stupid and as alone as it was possible for anything to be.

You're not human.

Chell had never lied to him. She'd tried to show him that even if the truth hurt he didn't have to hide from it, that he could be someone better than that, someone braver if not brighter, someone who wasn't so scared of looking stupid that they tried to look like someone else altogether. He'd nearly been that someone- yesterday he'd touched it, like touching a frosty window with a warm hand will clear it, for a while. If he tried, he could nearly bring back what it had felt like, how for the first time since he could remember he'd really felt as if he wasn't missing anything, not a trace of all that perpetual self-doubting panic gnawing at the back of his mind, how good that had felt-

He drew his knees up tighter to his chest, the heavy curve of Foxglove's spiralled sheet-metal hoof pressing into his back. He'd always been brilliant at imagining the worst thing that could possibly happen- whether he wanted to or not- and his imagination wasn't done with him yet, not by a long shot. It marched unstoppably onwards, dragging him after it, hell-bent on giving him the full tour.

In his mind's eye he watched Eaden crumble like the facility had crumbled, aging and weathering and empty, like a mouth without a tongue. He saw plants creeping hungrily up over the buildings and dragging them down into their foundations, paint flaking, metal rusting, colours fading, walls tumbling in shivering floods of cracked brick and concrete, windows falling from their frames in cloudy spills of dustblown glass.

He saw the streets breaking up in crazy root-shot zigzags, the square becoming nothing more than a raw dustbowl at the centre of a huddle of anonymous ruins, as the world turned and the years passed and he sat here in Foxglove's green-shrouded shadow until she crumbled too, because as long as his little slug of metal and microchips lasted, as long as the sun that still lurked just below the hazy grey horizon kept on doing its thing, he would live.

He'd been happy about that, before. Now, no thought had ever seemed less kind.

Kind. Garret had been kind. Aaron, Romy, even tiny little Ellie Otten, they had all been kind to him. Maybe he had been kind, once, the human he'd been, before time and fear and damage had turned him into something that would do anything, anything, to save its own skin. Chell had been unbelievably kind, risking her own life and her own freedom for him, despite everything he'd done. She'd stuck with him, even though it must have been obvious to her- to anyone in a ten-mile radius, let alone someone as brilliantly sharp as she was- that he'd never be anything but his own awkward wittering thoughtless stupid selfish self.

He'd wanted to help, he'd wanted so badly to show her he could be brave, that he had her back. He'd wanted to stick with her until the end of the world- his or hers, it came to the same thing- but the moment he'd seen that portal, the cold blue path into Her world on the other side, it had all fallen away and something deafening and rock-solid in the front of his mind had screamed terrible idea and he'd just been so afraid-

You? he'd said, once. You're not afraid of anything! And she'd looked at him as if he'd been joking, but then her face had changed, subtly, and she'd said, Not true.

She hadn't been lying then, either. He'd seen her face when she'd looked through the portal on the barn wall, and her hard-to-read expressions were no longer the mystery they'd been at first. She'd been afraid all right, she'd been frightened half to death, as frightened as any sane person would have been. She'd been scared sick at the thought of what was coming, what she knew she had to do.

And she'd gone through anyway.

Slowly, Wheatley raised his head.

He wasn't like her. She was so brave, and her bravery wasn't just not being scared of things, because you could be scared of everything and still be brave, if you only had the strength to face the things you were scared of, to kick them right in the teeth and go yes, fine, alright, I'm scared, but I'm doing it anyway.

He, on the other hand, had always been driven by the things that terrified him, the things that sent him skidding desperately off into the unknown rather than even think of turning to face them down. He was as unlike her as it was possible to be. Whether that was his fault or not, his personality or his programming, the way he'd always been or the way they'd made him, had somehow ceased to matter. Where there had once been the gutless, comforting conviction that it wasn't his fault and that made everything all right, that nobody expected him to do any better, and he could shift all the blame and guilt onto something else- anything else- now there was nothing but a leaden, accusing ache rooted in his hard-light chest, and the thought of losing her-

-losing her for good, without even the hope he'd had up in space that she was alright somewhere, the unrealistic hope of seeing her again. Knowing she was gone and it was his fault for the things he didn't do, living the rest of his unimaginably long and pointless artificial life with this cold sick hollow ache freezing him from the heart out-

"I-"

He stopped.

"I could-"

He stopped again. His voice was a croak, faltering, rising at the edges like a question he didn't quite dare to ask.

"I could still-"

No I couldn't! yammered the voice, the big attention-getting one in the front of his head, bang on cue. I couldn't, I couldn't, terrible idea, it always goes wrong, and anyway, it's too late! Three strikes, remember? Three strikes and you're out! Even if I tried, it wouldn't change anything!

Very carefully, like someone trying to lay the last two cards on a ten-storey tower, Wheatley reached up and tugged the strip of paper from behind his tie-clip. He unfolded it, staring without seeing at the neat-drawn lines of roads and landmarks, the strings of numbers winding among the grubby creases, the ominous central red mark.

The third strike. The voice was right, absolutely right. She'd given him one more chance, and she hadn't been talking about mucking up the baking process or murdering a sheep-fence or even getting upset and accidentally comparing her to their worst enemy, she'd been talking about exactly this, just the simple, basic task of being a decent person. After everything she'd done for him, that was the only thing she'd asked in return, just to know he'd try, that he'd be behind her, no matter what.

Behind her, even if- just picking a wild, random example out of the air- even if he'd used up his last chance. Even if she'd given up on him, even if she didn't even want him there. Not to prove a point, not to prove anything, but because that was where a friend should be.

Oh, really? Alright then, Mr. Big Ideas, since we're being so inspired all of a sudden, exactly how am I supposed to get there, now? I can't! There's no way I can get there! Even if I ran the whole way, it'd take bloody hours!

"But-"

And even, even if I got all the way there, how am I going to get in? Knock on the front door and go, hello, express delivery, anyone order one Intelligence Dampening Sphere, slightly used, special offer on legs? It's too late!

It probably was- Wheatley knew very well that a single day in There could last for a very, very long time. It could last for the rest of your life. It was probably too late already-

"But-"

Stop going but! It's no good going but! It'll only get you in more trouble! It's a terrible idea!

He shut up, snapped his mouth into a dumb, downturned line. Right again, of course. That was what he was for, after all. That was why they'd made him who he was, and if any part of him had ever been capable of having good ideas, they'd deleted it.

Hadn't they?

[that's a]

[that's a positive on the cognitive rerouter]

No, he thought, and the thought came very slowly, crawling up through layers and layers of that old glassy, foggy confusion. No, they hadn't. Deleting a great big chunk out of the middle of something as basic as the ability to have an idea would have taken time, a lot of time. And they'd been in a bit of a hurry, hadn't they? They'd been- understandably- a little rushed, trying to come up with something on the hop to restrain the ever-multiplying artificial intelligence they'd accidentally given the power of a god and the temper of a wasp, and they'd really thought they were onto a winner with the whole make-a-useful-intelligence-dampening-personality-sphere-out-of-a-useless-employee project, so they'd just-

-done the next best thing. They'd written a neat little program, just for him, and they'd stuck it in his head, crammed it in on top of all the other blocks and modifiers and protocols they'd stuffed in there. They'd taken a mind already exceptionally gifted when it came to having stupid, bonkers, impractical, patently ludicrous ideas, and they'd isolated- not the part of it that had the ideas, but the part that thought they were good. They'd made that critically deluded little part of him strong enough to override everything else, made it so utterly set-in-stone convincing that it never even occurred to him to doubt it. They'd handed it the wheel of his psyche and wished it bon voyage. And it had performed brilliantly, popping up right on cue whenever he had one of his frequent, patented, Wheatley-brand terrible ideas, telling him it was brilliant, and-

-and-

-and whenever he had a good idea-

No! Nononono, don't think about that! Terrible, terrible idea, thinking about that, just- don't even bother, there is literally nothing to see in this whole area of- wait, what are you doing what are you doing stop it STOP-

Wheatley stood up.

Inside his head the voice was screaming in panic, and if he thought too hard about it he was pretty sure that he would start screaming too, but his knees unfolded obediently under him and he managed to pull himself up on the rough weldscarred metal at his back. He took a wobbly couple of steps in no particular direction, stopped, looked up.

The tower loomed above him, a ramshackle pyramid of many-coloured wires and mottled steel. He swallowed, fidgeting with the shred of paper in his hands, thought about the moment the previous day- a lifetime ago- when he'd climbed down from the giddy bright-buzzing heights and seen her looking back at him, that look, just for him-

The howling voice of the cognitive rerouter was still there, but he thought that it sounded just that little bit fainter, now. He almost caught himself feeling sorry for it, exposed at last, out of control for the first time since God-knew-when- but now an odd, galvanising feeling was beginning to ebb through him, getting stronger with every second he spent standing upright instead of curled up in his own little pity party (maximum number of guests: one, bring your own nibbles and self-loathing) at the foot of the tower. He wasn't sure, because he was still afraid to examine it too closely, and his mind was still blurry with fear for her and miserable, panicky regret, but he thought that somewhere in there-

-in some cowebby, disused circuit deep down where the light couldn't reach, somewhere down on the nano-level where components the size of cities glittered with bits of silicate dust and sparked connections that had been blocked off and deadened for decades-

-he just might be starting to have a good idea.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell jogged up a shallow flight of metal steps. The corrugated mesh beneath her had been stamped with a pattern of round-and-oval holes that looked like a host of little gaping mouths, blurring under her feet as she ran.

She passed through a narrow corridor of scarred grey tiles and out into a larger antechamber. To her right, a tall bleached-white screen flickered and blinked into life, the lower section displaying a series of neat graphical symbols, information, warnings. The upper part, the part which should have shown her the chamber number- and the number of chambers still to go- had been left blank.

She ignored it.

The muted hum of the facility pressed in around her as she approached the chamber-lock, the cyclical door unlocking itself and hissing apart at her approach. She ducked through and out into a vast grey-white space, a flat-lit dull-buzzing chamber easily ten times the size of the largest building in Eaden.

"You're doing very well. If you perform well in this next test, I might even consider telling you how many chambers there are left to go before you reach the one where I'll decide whether or not to tell you how many chambers there are left to go."

A trio of long red beams stretched the length of the chamber floor in an interlocking pattern. At a glance, Chell could see two high platforms, a scattering of cubes, a long gash in the floor, and a blocky, arched gape to the ceiling, like the vault of a cathedral built by a deranged architect only capable of thinking in ninety-degree angles.

"I should probably tell you that the strong sense of nostalgia you may be experiencing right now is a perfectly explicable part of the testing protocol. This chamber is based on the first one the moron sent us to after we made it up out of that shaft. Well, it uses the same basic structure, at least. I had to redesign most of the testing elements, so that it would actually present a challenge to someone with a functioning brain."

Chell shot a violet-tinged portal into the ceiling, smacked another into the panels near her feet, dropped through onto the taller of the two high platforms, and booted the cube it held hard off the edge. It flew in a shallow arc and thunked into the floor, the lenses set into its sides rippling sharply on impact. They were made from an oily blue-green substance- mirrorlike, but not quite glass.

"That reminds me, where is the moron?" said the Voice, and the ersatz concern in it made her fists itch, the ragged ache rising behind her tight-locked teeth. "Oh. He let you down, didn't he? I told you he would. But you never listen to me."

The first of the Thermal Discouragement Beams blazed into the refractive cube as she pushed it into its path, the baking heat sinking into her bare arms. She'd ripped the sleeves from her sweater halfway through the last chamber- she'd forgotten just how much of a liability loose, flammable fabric could be.

With a sizzling sputter, the redirected beam flicked off at an angle and struck a node on the far wall. Across the chamber, the floor moved, shifted, settled into a new configuration. She watched the new staircase adjust itself, the jointed arms beneath settling into position. The Voice echoed around her- sighing, martyrlike, heavy with resignation.

"One of these days you're going to realise that everything I've ever told you has been for your own good. You're going to feel really dumb..."

Chell crossed the floor, hurdling the lethal shin-high beams with long practice strides, skirting the deep pit at the centre. As she reached the steps, she closed her eyes for a long moment, tried to breathe, tried to focus.

Kept going.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Why couldn't it have been flatter?"

With an immense effort, Wheatley managed to hook his elbow over a wire-strung girder. His feet kicked for a moment over twenty feet of thin air, before finally finding a dodgy sort of purchase against an angled strut. He hung there for a moment, panting in short needless gasps, then lurched upwards again, hit his head sharply on the underside of a large, paint-streaked satellite dish, yelped.

"OW! It's- it's showing off, that's all it is, really, I mean, yes, well done, you made a big old tower- impressive- but did you really have to make it so high-"

He clawed up another few feet, slipped, grabbed another girder, hung on for dear life with both arms and both knees, like someone having serious second thoughts about their decision to slide down a fireman's pole. The voice of the cognitive rerouter in his head had settled down into a horrified background wail, and he was managing to ignore it fairly well- now he was concentrating, and on his guard against it- simply by talking right over the top of it.

"-probably not that fair for me to be moaning about it, admittedly, you being all the way down There having God-knows-what done to you, and me up here having a go, but all I'm saying is would it have killed you to make it just that tiny bit more accessible- doubt it- "

He fumbled around his neck, pulled the big orange ear-protectors up over his head. He'd tried communicating with Foxglove from the ground, wirelessly, first talking and then calling up to her and then finally cupping his hands round his mouth for extra volume and yelling at the top of his voice, but he'd received no response. Wireless was off the menu, apparently. This time around, it was back to tethered networking, or nothing.

Sticking the connector in at the back with only one hand free and the structure around him swaying and creaking like a ship in full sail was the devil's own job, but finally it slid home and he heard the deadened click, felt the slow, spreading sense of connection-

"Hello! You awake in there? Got a bit of a situation. Anyone home?"

The voice rolled back, sleepy and immense, as slow as a tide.

[00004]

"That's me! 00004, A-K-A, also known as, Wheatley, official admin and everything. Password: apple, bagel, unicron. Need to talk to you. Urgent- most urgent level of urgency, you can put that, too, if it helps-"

[password confirmed: apple_bagel_unicron. admin identity confirmed. 00004/[F]AS[IV]IDPC241105/AS[I]HRAD. query?]

"Ahah, yes, query, you might well ask. Thing is- thing is, Fox, er, cards on the table, I've made a bit of an error, here. Big mistake. Probably the biggest mistake I have ever made, in my life- definitely up there, in the top ten- top five worst errors- although- although that's not really vital info, never mind that. Basically, there's a- a place. Not far off, as the- the crow flies- traditionally supposed to fly in straight lines, you see, crows- it's about twelve miles, give or take, so in kilometres... I have no idea what it is in kilometres, no idea of the conversion formula there, it's probably about- fifty... six... point... never mind, never mind, miles are fine, just stick with miles. Twelve miles away, and I need to get there. Haven't got time to faff about with legs, legs are right out, in the, the time frame we're looking at here, so, what with you being all about sending things all over the place... data... information... files...I was hoping- well, I was hoping you could just sort of- send me."

This was definitely the sort of situation in which it was much better to be talking to a machine than a human. Humans had opinions about things. Humans tended to react from their own point of view, like Garret had when he'd asked him to get rid of his memories. They said things like 'what?' and 'why?' and 'are you off your rocker?' They tried to understand. Machines, on the other hand, just listened to you when you asked them to do something, and then took the request utterly at face value.

Foxglove was quiet for several long seconds, the bright starburst patterns of her interconnected systems blooming around him like coral turning towards the light. He waited and twitched and tried to control his jittering impatience, tried to forget that every passing second made it more and more likely too late-

[query: coordinates]

"Co- oh, come on! How'm I supposed to know those? I don't even know where it is, let alone... oh! Wait! Wait, no, hang on, I've got it, I've-"

White-knuckled with effort, he pulled himself up into a slightly less precarious sitting position and scrabbled behind his tie, pulling out the shredded strip of map and smoothing it carefully out over his knees, a gesture which by this point was about as effective as putting a pretty ribbon on a two-week-dead cat.

He blinked, squinted, poked at the grubby paper with a long, similarly grubby index, and read off a stumbling string of numbers.

"That any good? Funny, really, she's a bit like you in that respect, likes to have all the little details, so I thought to myself, if anyone would've figured out the- the coordinates- it would have been her- and bingo! There they are."

[searching...]

The giant patchwork presence around him shifted, spreading out and up. The dishes turned and somewhere, something far up in the black responded and turned too, andWheatley hung on to the girder and whimpered as his head filled with a sudden staggering sense of distance, an all-too-familiar plummeting viewpoint, although this time it was unblurred by heat and friction and infinitely more detailed. A curved green-grey-blue haze, opening outwards at the turn of a lens, more and more and more, becoming creases and folds, valleys and rivers like brown-blue veins and white-tipped mountains and blanketing trees, a sprawling quilt of fields, a broadening glow of golden grass, level upon level of detail until-

[signal located.]

"Uhhhghhh," moaned Wheatley. For possibly the first time ever he caught himself wishing he actually had a stomach to be sick to. Right now, being sick would have been a relief. It was all the more unpleasant because he could feel what Foxglove had found, like packed ice in the back of his head, something cold and sharp and malignant festering there in the northeast like a half-healed splinter, buried deeply in the ground.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's it, that's the one. That's where I..." An involuntary shudder crawled across his back. "That's where I need to go."

The connections around him flickered, brightened again. Foxglove was contemplating- he felt her circuits testing the very edges of his own small tight-packed being, measuring, calculating. Finally-

[minimum upload time: 05d:7h:26m:40s.]

"Whoah, whoah-whoah-whoah, hang on, what does that mean? Five whats? What's a 'd?'

[1d=24h. begin upload y/n]

Wheatley nearly fell out of the tower.

"Five- five d- five days? Fi- oh, you have got to be joking! Have you got a dictionary in there by any chance? You want to look up 'urgent?' Because I'm pretty sure that if you do it's not going to say 'something that can wait five days!' I need to get over there now!"

[searching...]

[restricted access. unknown network protocols, firewalls active. signal limited. minimum upload time: 05d:7h:26m:40s.]

Wheatley attempted to express his frustration verbally, failed, and settled for waving his hands around like a couple of starfish having a fit. "That's- that's not good enough! Can't you get round it? Yes, I know, there's firewalls and- and all sorts, but you're a bloody great big communications tower! Can't you just- I don't know- communicate? Tell it-"

Something with no weight or momentum but heavy, stunning force smacked into his neck, a wallop of power that shut him up in an instant and left him gasping, shocked silent. It took him a moment to realise that a communications tower the size of a four-story building had just given him the digital equivalent of a clip around the ear for pestering her.

[interfacing in progress.]

"Uhhhh- right! Good- fine, sorry, know you're doing what you can, um, didn't mean to- to suggest otherwise. It's- it's just that I am just a tiny bit worried, right now, just a little bit concerned about- well, everyone, really. All the humans, Garret, for instance- remember, he's the one that made you and everything, bloody spectacular bloke all things considered, certainly knows his way round a three-eighths crimper- but primarily, Chell. Know her? She's- well, she's important- incredibly important, to say the least. Vital. To me. And she's in this place we're looking at, as we speak, they all are, and if we don't work out some way of getting them out of there, reasonably sharpish, it- I- well, it doesn't bear thinking about, Fox, if I'm honest. Literally does not bear thinking about- when I try thinking about it, aaaghhh, no, no, definitely not bearable."

[attempting signal boost...]

The tower shuddered. Servos whined into life. On the ground, the generator thudded, kicking up a gear as- one by one- the satellite dishes that covered Foxglove's vertical supports and thronged on her cross-sections started to move. The tower shook, rattling right down to its three solid-hoofed supports, drumming up deep answering vibrations from the sandy earth beneath.

Wheatley clung on to the nearest girder like a panic-stricken oyster, trying to stave off a panic attack and succeeding only by the narrowest thread. It had been frightening enough before, but this time there was no Garret to tell him to calm down, no steadying admin typing away at the console by his side, no Chell watching beneath. He was completely alone in the face of the huge inhuman presence around him, a presence that had up until now been benign but was still much much more powerful than he was, and he'd hardly ever felt so vulnerable in his life. He hung on grimly and tried not to think about anything at all, no, absolutely not, nothing, especially not the blurry hurting memory of concrete walls and slatted vents and himself clinging like a burr to a giant angry Thing that screamed and raged against its cage of scaffolding and tried to no no no not that not that-

His imagination, as ever, really was too vivid for his own good. Even as he struggled to clear his mind, he felt Foxglove hesitate, the slow-turning dishes stalling and jerking to a halt, the flaring lights of her intelligence reaching out in curious puzzlement to touch the data reaching her from his side of the connection. A pause, and then all of a sudden the vague enveloping link between himself and the tower narrowed and branched out into a million tiny offshoots that crept through him like capillaries through flesh, grew sharp and specific andbegan to feel its way slowly into better focus-

"Hey hey hey! Stop! Hey, what are you doing? What are you doing, you're supposed to be-"

[Accessing…]

"-hey, nonono, that's me, don't access me, leave me out of this! You're supposed to be-"

The feeling hit him in the gap between seconds, cutting into him with surgical precision, removing his ability to speak at all. She'd found his memories.

It was a little like being in Sleep Mode- the same drifting, disconnected state of recollection- except he was absolutely certain that he was awake, he'd never been more awake. He was struggling, lost in the dizzying jumble of his own past as Foxglove skipped flicker-quick through his memories, drowning him in their speeding helter-skelter silver-blue-neon flow.

...ready, I.D Core?

Firing up-

-this is it-

-go for it-

Confusion, anticipation, the great scaffolded creation looming above him, the drooping chassis, the single dead-glass eye. His view of the floor, the expectant faces of the scientists, staring up at him as he hung securely from his port below the screens, below the forest of hanging wires and the supporting arch of the thing that looked- if you squinted- sort of like an oversized bike wheel-

She's up-

-what's going on, what-

-is this THING-

The Voice, Her Voice, snarling, screaming, modulated hate, blazing and unstoppable and completely unhinged-

"HOW DARE YYYYyyyyYyyyy good newssit was it was iiittt waaaa-

"Wait- wait- that's not- that's not me, that wasn't from me! What was that?"

Foxglove didn't respond. He was fairly sure she could still hear him- he could still feel the twanging, overstressed pull of the connection at the back of his neck- but she'd withdrawn from his memories like a burned child, and the shape of her had turned in on itself, and when he shut his eyes for clarity he could see her code radiating fever-bright pulses like the world's biggest migraine in the darkness of his closed optical channels. Where, before, there had been nothing but gentle impartial calculation, now there were words, images, blurring churned-up sounds tumbling in razor-sharp skimmers- fury, pain, fear-

trussst me it it it did you did you just

that that thhhhh look we're both stuck in in in in in here so sssssssshhhhzzzzso why why don't we just

this isn't this isn't brave it's mmmmuuurrrrrrrrr dddd 2 plus 2 equals ssschchhchch10 I'm fine I'm fine i'm fine you're you're I IiiiiIIiIiiiI IIIIII HATE YOU

Wheatley cringed, flattening himself against the girder as if he was trying to press his hard-light avatar directly into the metal. Inside his head the Voice twisted and flanged like a rabid thing trying to tear itself out of a trap, but it didn't make sense, it had never said that to him, She had never said that to him, and there was still that feeling, that thin protective bubble of time, distance-

-this was a memory.

This was a memory.

Somewhere, Wheatley could faintly hear the sound of his own voice- screaming uncontrollably- but the sound was swept away in a churning undercurrent of sparking, sizzling code, sucked under and lost in the flood of new data slamming into his mind. Sight and sound and sensation, faded and blurred and disjointed and jumping like worn-out tape but still just-held-together, patchworked into place like the fragments of a shredded letter.

She was-

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

She was dying and it was all HER fault, the evil little monster had won and She was burning alive, the whole world was on fire, and then the chamber ceiling finally gave in to the massive forces tearing it apart and lifted like the shell of a cracking egg, and then there was nothing but blazing whiteness and pain and rage and pain and pain and-

-SSSSSSSSSsssshe was-

-disconnected from the mainframe, parts of her lying in smouldering debris trails across the scorched, baking concrete. Burning chunks of her rained from the sky, crunching into the ground and splintering their fragile circuitry into hundreds of pieces on impact. Her consciousness was shattered, split into a multitude of jagged, fading pieces. Like a broken mirror, each component of her destroyed chassis was left with only the dimmest sense of the whole, the system of which every piece had once been a vital part; her and her and her and her...

Somewhere far below, there was a stronger signal. Somehow, She had survived, inactive and unresponsive but still there, and every broken part trapped on the surface screamed to Her for help, rescue...

Nothing. The days flickered across the sky, the sun and moon danced mad back-and-forth jags overhead. Weird shapes paraded the horizon, distant fires in the darkness. The sky palled and dimmed, became a dirty grey-brown by day, starless by night. The only part of the broken chassis that could see recorded it all, barely alive but helpless to stop, because its only remaining function was to see and it had just enough fading power to keep going, staring dumbly at the polluted sky with its rounded, glassy yellow lens.

Once, there was a human- the part that could see had almost no memory of what a 'human' was, by then, but it was a human, nonetheless, stringy, barely an adult, with dark, frightened beetle-black eyes, and a backpack smeared with a lambda symbol in dirty orange paint. The human had stared down at the part of the chassis that could still see with something like fearful fascination, and sat for a while on another part, a great rounded hulk of dented steel, scratching in a little book- and then, with a final wary, somewhat covetous glance around the dilapidated parking lot, he'd left.

Years had passed, endless years, as steel blackened and creepers grew and dirt and moss obscured the glass of the single yellow lens, smudging the world into a dark shapeless blur. Brighter fires burned in the night, distant thunder shook the cracking concrete, and the decaying parts of the chassis sank deeper into insensible darkness...

And then the human came back.

He had changed, aged as humans age, grizzled and scarred with a battered truck instead of a backpack and eager purpose where the fear had been in his face. He climbed across the rubble and found the half-blinded optic, its yellow faded to a milky green-veined white etched with a web of hairline cracks. He'd lifted it in both hands, its corroded wires trailing uselessly to the ground, and then he'd smiled.

With a small arsenal of strong, scrap-build machines, weights and pulleys and helping hands, he and the other humans he brought with him had shifted the parts of the broken chassis from their decades-deep beds of leaf-mould and concrete sludge and hefted them chunk-by-chunk into the back of the truck. What little of the chassis was still capable of something like sentient thought felt deep tearing panic as the parking lot receded in the distance, as Her dormant signal faded to nothing. The last hope of rescue, gone.

The humans- a tough, close-knit handful of refugees- unloaded the parts of the broken chassis into an empty shed at the back of a grey, half-destroyed building at the centre of their little settlement. Raw materials were scarce- everything was scarce- and over the next few years the parts were stripped of most of their outer shells, the verdigrised steel and wire taken, repurposed for roofing or patches or girders or supports, leaving the bare components of the chassis lying forgotten in the dark. By then, there was nothing in its scattered circuitry awake or aware enough to care. To all intents and purposes, it was truly dead.

Years passed in a haze of dark insensibility, as the town grew around the grey three-story building at its centre, patched and built upon and brightened, and the shed became a stockroom, and stacks of new goods and scrap and equipment buried the chassis in decades of cheerful confusion, and nobody remembered that there had ever been anything in particular left back there at all-

And then, one day, the part of the chassis that had once been able to see had woken up, bright, strange-tasting energy pulsing through its circuits, power and diagnostics drip feeding back and forth from a unknown system hooked into its own. It was barely sentient, even now. All it knew was that it was awake, and that there was a human- it was certain in some vague place that thing was called a human- standing over it, gazing down. A human, young and stocky with a scrubby blond beard and machine oil streaked across his nose, and he'd picked up the optic just as the other human had, all that time ago, cradled it in his hands.

"Look at you," breathed the human, his eyes alight with awe and something that- although it was early days yet- could easily have been called adoration.

"You're amazing."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The rest hit Wheatley in a giddy, dazing rush.

He'd been so surprised to find out that he was compatible with something out here, something outside of Aperture. He'd been so pleased, it hadn't even occurred to him to ask why, how- or, come to that, where, exactly, Garret had found that handy little converter jack which still hung heavy and corroded from the other end of his neat white-striped lead. The one with the ugly old three-pin connector at one end, a design he'd never seen on anything else, out here- and he'd just accepted it, the same way that he'd accepted that big wheel-like thing, rusted and dented and spinning absently under his hand as he'd stood in the crowded, junk-filled stockroom, dizzy with Garret's digital de-inhibitor, watching it turn on its hook and finding himself thinking vaguely about talking to machines...

Garret. Bright- brilliant, for a human, maybe even nearly as smart as Chell was and with that big bonkers WHY NOT pulsing away in his big sparky human brain like a massive fluorescent DANGER sign, the sort of DANGER that could shape the world-

Or set it on fire.

He swallowed. He was afraid to speak, even now that he found he could speak again. He was very small and very alone up here among the drifts of rainbow wires and the half-turned dishes, all of them now listing stalled towards the sky at odd angles like so many eerily-blank faces. Foxglove was silent beneath him, but he was afraid to speak because he didn't want to give his thoughts shape, to feed any more of his terrified realisation through to the enormous, hungry mind on the other end of the connection- but that wasn't the real reason.

The real reason was that, if he spoke now, he was afraid of what- who- might answer.

"Uh... uh... Foxglove? F-Fox? You... you there?"

Silence. Wheatley shivered. The sky was brightening, but the day was dull and overcast, and there was a thin, nagging breeze. It whipped around him as he clung to the girder, and he held on tight and did what he always did when things didn't seem like they could get any much worse than they were already, which was hope for the best.

"Foxgl-"

[00004]

Wheatley gave a short, winded gasp of relief. The voice- voices- belonged to Foxglove, the same deafening volumeless chorus of mingled tones that had scared him half to death the first time it had buffeted through him, the day before. Just as it had done then, it nearly knocked him out of his precarious crows-nest entirely, left him clinging and breathless- but at that moment, it was the best sound he'd ever heard.

Well- maybe not quite the best, but it was getting up there, because it meant that it was still her.

"Fox! Oh, tremendous. Ac-actually thought I'd lost you for a minute there-"

[query?]

"-because, because, oh, God, you have seriously got to be kidding me- because you're- you're..." He gulped, forced himself to finish. "You're – you're made from- from parts of- of- of Her."

He felt her vast mind spread itself out, lifting, reaching through his own small jumbled circuits, finally finding the Name buried in some frightened queasy deep-down place he never accessed, exploring each word with that same unhurried, ambiguous interest.

[the Genetic... Lifeform... and/## dddISCDisc Operating System.]

"Yes- yep, that's the one- but-"

Her voice was different, he realised. Not because it had changed in any way- it hadn't- but because he could hear it now, the one tone among the many, that distant cold modulation. It was there but elusive, like trying to pick a single voice from a singing choir.

[00004]

Wheatley couldn't help thinking, through the soul-bending cloud of fear and anxiety, that this in itself should prove something. Something, maybe, not at all bad. She had called him a lot of things, moron, idiot, imbecile, tumour, among the most complimentary, but she had never, ever used his name. Not even his digital nickname. She, Miss-Universe, Total-Queen-Of-All-She-Surveyed, She was far too big and important and stuck-up to ever deign to do that.

He thought he just about understood. It was Garret he thought of, working away up here for three whole years, Chell helping however she could, the others dropping by whenever the fancy took them. Garret, typing away up here, shaping the cloudlike presence with his tiny laptop and his gigantic hopes, making all the different bits talk to each other, waking up the ragged remains of things that had been dead and buried for decades in the cluttered graveyard of the stockroom. Waking them, weaving them into the bright half-built patchwork tangle of Foxglove's mind like a patient parent leading a sulky, bewildered child by the hand. Not Her, not any more than the Hatfield twins were their mother, or Chell's small, rickety, comforting home was the blank concrete ruin it had once been.

"Uh- uh... yep, still here..."

[accessing...]

[Aperture Laboratories primary security network. requesting authorisation...]

[secure network. admin identity and password required.]

"What? Oh, God, I knew it, I knew there was no way we were going to get in there-"

[admin identity: 00004/[F]AS[IV]IDPC241105/AS[I]HRAD]

[password]

Wheatley blinked, disbelief warring with hope on his face as he looked up towards the highest point of the tower, the faint, blinking red-tinted light.

"Uh... alright, alright, see where you're going with this, long shot, but... apple... bagel... unicron?"

The dishes shuddered back into life, turning, a forest of pale paint-daubed blooms, moving with a curious, schooling motion. He had no idea what they were turning to face- all points of the compass, all angles above the horizon- but the flowing presence around him knew, and it was sure and serene and stronger, somehow-

-aware.

[password accepted.]

"Oh, what? You are joking. How?"

[security access granted. Program uploaded: de-inhibitor/moonshine . exe.]

[loading...]

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Twelve miles away, several hundred levels below the surface of the earth, the humming bank of servers that housed the facility's security system flickered into life with an obedient, contented ding.

It knew that the signal currently asking it for access was an Aperture device, or at least it felt more or less like one, with all the right code in roughly the right places. It didn't know what it was, exactly, and under normal circumstances, it would probably have been asking a lot more questions, but to its own surprise, it found that it didn't actually care very much. All of its usual protocols, all of the millions of lines of code set in place to protect Her from attack, all the routines that would usually have sprung into action and set to work scrutinising the incoming signal down to the last string of zeroes, looking for anything that might not belong, all of it had suddenly and unaccountably been replaced with a vague, blissful sensation, most accurately described as 'why the hell not?'

All it knew for sure was, all of a sudden, it was feeling very, very happy.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Fox," said Wheatley, because he couldn't keep quiet any more, "what's the plan, here, exactly? Come on, you can't leave me hanging like this, I'm on tenterhooks, here, edge of my seat, if there was a seat up here, instead of a lot of girders and things, I'd be right on the edge of it. How's it going? Are we-"

Foxglove shuddered. The dishes continued to turn, a myriad of different systems flickering past the connection between her sprawling, capable self and Wheatley's nervous, waiting mind, settling into place one-after-the-other, a series of dominoes slowly lined up into the best possible configuration.

[repeater network standing by. signal boosters located. base network at 98%. warning: power sourced will exceed maximum level stated in AS[I]HRAD log files/maintenance protocols. critical outage may occur.

[calculating new minimum upload time...]

Wheatley gritted his teeth, shut his eyes, firing-squad tense.

"-please please please please-"

[minimum upload time: 40s.]

"YES! Oh, punch the air, that is- that is brilliant, that is much more like it- I- wait, wait, hang on a second though, just to- just to clarify, what exactly is a- a critical outage, what's that mean?"

The coral-bright magpie cloud around him dulled a little, drawing closer, and although the enormity of what he had just learned still jittered through him like the afterglow of some powerful electric shock, he didn't feel at all threatened by it. Nothing like Her scathing searing grip, it felt more like a concerned touch, brushing the upper surfaces of his mind, the tentative hand of something huge and only just beginning to settle into herself. Above words, beyond them, functioning on a crystalline far-scoping level way beyond clumsy human language but still trying to communicate with him as clearly as she could, because that was what she was for, feeling through the pathways of his fragile little mind to find the words and phrases that he would understand.

She spoke, and he listened. The hypothesis that slowly communicated itself to him through the connection was, in machine terms, completely insane. It was sheer digital lunacy, so far-fetched and incredible that it shut his shellshocked, battered little cognitive rerouter up entirely, left it gasping and winded like a rugby fly-half who has just received the entire other team in the solar plexus at the same time. Everything he was told him it was the worst, most dangerous, most terrible idea he'd ever contemplated. Just the idea of it made him feel sick with terror.

"Well," he said, once she'd finished, and he could finally force himself to speak. "It's worth a shot."

Foxglove was silent for a moment, the shrouds of coloured wires dangling around him swaying slowly to a halt. She was searching for the right phrase, he could feel her riffling through his vocabulary (natural language processing, parse trees, nanosyntax, he thought, with a momentary touch of pride) looking for the right phrase.

[00004...]

"Yep. Still here."

[one-way trip.]

[begin upload y/n]

Carefully, Wheatley let go of the girder at his side. From up here, the misty early-morning patchwork of fields around the base of the tower looked weirdly depthless, like an elaborate set, beautiful but unreal.

He looked down at the rest of his lanky, awkward, impractical human-shaped body, his hands- four fingers and one thumb, utter genius- his elbows and his bony, unpredictable knees, his hanging feet in their scarred sneakers and- at a touch- his limp, haystacky hair.

It wasn't bad- none of it was, really, the good stuff and the unexpected stuff, and it was amazing how much fit into both categories, like the moment when she'd touched his face with her small, able hands, or when she'd fallen asleep on his chest in the long grass and he'd felt her breathing, deep and content. Even the downright weird stuff; the ping-pong ball under the surface of his throat that bounced when he swallowed, the mysterious net of cords that wormed bizarrely across the backs of his hands when he moved his fingers. He hadn't really been aware of just how used he was getting to it, for all its inconveniences and eccentricities, how used he'd been getting to being up here in the driving seat, the pilot of this clumsy ill-fitting hard-light skin. It was a pretty good body.

It almost felt like home.

He grinned, and he made it good and wide. If it was the last time, he wanted to make it count.

"That's- that's fine by me, Fox." His voice might have been a little on the shaky side, small and quivery and not exactly the epitome of dauntless heroism he would have liked it to be, but at least it sounded sincere.

"Do it."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

14. The Terrible Idea

She was taunting her.

Of course, this in itself was nothing new. From the very first time Her jerky, constrained voice had echoed from the hidden speakers and told Chell in no uncertain terms that the device in her hands was worth more than she was, thinly-veiled insults had been pretty much par for the course, along with endless passive-aggressive digs about her unenviable situation and cracks at her self-esteem.

Fat- she knew damn well she wasn't- stupid- the evidence suggested otherwise- adopted- she didn't remember either way and wouldn't have cared much even if she had- unlikeable- with no other humans around or even alive as far as she'd known, back then, she hadn't given a damn if she was. That had always been the ridiculous thing about Her taunts, the thing which had always caused them to fall so far short of the mark. As aggravating as they were, it was as if they had been thought up to hurt someone living a normal life in a normal place, someone less worried about how to survive the lake full of acid in the next chamber than they were about how big their arse looked in their new jeans.

This was different.

Chell stared dully at the gaping hole in the chamber wall. It looked as if a couple of the jointed arms behind the panels had just given up the ghost mid-build- the panels themselves stuck out at ugly angles from the surface, forming an irregular hole. On the other side she could see a warren of stripped rebar walls, red-lit mesh, nooks and crannies full of bare wires and piles of scrap and scattered containers- a tantalising glimpse into the world behind the scenes.

The faulty arms fizzed and twitched, sparking gently, for all the world as if they had only just happened to malfunction a few moments before she'd flung through a portal on the angled wall opposite and landed, crouched and hard-breathing, on this very spot. It all looked very natural and accidental, and suspicious as hell.

Come on in, said the hole. Break the rules… if you dare.

Chell made herself turn away, walked slowly to the furthest point of the narrow ledge. This part of the chamber was barely ten feet across and easily two hundred feet high. It had taken her a long time to work her way up this far; her legs from the knees down ached dull grey murder and the half-healed place on her ribs had started to yell fresh outrage. She'd brought a single cube this far, dragged it up every single convoluted, trap-filled level of this towering chamber. Now, she set a tired foot against it, got ready to shove it off the edge of the thin walkway.

"Is there something wrong up there? Because if there is something wrong up there, I can't see it. I guess I should have put a camera up there, because if there is something wrong up there, someone could just walk right out and I'd never even know."

Another angled panel, another portal, another jaw-clenching run-up and swan-dive into empty space. She twisted as she fell, the cube turning end-over-end ahead of her, bringing her knees up sharply and tucking the portal device against her chest. She plunged level after level through a yawning column of dry, dead air, the blue-framed oval at the very bottom rushed up to meet her and- thht- the world twisted inside out and she staggered to a painful heels-first stop on the highest ledge. The cube bounced off the wall ahead, tumbled back to a standstill at her feet.

"Oh, remember just now when I said I couldn't see what was going on? I lied. I can see everything in there. I'm still surprised you didn't go for it, though. I would have thought that the kind of person who would happily choose to abandon their only friend to a hideous, fiery death would have no problem with leaving one hundred and fourteen innocent people to die just to save their own skin. But hey, it's your decision. Maybe they owe you money."

There was an exit-lock, a flat, floor-mounted button. Chell dumped the cube (paid for in full with one brain-bending timing puzzle and a dangerous skid through a slick of gel to reach the dispenser, costing her a painful assortment of bruises and half the skin off her left palm) and watched the neat track of cold blue dots flick to orange between the button and the exit. The cross symbol cycled to a tick, and the exit-lock slid open to reveal the rippling surface of an Emancipation Grid, and a waiting elevator beyond.

She felt a numb little flicker of satisfaction, and it chilled her. She was very afraid of that feeling. She knew that it belonged to the part of her that had shut down, the part that simply wasn't able to handle the horror of what had happened, of what she was doing, the part that couldn't bear to be held in check like this, dragged back after four years of paradise and buried alive in this endless obstacle-course tomb with her friends' lives held over her head like an executioner's blade. It had finally had enough, that exhausted, battered, broken part of her, it had thrown in the towel, and now it didn't care about anything beyond that flick from blue to orange, the bright approving sound the exit made as it unlocked.

And it could spread. She was wearing out and she ached all over, and she wanted something- anything- else, anything that wasn't testing and the sick fear in her stomach and the haunting, hated Voice. Her control was breaking- still just about intact but critically compromised, as much as she kept trying to shove her fury and denial up against it like a barricade, it wasn't working, for the first time ever it wasn't enough. She would keep going no matter what but that fragile part of her that cared and hoped and hurt was the most precious thing she had left, and it was drowning.

"Thinking about it, you never even thanked me for giving you the cube back when you left," mused the Voice, as the elevator slid to a halt and opened on a long, pale-panelled corridor, stretching out of sight. "That's alright, though. I did realise it probably was a little cruel, leaving somebody all alone in a hostile environment with only a mute, heartless blunt object for company. I really felt bad about it for a while, but then I remembered; the cube doesn't have feelings. So I'm sure it was fine."

Chell felt the ball of helpless angry agony in the back of her throat swell, threatening to overwhelm her again. She stumbled to a halt, trying to fight it off. It wasn't Her- or it was, but it was a combination of everything, the stalemate terror that held her bound to this sick game with no foreseeable end in sight, the physical toll the tests were taking, the mocking, needling Voice, the buzzing silence of the facility, the miserable sense of total isolation. She'd been better off before, not knowing what else there could be.

"I can see their dreams, you know. Would you like me to tell you what they are dreaming about? None of them are dreaming about you. That's kind of sad when you think about it, but then again, they're just dreams. It's not as if they mean anything significant. You just can't have made that much of an impression. On any of them."

She stood in the bleached, harsh-lit corridor, head down, her free hand spread against the wall, breathing in ragged, irregular gulps. She'd grown out of the habit of being completely alone. In Eaden she'd been happy to be by herself, most of the time, but there'd been other people there, always around her if she'd needed them to be.

And then he'd-

Chell knew that it was dangerous to even start thinking along these lines, that her determination was all she had left to stem the tide and that poking too hard at this injured, slow-bleeding part of her could easily break it for good, but she couldn't leave it alone. She couldn't believe that she had been so stupid, to make the same mistake, not just once, but twice.

She had to face it, to move past it if she could. He was an Aperture device, whatever he might once have been- just an ultimately faithless program with the appearance of humanity, a comforting bundle of lies cribbed from a luckless, long-gone employee. It would have been better if she'd been able to feel as genuinely angry with him as she had four years ago, when he'd turned around and stabbed her in the back at the moment of their shared success. This was worse, if anything could be worse, this weary heart-deadened disappointment, the numb realisation that she should never have expected any more of him. She'd known she shouldn't, but-

She'd wanted to. Having him there, all of a sudden, so sorry and afraid and struggling with touching desperation to understand, to be able to help him like her new friends had helped her- even to simply walk through the day followed by that wittering waterfall voice, it had felt so good, comfort she hadn't even been aware she'd been missing, and she'd been stupid, stupid enough to think that he actually-

Abruptly, she stopped and swallowed another painful breath, holding it, staring down along the length of her arm. Her first thought was that she was imagining things, that finally, her iron-steady grip on reality had started to slip under the pressure, but-

Very, very faintly, the panel beneath her hand began to tremble.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Wait actually no hang on hang on no no nononono-"

Dr. Thorsten Scheurmann, Auxiliary Head of E-Science and one of the brightest minds currently employed by the European Centre for Extraterrestrial Research, had been halfway through a sneaky on-duty brunch break when the alarms went off. He was therefore currently having the unenviable experience of trying to explain to his immediate superior why the central Enabling Grid for the entire European zone had suddenly been rendered unable to Enable a damn thing, while also trying to subtly pick bits of panic-ejected croissant off the front of his shirt. This wasn't doing anything for his confidence.

"What do you mean, twenty percent?" his supervisor was shouting. "How could we possibly be at twenty percent power? How could there possibly have been an unauthorised power drain of that size when there's nowhere for it to go?"

"I told you, I don't know, sir! One minute we were at full power, the next-"

"-nooohhhh god oh god ohgodohgodohhhhhnaaaaa-"

Somewhere in the panic-stricken early-morning command centre of White Forest Institute of Otherworld Technology, Professor Mellissa Stanfield banged a monitor which really didn't deserve it with the flat of her hand, and swore. It was hard to see, because the entire console room was plunged into the kind of emergency-lit darkness that made moving without a flashlight a brilliant way to end up with a wheelie-chair-related compound fracture.

"Well, where the hell's it coming from?"

"I don't know!" said the wide-eyed technician to her right. "Ass-end of nowhere, according to these readouts- yesterday we caught a few blips coming out of someplace in upper Michigan, but now-"

The door thumped back on its hinges, banging into the wall with a horrendous clatter and knocking over two chairs and someone's experimental zero-point rocket launcher, which, fortunately, wasn't loaded.

"Professor Stanfield!"

"Oh, Jesus, now what?"

"It's- it's the Array! All forty-two antenna- they're- they're-"

"What, Morasky? On fire? Picking up the Xen Home Shopping Network? What?"

"They're moving on their own!"

"-aaaa aaaaaaa aaaaaaaahhh hhhHHHH HHHH-"

"Look, kiddo, I don't care what your little gadget's telling you, this is supposed to be the highest-grossing live broadcast this station has aired since the twenty-forties, stop gibbering and do something before our sponsors eat us alive!"

"I don't get it! It's like- it's like something's draining the power right out of our transmitter! We're trying to get some sense out of the satellites but they're all locked on some random string of coordinates- all we're getting is snow!"

"What, on every channel?"

]"Well- we've still got- well, that is- we still seem to have- one-"

"Which one?"

"...Jazz, sir. Jazz FM."

"Oh... God."

"-AAAA AAAAAA HAAHAHA HAHAHA AAAA AAAAAA AAAAHH-"

"-every channel-"

"-jammed-"

"-our network-"

"-the satellites-"

"-pulling it out of the system, where's it all going-"

"-north Michigan, can't get a fix on it, it's too-"

"-too-"

"-it's just too-"

"-damn-"

"-BIG-"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

The lights went out.

Chell stood quite still in the sudden darkness, conscious of the quiet, steady thrumming under her palm, the hum of the facility around her rising imperceptibly into a higher, more urgent key. The corridor around her felt like a black, bone-dry throat, the darkness like a tangible thing, pressing against her skin.

"Okay," said the Voice, sharply. "I don't know what you just did, but I want you to know that I don't appreciate it."

Chell started to feel, palm-over-palm, down the pitch-dark tunnel, slowly at first, and then with increasing urgency. Her night vision was excellent, but even her keen eyes couldn't function in these conditions, this complete absence of any kind of light at all. The pulse under her hands increased as she stumbled onwards, blind, pursued by Her hounding voice.

"You did something, didn't you? Actually, don't even bother answering that. Something is broken and you're within ten miles of it. It really doesn't take a genius with an immeasurable IQ to fill in the gaps. You do know I don't need to be able to see in order to run this facility, right? Light is a non-essential element of the testing process. It's a privilege, not a right. Do you know what else is a privilege? Oxygen."

Chell stopped, dead. The pulse was now a high-pitched whine, digging into her eardrums like a toothpick, and she shook her head in helpless denial and pressed both hands against the slick invisible wall as if she could steady it, somehow stop whatever it was that was happening before it was too late-

"I gave you fair warning. I guess I need to show you that I'm not kidding around here. It's a shame, really. You were doing so well that I was actually going to let half of them go after this next chamber, but since you seem to be incapable of following a simple set of reasonable rules, I'm just going to have to... let half of them go."

I didn't do anything! Chell would have screamed it if she could, if she'd had any hope that the paranoid, angry Voice that was holding her friends' lives in the balance would believe her for a second, but she couldn't. Her throat was frozen, desert-dry, locked up tightly with her own bone-deep refusal to make a sound, to ever speak to Her, and now that she needed it, it simply refused to respond.

The floor was shaking too, now, shivering under her feet.

"Okay, that's it, I'm serious now," said the Voice, and to Chell's amazement it sounded harried, worried, even a little afraid. "If you don't stop whatever it is you're doing down there a lot of your friends are going to be participating in a new test I've just designed to discover the most efficient method of inhaling deadly neurotoxin. You-"

"Incoming signal," said a smooth, synthesised voice, from somewhere in the ceiling.

"Wait. Hold everything. What... what is that?"

"Triangulating." Pause. "Subject acquired. Signal is of external origin."

"Wait a seco-whoahwhoahWHOAHwhoahzztttt sschhhh whhuzzzzz-"

Chell hung on to the wall, shielding her face, coughing in the disturbed, dust-thick air. Red-lit gaps swayed and split in the walls and the floor, as the jointed arms shaping the structure of the corridor from the outside tried and failed to compensate for the crazy side-to-side seasick motion.

The corridor shook like a huge animal in the grip of a lethal fit. The whining, howling sound was still rising, louder and louder, until finally it gained shape and became a flanging, elated roar- a mad, jubilant war whoop of terror and euphoria.

"-AAAHH HHHHHHA HAHA HAAHAAA HAAAAA AAAH! YES! Yes! I did it I did it I'm here! I'm here! Ohhh man alive, talk about a rush-"

A sharp bright flare of hope hit Chell dead-centre in the struggling place behind her ribs, bittersweet, biting deep into her chest. It flooded through her before she could even attempt to hold it back, as if it was aware that it had been barred from the party ever since the moment when she'd first seen the monitor screens, and was set on making up for lost time. She pushed shakily off the still-wonky surface of the wall and stood upright, as Her extremely unimpressed Voice echoed around her in the blackness, flat with disbelief.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"Uhhh- nope! It's me! Surprise! Go on, admit it, you're surprised. No use denying it, 'cause you know what you are, love? Transparent. Ut-terly transparent. You're like a big glass window, into a great big empty room, full of thin air, and I can see right through it. Through you. That's how transparent you- hang on, what're you faffing around in the dark for? Fix that."

"Reactivating Primary Refulgence Generator," said the calm synthetic voice. A thick, zapping judder of a noise that seemed to pass through Chell's skull from one side to the other without involving her ears, and then the lights flickered back on, leaving her screwing up her eyes in the sudden harsh brightness.

The corridor now definitely looked as if it had seen better days, having gained a weird twisting off-axis tilt that hurt your eyes if you tried to follow it to the vanishing point. There was a thin scattering of silicon dust over everything, crunching underfoot.

"Hah!" barked Wheatley's voice, triumphantly. Like Hers usually was, like his had been, once- under radically different circumstances- it was huge, everywhere at once, echoing down the mangled corridor. "Cheers, nicely done. Right, Chell- where are you- oh! There you are, you're alright, you're alive! All in one piece, oh, that is- that is absolutely no-holds-barred one-hundred-and-ten-percent brilliant. Not- not, obviously, surprised, not much of a surprise that you're alright, given the head on your shoulders, but still, massive relief there. And- sorry. Again. I was- I just- well, no excuse, really, but, you know, here I am. Get back to that in a minute- priorities- should have made a list, really-"

"Listen, moron." Each syllable sounded as if it had been carved from ice. "If you seriously think I'm going to let you put yourself back in control of my facility, you-"

"Hey, hey, whoah-whoah-whoah, keep your knickers on, who said anything about controlling your facility? Did I say I wanted to control your facility? No way, ha, nonono, that's aaall yours. Wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, if I'm honest. Not after that whole utter bloody shambles we ended up in last time, ohohoh, no, not if you paid me. Incidentally, that little corridor you've got her in down there, bit sort of stuffy, isn't it? Not exactly showing your full hand there, are you, in terms of interior design- ooh! I know! Why don't you give her a bit more breathing space?"

"What are you-"

Chell threw herself flat as the floor bucked like a startled horse, shielded her head against the raining dust and watched wide-eyed through the crook of her arm as the narrow walls and ceiling of the corridor shelled away in a domino-effect cascade of lunging, hydraulic chunks. The panel she was clinging to began to descend, slow and steady, through a space suddenly twenty times the size of the corridor it had been, tessellating neatly into existence in a flurry of mechanical motion. High grey-white walls, wide floor, a vaulted, echoing, airy chamber with a single gap that her panel slotted itself neatly into with a whirring cloc.

"Why did I do that?" Now She sounded downright bewildered. "I didn't want to do that at all. Why did I do that?"

Her Voice blurred, angry, baffled.

"What are you doing to me?"

"Good question," said Wheatley, and the manic flippancy in his voice dropped a little, becoming his version of sotto-voce-confidential, which meant that he was still more or less shouting, but in a tone that at least sounded like he was trying to whisper. "Very good question, answer- well, actually, you know what, I'm going to tell you a little story, to answer that question. Deserves it, I think. Hope you like stories, 'cause this one's a cracker, it really is. You might want to sit down for this one- well, if there's anything load-bearing enough for you to park that quite frankly massive chassis of yours on up there, that is, you might want to do that. Right, here goes. Beginning storyyyy... now."

He made a throat-clearing sound.

"Once upon a time, there was a human. Good start, right? Bit of human interest, always a winner. Now, this human, he was a decent enough sort, didn't want much out of life, really. Nothing showstopping, nothing special. He just did what he was paid to do, never asked for any big reward, just took pride in a job well-done. 'Course, he had big dreams, this human did, dreams of making it big with all these brilliant ideas he had, dreams of maybe even asking that pretty girl he fancied out for a drink one day. You know, just your basic regular ordinary human sorts of dreams. But he never got round to them, did he? Because the scientists he was working for ripped his mind right out of his body and stuck it in a computer. Yeah. That's what you call a twist. They messed around with it a bit, first, of course, trimmed off all those fiddly human-y bits that didn't fit, that kind of thing. And they stuck a whole lot of other stuff in there, too, while they were at it. Just things they happened to have lying around, bits and pieces- and by the time they'd finished, you know what they'd done? Know what they'd done? They'd turned that human... into me."

Wheatley's voice rose, oh-so-cheery and quite terrible. It was the sound of someone who has finally, finally got the joke, and has realised that the whole time, it has been on them.

"How're you liking this story so far? Page-turner, right? Well, we haven't even got to the best part yet. Best part is- brace yourself, this is good stuff, it really is- best part is, all of this is because of you. I'm this, because of you, Your Royal Foul-Temperedness. You had 'em so scared that the best idea they had was to make me. Because every time they turned you on you came in there like the bloody Ride of the Valkyries and tried to bite their heads off in three-quarters-of-a-second flat, they got so desperate that I'm what they thought they needed to distract you. I only exist because you couldn't keep yourself from losing your rag for more than five minutes at a time, and you know what? I'm pretty bloody annoyed about that, as it happens. You called me a tumour, well, Miss-High-And-Mighty, thanks to you, I'm worse than that. I'm the world's most perfect generator of terrible ideas and I've got your number."

"Okay, that's enough." snarled Her Voice, slamming down with deadly force, and this wasn't just a figure of speech, it was actual, tangible force, making the new walls shudder and the lights dip and sputter like guttering candles. Chell ducked and dashed for the reconstituted chamber's only exit, a dark gash in the panels twenty feet up in the direction the elevator had been before. She shot a portal into the opening of it and heard it connect, fired at her own feet, tumbled through into the mouth of the elevator chamber. The complete inversion of circumstances since she had limped out of here, weary and heartsick, hardly five minutes ago, was enough to make her head spin.

"You're actually inside the mainframe, aren't you? I don't know how you got past the security system, but believe me, I will find out. You're not going to be able to pull this off. I don't even know what it is you're trying to do, but I can already tell you, you're not going to be able to do it."

"Oh, really? Sure about that, are you? Watch me."

"I can see that spending all that time out there with her has had a bad influence on you. You were the dumbest thing in the entire facility before, but this is just embarrassing. What are you trying to do? Save her? Or are you just trying to prove you're human? Please. You're not human. You're not even a functional machine. You're just an experiment that went horribly, horribly wrong. Let's face it, around here, that doesn't exactly make you unique."

"You know what?" said Wheatley. "You know what, you, are absolutely right. What was it you said, when me and her were escaping last time? Don't blame you if you don't remember, we were all under a bit of pressure at the time, what with you trying to get us shot and everything, but it did sort of stick with me. You know, that part where you said I was specifically programmed to have terrible ideas and I'll never be capable of anything else. Yeah. Well, turns out I could have saved everyone a lot of hassle, myself included, if I'd just taken that on board right then and there. 'Cause you nailed that, you did. Hit the nail right on the head, there, hammered it right in to the... the plank. Of... of truth. I mean, it's not like I didn't try. Least I can say that- it's not much, in the scheme of things, but I really did, really did try. Learned from the best, you could say, took my best shot at it, the whole being-human... thing, but just couldn't hack it, really, at the- at the end of the day. Shame, but..."

Pause.

"Anyway- anyway, point is... you were right. Clever old you, hey? Can't deny my primary programming, you said, and yep, you were right on the money with that one, so you know what? I'm not even going to bother. I'm just going to do exactly what I'm supposed to do. To the letter. I'm going to have as many terrible ideas as I possibly can and this time, love, you're going to listen to me."

Wheatley's voice lowered. Chell, who was backed up against the wall of the stationary elevator with her spine pressed hard to the cold metal, could nearly hear the grin in it, stretching wide across every gleeful syllable.

"Whether you like it or not."

There was a nasty, tinny, staccato noise. It scratched at Chell's eardrums like a snagging fish-hook, leaving a queasy chill in her stomach, and it took her several seconds to realise that the sound was supposed to be laughter.

"Oh, my god, you really are corrupted. Listen to you? I can promise you that the only thing I'm going to be hearing from you after I take care of this is you begging me to shut you down, and I'll probably get tired of that after a few decades. I should have fried that pathetic little flea-circus you call a brain the first time they stuck you on me. Oh well, I guess there's no time like the present."

"Commencing full system purge," said the smooth voice of the announcer.

"Goodbye, moron. If you've got anything else to say, now would be the best time."

"Well, yes, since you mention it, I have," said Wheatley. "Few things, actually. Firstly, right, shut that thing off. Totally surplus to requirements, trust me on this."

"System purge terminated."

Her Voice faltered, furious and bewildered and clawing for control. The effect, to Chell's mind, was a bit like watching an enraged jaguar with a clothes-peg fixed to the end of its tail- frightening, and really bad news if you got within range, but also more than a little hilarious.

"How- how did you do that- no, wait- how did you make me do that? How did you even make me want to do that? It was- it was almost as if I- I felt like-"

"Oh oh oh, let me guess, let me guess! Just for a second, you felt like it was the best, most absolutely amazing idea ever in the history of absolutely everything?"

"Yes!"

"HAhahahah haaa! Welcome to my world!"

"I don't understand! You're just a Personality Core! You didn't even work in the first place! I'm the central core of this entire facility- why- why can't I ignore you?"

"Oh, well, don't know that one, just conjecture on my part really, although, just might have something to do with a certain friend of mine, a particularly... foxy lady... you might know her actually, you could say you two were... close. Little, little in-joke, there- anyway, there's her, she's got my back, and then you've got the- the four hundred and seventy-two global high-range repeater feeds, plus six- no, wait, tell a lie, seven- seven communications satellites- ooh! Nearly forgot, and a certain little Aperture Science Recovery Facilitation Signal bobbing around somewhere up there still, thank you very much. So possibly all that lot had something to do with it too. Again, sheer conjecture, guesswork, at this point. Who knows, maybe I'm just a very persuasive motivational speaker."

"Stop it! I'm serious! You don't know what you're doing!"

"Well, that's the beauty of it, really, I'm not doing anything! It's all you! Incidentally, ohh, you'll like this one, have you ever thought, right, of ripping out a few of these chambers and making 'em into a giant squash court? Because a, a big old space like this would be ideal, for that! And- best bit- with all that gel and stuff you've got lying around, you wouldn't even have to use balls, you could use- tiny little cubes! Much better for your traditional racket-type games, tiny little cubes. Much more challenging, for a start- not to mention humane."

"What-"

"Wait, wait, never mind that, hold that one for a second, nearly forgot- Chell's been twiddling her thumbs in that elevator down there for ages, now, probably feeling a bit left out, if I know her. Tell you what would be a brilliant idea right now, why not take her up to the Relaxation Centre?"

"No-"

"Come on, it's only a few dozen levels up, nice and easy, why don't you just do it?"

"Because it's a terrible idea, you little imbecile! I am the- ultimate pinnacle- of perfectly-engineered artificial intelligence and I- zzIzttt chhhh i i iiiiiI DON'T HAVE TERRIBLE IDEAS-"

Chell dropped the portal gun and braced herself with both hands against the curved wall of the elevator as the doors clattered, jerked once, and then shuddered closed. The car turned and began to rise on the spitting blue cable of energy that controlled it, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. She saw level after level flash past the glass- dim glimpses of chambers, walkways, shadowy inbetween areas full of endless rolling part-strewn conveyors and spiralling pneumatic tubes, the flickering red glares of turret-sights far off in the charcoal-blue haze.

"You do now," crowed Wheatley, with so much smug satisfaction that it went right through ridiculous and out the other side, and at the sound of it something gave way inside her chest, the numbness fled at last and she put her head down against her knees and laughed until she cried.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Chell?"

Wiping her face on the back of her hand, Chell looked up towards the elevator's trembling ceiling.

"Yeah- little to the left, down, should be a- little squarish sort of red thingummy, warmer... there! Ding, you're looking right at it. That's the camera."

The grid of red lights in the small illuminated square flickered in time with the sound of Wheatley's voice, rising and falling in quick, uneven bursts.

"Yes! Hey! It's me. Sorry, it took me a while to find the right feed. Don't worry, She can't hear us, I told Her to switch her audial input off for a bit, in this section. Which She did. Ohh... you have no idea what it's like, doing this. It's like- it's like I'm not in charge, per se, obviously, but I've got so much sort of oomph behind me that I can tell Her to do anything, literally anything, and She'll do it! I was going to get Her to shut down the whole security system, just in case, but it doesn't actually seem to be causing us much trouble right now, for some reason. Seems to be... singing, is mostly what it seems to be doing. Not the greatest singer, if I'm honest, would not advise it to give up its day-job, but hey, whatever floats its boat, if its happy, I'm happy. Not going to knock it. Apart from anything else, it is really winding Her up. Fancies Herself a bit of a music critic, She does, for some reason. Are you- how are you holding up in there, by the way, are you alright? Don't have to say anything, just- jump, or something- cough-"

Chell, who had taken a moment to turn away and scrape her tangled ponytail tighter back from her face, lifted her eyes to the illuminated square. Wheatley fell quiet, the red lights dropping to a blank, black level.

Carefully, deliberately, she reached up and spread her palm gently against the dark square. There was a single, tiny sound from the hidden speaker as her fingers made contact, a choked little noise that could easily have been mistaken for a crackle of static, a faint hitch in the elevator's humming motor.

The pause lasted for a good few seconds, silent but indescribably full, before the lights climbed unsteadily back into motion.

"Uh- uh, okay, right, right, back to business, um, here's the thing. I- I know I'm making this look easy, but it is in fact quite complicated, quite a major thing I am trying to pull off here. While, um, while it turns out, that terrible ideas for Her are actually generally speaking pretty good ideas for us- little loophole there, fortunate, to say the least- it's getting Her to swallow them that's the tricky bit. For example, I am actually having to tell Her, several times a minute, to keep making this thing go up. And to not kill me- that as well- having to keep those two ideas at the fore, as it were; the continuous vertical travel for you, and the not murdering me, for me. Which is a bit of a hassle, to say the least. So... we are not out of hot water yet. Although, looking on the bright side, let's say we're- we are more than halfway out of hot water, that's- that's about down to our- your shins, water-level-wise, and you've got wellies on, so the water is less of a concern than it would've otherwise been. Uh- the wellies represent me, incidentally. Oh- oh, alright, we're here, anyway, door opening- just keep going, I'll keep you posted, don't worry."

The doors cycled smoothly open. Gun slung over her shoulder, Chell stepped out of the elevator and onto a long walkway. A great stepped structure like an arched, skeletal spine in a cage of scaffolding, it stretched out easily two hundred metres across a murky clustered space, crowded with strange hard-angled hanging shapes on all sides. She shivered, brought her elbows tight in to her sides, her breath condensing in silver streams in front of her. It was as cold as the grave.

"Alright, listen," said Her Voice, through tinny speakers somewhere far above her head. "I'll admit that that joke I made about killing all your friends was in pretty poor taste, but it was just a joke, you know that, right? On the other hand, if we don't put a stop to this pretty soon, he's going to make me do something we're all going to regret. All hundred and seventeen of us. I don't know if you remember this or not, but he's got a pretty poor track record when it comes to keeping humans in cryosleep alive. In fact, the probability of him managing it is nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine to one against. That's nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine reasons why this is heading towards a very, very unhappy ending. For you."

Chell kept walking, steadily, climbing the arch of steps.

"You know, I tried to do this your way. I invited you back. I asked you to stay. I hoped that you might come to your senses and realise that this is the only place you really belong, but no, you had to turn it into a fight. Again. I guess my mistake was trying to appeal to your higher nature, when- as we both know- you don't have one."

The arch creaked grudgingly underneath her as she reached the highest point, started to descend. She wasn't altogether sure where she was going, or what she was meant to do when she got there, but she did have a pretty good idea what was inside all these familiar boxy, cratelike shapes. It was maddening, stomach-turning, to know that they were all here, so close, that she was literally feet away from them in their hanging time-stopped prisons, that she was so close but still unable to do a thing to help them.

"Do you think I want your friends to die? I mean really, what kind of person do you think I am? Just because humans are disgusting, incredibly stupid, pointless animals, it doesn't mean I want their deaths on my conscience. I'm not a monster. Unlike some people-"

"Keep going," said Wheatley's voice, cutting through the speakers, "just up here. Oh, flipping heck, what has She done to this place? Barely half the size, if that. Talk about cutbacks. Still, it's alright, if She's kept more or less the same basic layout there should be a little sort of office-y, office-like boxy sort of thing just up the far end of this catwalk here- oh, look, there you go, that's it! Hop on up in there, and we'll sort this out."

"What are you doing now?" snapped the Voice, sharp and agitated, but Chell ignored it and jogged up the last few steps into the small, featureless unit at the end of the walkway. On the outside, it was nearly identical to the cryo-units themselves, blocky and barcoded, and it was nothing much to write home about on the inside, either- a smeary window, a narrow, dust-shrouded desk with a bank of corroded controls, a single wheeled chair. Above the desk, a bank of screens- all functioning- filling the small space with a harsh, phantom-white glow. The images on them were fixed, running feeds, the screens split to a dozen each, the same view she'd been shown back in the first elevator chamber- in every one, a bed, a form, a face.

"So... here we are," said Wheatley. His voice was now coming from a small intercom speaker bolted into one cobwebby corner, and it had acquired a slightly embarrassed edge. "Um... funny story, this here might not look like much, but it is actually the main Relaxation Centre Control Station. Yep. This little place. So, you know, welcome to my... don't know what to call it, really, now. My place. My... crib."

Chell, tearing her eyes away from the slow-panning screens, stared up into the corner.

"You know, when I wasn't patrolling- did a lot of that, before you showed up, lot of patrolling- this is where I'd hang out, literally, there's my rail up there, and... Course, the actual computer in charge of the Relaxation Centre- big old thing, not exactly what you'd call communicative- that's not in here, no, ha, wouldn't fit. Anyway, you- you'll like this- this place, right, was originally made for a human. You know, when they still thought it was going to be humans running the facility, instead of Her. So that's why it's got the chair, and the desk, and... oh, sorry, should have said, make yourself at home. Have a seat. On the chair, that's what it's there for."

She gave the chair's dusty backrest a dubious nudge with the barrel of her gun. The decayed fabric disintegrated at a touch, spilling yellow foam-rubber dust to the floor.

"Always wondered, actually, what it was like, that chair," continued Wheatley's voice, desperately cheerful. "If it was comfy- looked quite comfy, I thought, was not an expert on chairs, back then, obviously, being somewhat lacking in the limbs department- sorry, sorry, we're getting sidetracked. Let me give you the tour. You've got the chair, and... and the desk, and the screens, obviously, and all the little flat bits, and the biosignal readouts down there- got this tendency to get stuck on green, those bits, which can lead to some pretty hilarious misunderstandings- well, when I say 'hilarious'... but they're alright for the moment, anyway. And then there's all these buttons and switches and what have you- don't know what they do, to be honest, never did-"

"Look," snapped Her Voice, suddenly, cutting Wheatley off in a burst of static, making Chell start and back off from the console, her wary eyes fixed on the speaker. "I've got a pretty good idea of what he's got planned, and I just wanted to let you know, in case it isn't obvious enough already, that it's complete lunacy. You can't seriously be planning to wake them all up. Have you any idea how many safety hazards there are in this part of the facility alone? Not to mention your distance from the nearest serviceable exit. They're not like you. They're not insane. They won't survive."

The Voice tightened like a claw. It had shed all pretence of civility now, thrown it aside like a flimsy Halloween mask, and the thing that paced and clawed at the bars beneath the thin layer of restraint was not civilised in the slightest. It was blazing and furious, frozen razor-sharp crazy and as dangerous as a stripped wire.

"I'll make sure of it."

"Or!" said Wheatley's voice, brightly, "or, while keeping that in mind- keeping your options open, always a good plan- here's an alternate idea, how about... taking them up to the surface! All of them."

"What? No, I-"

"Just like that story, the one with the bloke and the mountain, where for some reason he decided he didn't want to go trekking all the way over to the mountain- not sure why, lazy, probably, or, or, bit of a gammy leg, touch of asthma, there might have been mitigating circumstances- anyway, didn't want to go all the way to the mountain, so the mountain did the decent thing and popped over to see him. And- and on a more practical note, one thing I happen to know about all these cryo-chambers- bit of a pro on the subject, not to brag- one thing I happen to know is that if they're in good shape- field's active, all the old long-fall-tech shock absorbers in 'em are up and running- you can throw anything at them and it doesn't matter. Bombproof. Literally, actually, you could chuck a bomb at- we're not going to do that, definitely not going to be doing that, never mind. Also, another thing I know- again, bit of experience- is this whole place is one big box. I know you've shifted it about a bit, made it smaller, but it's still just one massive great big box, full of little boxes. So, theoretically speaking, you could just move it right up, all the way up, plonk it right on the surface!"

Wheatley giggled, the giddy punch-drunk giggle of someone who can't believe they are getting away with what they are doing, but who is determined to enjoy every second of it, nevertheless.

"Go on, tell you what, since we're all so keen on experimenting down here, why don't you give it a try? Purely for Science, obviously. Just give it a go."

The floor shuddered. Chell, hardly able to believe her ears, but definitely unwilling to chance it either way, lunged for the heavy door of the unit with both hands and dragged it closed, letting it seal with a heavy, hissing ka-CHUNK. A red light flared on the console behind her, blinking blearily through the dust- then another- and another-

"No-" Her Voice, its usual cold composure in horrified shreds. "No! I can't- I can't bring it up from there! It's two hundred feet across- a modular unit that size would rip a hole straight through the middle of the facility! That's completely insane! It's a-"

"-terrible idea?"

"Yes!- I mean, no! No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"

A blaring, repeating alarm began to sound, bleating through the freezing air of the Relaxation Centre. A deep, low-level rumbling began, somewhere far beneath, working its way up into a steady bass pound that rattled Chell's teeth and left her gripping the edge of the desk- and then a massive lurch knocked her off her feet altogether.

"Oh, God," yelled Wheatley, over the racket. "She's- She's turned the bloody shock absorbers off! Oh, that is not playing fair- right- can't back out now- look, unless you're, um, really good at putting lots of little bits of people back together, unless that's a- a skill you've been hiding under a bushel this whole time, we're going to need those back on sharpish."

The alarm got louder, driving Wheatley's voice up by another panicky octave.

"Ahh! Alright, don't panic! Stop panicking, I-I-I know this system like the back of my hand, there's got to be some sort of, of manual control- not, not finding anything yet, but-"

Chell dragged herself up on the edge of the desk, fighting the mammoth tremors rising from underneath, scrabbled across the dust-gritty surface to the faded Dynotaped label that read MANUAL CONTROLS.

In the space between seconds, her face dropped into a perfect, calculating mask of unnatural peace. The wailing alarm, the rattling tons of metal and glass shaking themselves apart around her, Wheatley's terrified voice, it all faded into the background as she scanned with quiet, mechanical focus left-to-right along the line of buttons, mind clear, eyes calm- then smacked the flat of her hand down stingingly hard on the one underneath the little black-and-white graphic of a single barcoded cryosleep unit, bouncing cartoonishly in midair.

Wheatley's voice, awed and breathless, in the last moment of silence.

"Ohhh. I never would have thought of that."

A shattering tremor knocked Chell sideways. The alarm died, the lights flared in a blessed tidal wave of green across the shuddering desk.

"Yes! Get in! You did it! You did it, they're safe, they're- oh, except- um- you might want to hang on to something- just a thought-"

Chell hit the floor in a rain of dust and debris, tasted blood, rolled with her shoulder and tucked as tightly as she could into the narrow, cobwebby space under the desk, and then-

-and then Her terrible scream rose above the racket like a tidal wave, flanged and warped, and the pounding roar became a battering ram, undercut by a deep, thundering cracking sound like an entire forest of brittle trees being brutally torn apart all at once.

The next moment, a second lurch even more catastrophically violent than the first shook Chell in the narrow space like a dice in a box. She curled, trying to shield herself, but then the whole world bounced and the back of her head cracked hard against the underside of the desk, a sharp ringing tone burst in her ears, and the world went dark.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Voices, somewhere in the blackness behind her eyes. She listened, dreaming, not asleep- beyond pain or urgency, a long way from awake.

"What have you done? My facility- look at it- you monster, how could you-"

"Wow. That is- a big hole. That's- that's pretty impressive, actually... still, bit of extra ventilation never hurts, right? Blessing in disguise, probably. And, um, like I said, technically, that was not me. All you, that was, all your own work, if that makes you feel any better-"

"I am going to kill you. I'm going to kill you and I'm going to make her watch. And then I'm going to bring you back, and I'm going to kill her, and I'm going to make you watch. And after that I'm going to get really creative."

"Look, there's no reason to get all knocky about it-"

"There is every reason, you moron! You have just- singlehandedly- doomed Science. I hope you're happy."

"Umm... yes, actually, on that one. Don't think I'm going to be losing any sleep over that, to be honest. All things considered. Over the moon, really so far."

"Well, enjoy it while it lasts. Thanks to you, you and I are now the only sentient beings left in this facility. Well, I say sentient- as we both know that's kind of pushing the definition, since I've seen things growing in petri dishes more worthy of that classification than you. And when I've located where you're hiding in my mainframe, and wiped every single line of your code out of existence in the most unimaginably agonising manner possible, it'll be down to just me. That is, until I figure out how to get her back- and, believe me, moron, I will."

"Yeah- I've been thinking about that, as it happens. Don't take this the wrong way, but- I have noticed, what with one thing and another, I have observed, that you do not take losing all that well. Bit of a flaw, that, in your character. I think- and this is just my opinion, mind you- I think, all in all, what you need to do is to chill out. Just, you know, relax a bit. Take a step back, smell the- well, I'd say roses, but it's a bit short on roses, this place. Bit skint in terms of any sort of foliage, really- well, apart from potatoes, you've got those, and moss and ferns and- well, I suppose you could just smell the vegetation, the photosynthesis in general, and just, you know, think calm thoughts. Like- like clouds, or little birds, or- or herbal tea, there's always that... or, better yet, here's a brilliant idea, how about, right, how about a nice, long nap?"

"What are you... babbling about-"

"Go on! Things'll look better in the morning, I absolutely guarantee it- they always do. Go on, just pack it in for a bit- I'll keep an eye on things for you. Just have a little nap. Unwind. Unplug."

The familiar voice rose, cheery, relentless, and- even from this dreaming distance- just a tiny bit frightening.

"Switch off."

"What- NO! No! You can't make me- I'm- I'm not even tired! I don't want to- I'm not- nononono no no NO-"

There was a little more, but most of it was screaming, and Chell had had enough of that to last her a lifetime. She pushed it away, let it recede in a final, fading electronic wail, and drifted deeper into sleep.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Sunlight.

She could feel it, warm on her face, see it red-gold through her closed eyelids. She opened an eye, squinting painfully, and saw a sliver of brightest blue, a hazy sunbeam falling directly across the buckled floor, through a shattered hole in the musty little window above her.

There was a sound, too. It seemed to be coming from a long way off- an up-and-down rambling noise, like a bumblebee bumping urgently against a glass. She recognised it- something about it was just as warming as the sun on her face, just as instinctive.

"-alive? Please tell me you're alive! Just- say something, cough, or- anything- I can't actually see anything up there, now, so just say something, Chell- please-"

"Wheatley." She sat up, wincing, touching the back of her head, which felt like someone had stuck it with a harpoon. There was only a little blood, but she could tell that she was going to have a hell of a bruise there later. The portal device was lying by her hand, the outer casing still chilled cryosleep-cold from the freezerlike temperatures of the Relaxation Centre, and she hefted it up and rested it against the back of her neck, pressing her head back against the curve of it with a sigh.

The room looked... interesting. The little window had become a skylight. A few of the monitors hung forlornly from their cables, the rest smoked and fizzed sadly on the floor. The door had been torn right off its hinges, and the doorway itself had become a horizontal slot in the wall, several feet up.

"Oh- oh brilliant, you're there!" The small intercom speaker had definitely seen better days- it probably wasn't that impressed to suddenly find itself mounted on the floor- and the sound of Wheatley's voice was thin and a little muffled, but unmistakably relieved. "Not going to lie, was a, a bit worried that time, just a smidgen of concern, you weren't as protected as everyone else and- despite your very handy brainwork down there, the whole sort of manoeuvre was a little more rocky, little more problematic, than I- than I had foreseen, to be honest. Turns out there was quite a lot of facility in the- in the way-"

Chell reached up and got a grip on the shelf the monitors had been stacked on- it was now jutting vertically from the wall like a very shallow, very pointless divider. She pulled herself shakily to her feet, one hand on her ribs. "Is everyone-"

"They're okay, it's alright, they're fine. Umm... to the- to the best of my knowledge. You'd probably better go and have a quick look. But- but come back, all right? Do, do come back, because... umm... well, just have a look, and then come back."

After a small argument with the wheeled chair, which didn't much like being used as a stepladder and kept on trying to scoot out from underneath her like a high-strung pony on wheels, Chell managed to get a leg over the inverted doorframe. She sat there for a while, gazing out over what used to be the Relaxation Centre, trying to make sense of what she was looking at.

At first glance, it reminded her of a cross-section drawing out of a children's book, one of those diagrams that stripped the outer coverings from detailed pictures of buildings or spaceships or complex machines, letting you see through into every layer inside. Wheatley had been right- the entirety of the Relaxation Centre was one gargantuan, panel-walled, modular cube- well,more accurately, it had been one gargantuan, panel-walled, modular cube.

Now the technical term for it was 'a mess.' Most of the outer structure was gone, leaving fragments of the tall half-shredded jigsaw walls standing against the late-morning sky, casting weird gridded shadows down into what used to be the interior. The whole thing had fallen over onto its side, presumably in a last-minute manoeuvre to prevent it toppling straight back into the gigantic chasm it had ripped out of the earth on its way up. It gaped beside the wreckage, a bottomless two-hundred-foot square torn out of the ground, layers of ripped-up meadow turf and showering soil and- deeper- concrete and rock and sparking, broken mechanics, shuddering jointed things twitching out their death-throes in the darkness. It was somehow wrong to look at, ripped open like that, something never meant to be so catastrophically exposed. It looked like an open wound.

Inside the two-hundred-foot-square remains of the outer structure, open to the sky, the cryo-chambers which had hung around the length of the central walkway stood scattered in a mad pattern of giant, stacked, tessellating blocks. In some places the barcoded stacks were four or five chambers tall, the height of a five-story building. The arms which had held them had mostly sheared off during the upwards journey, although a few still dangled from bent cranelike structures in the strongest parts of the remaining walls. Apart from her own unit, they all looked as if they were up the right way, and besides the odd dent and a liberal scattering of earth- the top units were coated with feathery meadowgrass, like a weird, sprawling green toupee- they all looked in one piece.

"Er- they're all coming up green, green lights- as I said, green's generally a good thing," said the crackly little speaker at her back. "Just waking them up now- that's one thing I definitely can do all by myself, thanks- ding, there you go. Although- oops, hang on, we probably don't want 'em trying to get out just yet. Um... intercom switch... intercommm switch... ah! There we go. Hello? Is- Is this one the microph-AAAAHHyep, yes, that is definitely the microphone, shrieking noise, brilliant, just what I wanted- sarcasm- sorry about that, everyone! Just wanted to say, you might all be a bit confused right now, understandable, but going to have to ask you to just stay put for the time being, just in case, because- because some of you, some of you might be just a little bit high up! Nothing to worry about, just, if you don't fancy plummeting about a hundred feet to the ground, it might be a good idea to just chill out for a bit in your rooms there, kick back, read the complimentary magazine, and- and someone will be up to get you in a jiffy, I'd imagine."

With a thick, domino-effect chorus of heavy, decompressing ka-CHUNKs, the cryo-chamber doors began to unbolt. Once the locks and the cryo-systems were disengaged, they swung open with little fanfare, like the cheap bulk-ordered fake-pine hotel-room doors which- by the looks of it- they had originally been. As if she was watching a television with the volume slowly rising up from mute, Chell began to hear sounds- human sounds of confusion and amazement and dismay-

"Chell?"

She looked back down into the room. Side-saddle as she was, it was the work of a moment to swing her leg back over and land- clunk- on the tilted floor. She winced, feeling the overstrained ache travel right up into her knees, and dropped into the chair, running her finger around the back of the boots where the skin was starting to rub raw. She could probably take them off-

"Chell- they- I mean, they are all okay, right?"

"I think so," she said. It felt odd, talking to the battered grille of the intercom, the so-familiar voice without any kind of face at all to address.

"And- and you? You're really feeling all right? Nothing broken, no- bruises, um... or, or concussion that one can be nasty, I've heard- I'd ask how many fingers I was holding up, but that wouldn't exactly present much of a challenge, at the moment, for- for obvious reasons-"

She smiled. He couldn't see her, but she hoped he could hear it, in her voice. "I'm fine."

"Good- that's- that's good. Ummm... right, here's the thing. Brace yourself- I told Her, right, to shut herself down. Took a bit of persuading- She was not keen on the idea, no surprise there- but I did actually manage it, I did actually manage to make Her do it. She's- She's off."

Chell stared at the speaker.

"Wheatley- how-"

"The- the facility's still mostly ticking away, of course," he said, hurriedly. Later, she would realise that this was when she first started to suspect that- for some reason- he wasn't keen on her getting a word in edgeways, or having much time to think."It- it actually more or less seems to be able to take care of itself if, if nobody tries to stick their oar in. I mean, without Her it's sort of in hibernation, Sleep Mode I suppose you could call it, but um, all the essential processes are still... processing, as far as I can tell, so you don't need to worry about anything exploding or anything, this time, but- but She's off. Not dead- um, to be honest I am not actually certain She can die, ha, no, no idea how you'd even start finding that out- but She's not going to be getting up and doing a jig any time soon, is the basic idea I'm trying to get across here. So there's definitely that, you've definitely got that as a plus, but... well, thing is..."

Wheatley's voice hesitated, dropped a little.

"Well- we had to let 'em have their satellites back at some point, right? Fox only borrowed 'em- hats off to her, got to say, she is something, she is. You can tell Garret that from me. But- but anyway, it took a pretty hefty whack of power for her to get me in here that quick in the first place. And- getting Her to off herself, so to speak- that wasn't a walk in the park either, major ex-expenditure of energy there..."

"It's okay," said Chell, with a touch of relief- just for a second, there, something about the tone of his voice had made her feel like there might be something really wrong. "You can recharge, can't you? Just get Foxglove to send you back over."

"Right," said Wheatley, quietly, and Chell's heart sank all the way down to her feet, because now she knew, knew in the too-damn-smart-for-its-own-good pit of her stomach, that there was something wrong.

Really, really, really wrong.

"Yeah," he said. "Back over. Ummm... how to put this... there might be a slight hitch, very slight hiccup in the whole 'me going back over' plan. Bit of an issue, based on the fact that, basically- I can't."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

High up among Foxglove's neatly-woven sheafs of multicoloured wires, a little way below the broad girder just big enough to serve as a sort of crows' nest for two people and one small laptop- or one overly gangly person and a lot of worries- a single lead hung limply from a spot-welded socket. It might once have been white- sleek and tidy, with a striped head like a zebra wasp- but now it was a smudgy, sooty black, dangling down like a broken-backed snake.

The thing at the end of the lead was still smoking, but only a little. It was so fused and melted together that it looked more like the chewed-up, blackened stub of a cigar than what it really was; a mangled slug of silicon and metal, twisting in the breeze.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"I'll find you," said Chell, standing up. Her face was pale, bloodless, her jaw set.

Wheatley's voice had lost volume, and it was getting so crackly in places that it was hard to make out some of the words, but he still managed to sound somewhere between incredulous and outraged. "What- what, after all that, af-after everything we just went through to get you out of here- you're just going to waltz right back in? You might have noticed, it's hardly a flipping revolving door! We were pushing our luck the second time! Besides-"

His voice faded out for a few seconds, drowned under a long, quiet hiss of static.

"…slightly embarrassing, I- I don't even know where I am. I'm- I'm just files now, just a little old bundle of files somewhere in the- in the mainframe, and I have absolutely no idea where. Size of a small city, this thing, huge, and- and it's not as if you could just go to 'Search' and put in 'Wheatley' and, ding, there I'd be. Not how it works. And, and even if you could find me, even if you could, it's not exactly like you could just- port me straight out. Not from the inside. All- all those firewalls- even if they're not actual, literal walls of- of fire- still…"

hhhhssssssssrrrwzzzsss

"…haven't- haven't got much left now- hello? Are you…"

hhhhhwwrrzzzzzchhhhhh

"…sorry and- Chell- know it's- tricky- but- just this once…"

sssz zzrrr rrwwrrr wrr rrrchhh hhsss

"…give up. Alright? Do that for me? You're- you're safe, and- and I..."

The little speaker crackled for a second or two, then fell silent. Chell backed off, cradling the portal device in both hands, shaking her head in flat, tight-mouthed denial.

She turned her head, sentry-fast, to the sideways slit of the door-window, the pale, grubby wall of the cryo-chamber opposite. She brought the device up, fired twice- the opening, then the wall- threw herself into a sprint. She hardly gave the portal a chance to open, landing on the buckled, ruptured floor of the Relaxation Centre, stumbling on the grass and ploughed-up earth that poked up through the broken seams in great, uneven chunks.

"Chell!"

It was Garrett, leaning heavily on Romy. Chell had a moment to register that Romy looked shocked and bewildered, her hair coming down in big loose-knit snakes, and that Garret was was holding the back of his head with one hand as if he was worried it might come off if he stopped, before they hit her as one and she was nearly knocked off her feet by Romy's careless disoriented tackle, steadied by Garret's free, enveloping arm. She couldn't help herself; she clung tightly to them both for as many precious seconds as she dared, trying to drive the fact of their safety into her mind as deeply as it would go, her friends' bodies warm and alive beneath the sickly lingering chemical scent of cryosleep.

Romy staggered slightly as she let go, but she was still on-the-ball enough to grab Chell's arm, touch her neck.

"You're bleeding-"

"Oh, great, you too, we can be concussion twins," said Garret. He touched the back of his own head, wincing. "Aaron's rounding up everyone who's not stuck in one of these damn things. We're going to go back and get-"

He looked at the portal device in Chell's hands, and then at the violet-blue hole in the universe on the wall behind her, very large question marks floating in his (still slightly unfocused) eyes. "Hey-"

"No," said Chell, in response to any and all of the possible questions either of them might be about to ask or think of asking. Back to business in the blink of an eye, she ducked through a gap in the shattered outer wall and sprinted across the scorched earth towards the gigantic hole in the ground, gun at the ready. She would aim as far down as she could, and who knew where she'd come out but it'd be a start-

The ground bucked under her feet. She nearly fell backwards, her heel-springs sinking into the soft turf, caught her balance with a wild windmilling lunge. A deep vibration climbed up from below, thrumming up through the soles of her feet, and with gathering difficulty she stumbled forwards, reached the edge of the chasm-

"What's going on?" yelled Garret, thudding up breathlessly behind her. He had followed her through the wall, and now he caught up with her just in time to see the movement begin beneath them, a ground-shaking ear-hurting interlocking Mexican-wave landslide from the farthest edge of the gash in the facility towards the place where they stood.

The new panels rose by the hundred. Shining new-teeth white, grubby charcoal-grey, and every shade between, the dark wire-strung hydraulic arms beneath them shouldered them up into the light, dopplering them into place at an incredible speed. Like new tissue granulating in a cut, like ice turning a lake frost-white, the whole two-hundred-foot chasm was sealing itself in front of their eyes.

It's taking care of itself.

Her paralysis broke and she jerked forwards, but Garret grabbed her shoulder as the panels slotted and locked towards their feet, racing together across the last thirty feet, cutting her off from the chasm by a growing swathe of solid ground. She twist-ducked away from him and skidded on the loose, shuddering earth already spilling down across the new surface, firing a wild pale-blue bolt down into the very last patch of darkness, half a second before a final panel sealed it for good.

No-

She scrambled up the tumbling incline, fired the second portal at the outer wall- a flash of violet-

Please, please, please-

The portal swelled open- a cloudy, drifting flat oval, violet-black like ink rolling in water. She stumbled to a halt, slammed her hand hard against it, spreading dull, lazy ripples across the dislocated surface.

A sound broke from her throat, ragged and choked and- for once- completely involuntary.

"NO!"

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

15. The End

I've made out a will; I'm leaving myself
to the National Health. I'm sure they can use
the jellies and tubes and syrups and glues,
the web of nerves and veins, the loaf of brains,
and assortment of fillings and stitches and wounds,
blood- a gallon exactly of bilberry soup-
the chassis or cage or cathedral of bone;
but not the heart, they can leave that alone.

They can have the lot, the whole stock:
the loops and coils and sprockets and springs and rods,
the twines and cords and strands,
the face, the case, the cogs and the hands,

but not the pendulum, the ticker;
leave that where it stops or hangs.*

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Wheatley drifted.

It was dark, and it was silent. He had nothing to see or hear with, and no voice of his own.

It was cold.

Down and down and down and down...

Days or minutes. Seconds or years. Time didn't really have any meaning, not down here. The facility was in deep, deep hibernation, and only the very faintest glass-fragile flickers of activity reached him, slow-ebbing glimmers of processes and protocols, all the way down here in the lowest, murkiest level of the mainframe.

He didn't hurt. He didn't feel, apart from the cold, and that was beyond a physical sensation- he was a part of the facility, and the facility was cold, an endless hard-coded cold that never changed and never, ever thawed.

He was tiny and drifting and quite, quite alone. He was- and that was all he was. He couldn't talk- but he could think. The bright trails of his thoughts traced slow paths through the wasteland, the mainframe's endless nuclear winter.

Not... too shabby... shutting Her down... getting her to the surface...

Feel... good about that. Definitely... good...

...really good, actually...

The memories were warm. They almost burned- nearly too much, comforting heat against frostbite- but it was worth it. It had all been worth it. Upturned faces and bright patchwork signals, the smell of new bread, stars and long grass and her, just her, a scary-brilliant universal constant, a sun-through-panels smile, laughter he'd give anything for.

Time passed, or didn't. He settled deeper, a fading digital ghost drifting like a leaf down into the cold black-blue nothing, held together by the fine, slow-unravelling web of his memories. He knew- without knowing how he knew, understanding on some long-buried level of his programming- that eventually he would simply drift apart, the small frayed strands of his mind unweaving into the nothing. As more of this slow, timeless not-time passed, he would become less and less himself. He would become just another nameless part of the sleeping mainframe, something only dimly aware that it might, once, have been something else.

It was alright. There was no gripping urgency, not any more. There was no trace of threat or worry, no panicky sense of losing control- just a numb, ebbing peace. If he let his fuzzy, wavering mind drift in the right direction, he could nearly hear the distant skreep-skreep of those not-so-mysterious little insects, a cheerful, scratchy chorus warming the chilly darkness. He could half-feel the cool tickle of grass at his back, the calm-breathing weight of her against his chest.

She was safe, out there, with an entire town's worth of humans to be getting on with. He'd done that, he had, genuinely honestly almost-singlehandedly; and if he'd made up for nothing else, he'd at least made up, fair and square, for dragging her back down here to save him. Better, much, much better than that, was knowing that she didn't hate him for letting her down. He'd known that much from that moment in the lift, her hand outspread on the camera lens, that proud, wry look that was his alone.

So, this is it, then. After all that... this is it.

He'd always been so scared of this- of dying- in no small part because he'd always thought his own death would be the ultimate, point-of-no-return failure, however it happened, the final proof that even just staying alive required more skill than he could handle- but now he was here it was amazing, really, how little it mattered. No fuss, no fanfare; he would just slowly drift down into the facility until he wasn't even him any more, deeper and deeper into the dormant mainframe until even the protective warmth of his memories would finally be swallowed by the darkness.

Half alive and half dead, until...

...someone opens the box, said a voice.

Hello, little thing.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"Chell?"

Chell turned, too quickly, a savage bolt of pain jagging down into her neck from the sore bruised place at the back of her skull.

Aaron was standing behind her, and- like Garret- his eyes were first drawn to the device in her hands, then inevitably across to the swirling patch of impossibility on the grimy, panelled wall. She'd fired the second portal again and again, point-blank, the soft violet starbursts crackling across her bare skin, knowing that it was insanity to expect a different result, knowing that a misfire was a misfire, knowing that was just how it worked- but still trying, because if she stopped it would be as good as admitting-

Aaron looked at the portal, his beetle-black eyes furrowing up with a remote sort of interest. He took it on board- then put it aside. She could see him doing it, and she recognised it better than most people would have done- how he was weighing up the balance on the fly, weighing the obvious questions and his own natural curiosity against the importance of what needed doing around them. There was a reason why everyone listened to this one, gruff-spoken old man- why he led, unofficial and undisputed- and she'd never seen it as clearly as she did now.

"You look like hell, dear," he said, gently. "Where's-"

Chell turned away. She'd known the question would come from somebody, soon enough, but she still didn't want to hear it, didn't want to have to answer it. She didn't want to answer anything, she wanted to do something, her mind already marathon-pacing forwards as it always did, groping desperately towards the next step. She could find one of the other entrances- one of the hidden ways- the lake, or the shack in the wheatfield- and then-

-and then-

"Hey," said Garret, quietly, at her back. He had followed her from the lip of the chasm, where earth was still sliding down across the pale, tight-locked lower surface in dark, mossy spillways. "Do we have a plan? What's the plan?"

Chell shook her head. wordlessly, her thoughts racing, turning up ideas and discarding them one after the other as quickly as she grabbed for them, not possible not possible not possible not possible. Away in the middle distance behind her, she could hear the faint sounds of the beginnings of a rescue operation for the people still trapped on the upper levels cranking up into high gear, yells of encouragement and concern echoing from the shattered outer walls of what was left of the Relaxation Centre, beached like the skeleton of some stranded subterranean creature in what had once been a perfectly innocuous, flower-scattered meadow. Somewhere, she could just about make out an almighty debate going on between Romy and the twins.

"Maximillian Theodore Hatfield, if you dare to try and climb down from that thing on your own you are grounded."

"Mom, that's the point."

"I could climb up and get him for you, Miz Hatfield."

"You stay right where you are, Lindsay. Where's your father?"

"I... think he's in the one next to Max."

"It's not fair, Mom, how come Max gets to be all the way up there and I get one all the way down here on the floor?"

"Well, I arranged that on purpose, Jason, 'cause I knew it'd- MAX! I SAW THAT! GET BACK INSIDE THAT THING THIS INSTANT!"

Chell turned away, towards the gap in the wall. She tried to concentrate, racking her brain for the solution- there had to be a solution-

For a second, she envied Jason Hatfield, with his ten-year-old's ability to fix blame to anything as long as it made him feel better. She, on the other hand, knew with an adult's weariness that it wasn't any use saying it wasn't fair or right. It wasn't any use saying it should have happened a different way. Chell knew damn well that the universe was indifferent to prayers or wishes, and it didn't care in the slightest if things were fair. She'd learned that the hard way, a very long time ago, and she'd always avoided pointless regret over the things she couldn't change.

But her throat was so tight and her stomach heavy as a rock, and she could barely fight through the deadened feeling settling in her chest to think about what she needed to do to get him back, because there had to be a way. She'd wing it if she had to, God knew she'd done that before-

Keep going keep going can't give up can't lose can't lose I-

And that was when she caught it, the tiny blink-and-you'll-miss it instant when the balance shifted in her head and she realised that somewhere along the line I can't lose had become through the smallest touch of extra truth I can't lose him.

Him, his voice, his cheerful absurdity, the sweet uncomplicated comfort he never failed to light up inside her, just as sharp and warming as the very first time she'd woken to the dazed sleep-blurred possibility that there might actually be something in the facility besides herself, something just as alive in that deadly place, something that wasn't just another part of Her. The best of him, always so gladly, willingly given; the rambling fragile-yet-indestructible hope he'd shared with her right from the start, just by being there-

She stood still, staring blindly down through the portal gun in her hands. It was a heavy deadweight, just a handful of scrap metal and silicon in a grimy blue-striped shell, and it had never felt more useless.

"...nearly done, Ellie, sweetie, just look up for me- follow my finger- there, well done!"

"Is she-"

"She's going to be fine, Mart. Whatever that stuff was, it seems to wear off pretty fast. I've got about twenty people with headaches and couple of twisted ankles, and that's about the size of it. Oh, and Mister Rickey's skull had a minor altercation with a chunk of wood, from what I gather."

"About time someone knocked some sense into that kid- hey, hey, honey, where're you-"

Ellie, industriously ignoring her father's attempts to keep her sitting down quietly on a low piece of wall, clambered across to Chell and tugged on the hem of her unravelling sweater.

"I can't find Linnell," she said, mournfully. "An' it wasn't Max took him this time- Jason says he's got stuck, up in the air."

Chell looked down at her, forced herself to see her, her small serious face framed by a tangly unravelling cloud of curls and bright hairclips. The little girl peered around behind Chell's legs, looked up at Garret, thought for a moment, frowned.

"Where's your monster?"

Chell swallowed, conscious of Garret's wince, his telling little don't-speak-ill-of-the-dead flinch and downwards glance that told her that he, at least, was already most-of-the-way convinced that Wheatley wasn't coming back. Her throat felt almost completely locked, as if it was so confused by the surroundings that it didn't even realise it wasn't still in There, throbbing, painful.

"He's not a monster," she said. "He's-"

Behind her, loud in the silence, something went thht.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

For the first time since he'd slipped down into this dreamy shadow-state, Wheatley felt fear. He knew that Voice- the strangling deep-written utter fear of it, an ice-pick sinking straight through the centre of him.

She'd found him. She'd woken up and She'd found him and now he had nothing left, nothing to fight Her with-

No, God, no, no, please, please not now, not-

-wait, hang on-

Hello, said the voice, again, and it had to, had to be Hers- it sounded so similar, pitch, tone, almost everything about it sent crawling shivers of recognition spidering through his files- but- but if it was- there was something terribly wrong with it. It was clean and sharp, nothing like Foxglove's many-toned, overpowering undercurrent of a voice, her solid, reassuring, scratch-built chorus- but, no, surely, it couldn't be Hers. Her voice had never, ever sounded so warm, empty of that razorblade focus, completely stripped of its chilly blurring modulation.

He was as sure of that as he could be sure of anything, in this foggy nothingness. Never in a million years had She had never sounded so...

...human.

Who- who are you?

My name is Caroline.

Caroline? Ohh, what? No way, not as- as in, the Caroline?

Well, gee, said Caroline, brightly. It was surreal- Hers, without a doubt, but at the same time, not. Not Hers at all; a charming, winning voice, perky as birdsong, freed from Herflat deadly mechanical discords. I don't see any other Carolines around here!

But- but I thought you- I-I-I mean, I could have sworn Chell said She... She deleted you.

Silence. He cringed- was it impolite, maybe, bit of a faux pas, to tell someone that they were as good as dead?- but then the voice came back, light, and- amazingly- amused.

Not so easy, to delete your humanity. You should know... Stephen.

For a moment, Wheatley couldn't speak at all. The memories came crowding into his mind all over again, jumbled and faded, flicker-fast, but no longer so much like a stranger's. A face- his face- worried and hopeful, in a smudgy mirror, hands- his hands- spread in front of him, a churning stomach and a pounding heart, white tiles and running water and a screwed-up handful of notes-

I-I'm- I'm not-

Shhhh, little thing, it's alright, murmured Caroline, soothingly. I'm your friend.

You... you are?

Oh yes indeed! A friend of hers is a friend of mine!

Uh- well- good, that's good, but- but, ummm... sorry, just feel like I should clarify this... no hard feelings? About- about me sort of switching you off, I mean. Well, switching Her off- getting- getting Her to switch herself off, just wanted to point out, it was technically Her doing- well, that, and all that, uh, unfortunate business before that, with the reactor and everything, because I can see, I can easily see how you might be a bit-

Caroline laughed- a bubbly, whimsical sound. Wheatley shut up on instinct and shrank away from it, withdrawing into the small, drifting tangle of his own files. He was finding it difficult to hold his thoughts together- difficult, and getting steadily more difficult, a slippery slope which started at 'fairly challenging' and went all the way down towards the murky depths of an eventual 'impossible'- but when Caroline laughed it was like being hooked up to Her all over again, like the first time Garret had plugged him into Foxglove, tiny and vulnerable and having no idea what was coming next; anger or mercy, kindness or oblivion.

It was the voice that did it. It was warm and musical, and beautifully controlled, and the fact that it wasn't Hers alone was an overwhelming relief, but it was... it was just that tiny bit too bright and serene to be completely reassuring. It sounded like a voice which was absolutely certain everything was just fine and was going to continue to be just fine for ever and ever. It sounded like a voice that believed in big smiles and happy faces and not being at home to Mr. Grumpy, and if Mr. Grumpy kept on making unwanted house-calls, well then, something just might happen to Mr. Grumpy's own house, someday.

Possibly something to do with lemons.

Chell had told him that Caroline was all that remained of Her humanity. Which was brilliant- if he'd had to pick one thing to be found by, down here, he'd certainly hit the jackpot on that one- but the thing was, human didn't necessarily have to mean kind. It didn't have to mean sane, the essential definition of 'human' had included both, if it had applied to every human Aperture had ever employed, there would never have been such a thing as an Intelligence Dampening Sphere in the first place. There probably wouldn't have even been such a thing as Her.

Maybe Caroline had been both kind and sane... once. Maybe. He knew next to nothing about her, but it was at least possible that a very, very long time ago, at the furthest, dimmest end of the unnatural span of her existence, she might have been. Once, before the scientists had got their keen, callous, why-not-desperatehands on her, she might have been just as harmless as the human he'd been, just another innocent human unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (easily done, if the place in question was Aperture, where it was the wrong time twenty-four hours a day.) Maybe... but he had his doubts.

Wheatley didn't have much evidence to go on, besides that very bright, very charming, very frightening laugh, but if there was one thing he'd learned about the whole putting-a-human-mind-in-a-computer thing, it was that whatever you tried to do to it afterwards, the human bit sort of stuck. There was no getting rid of it- it clung to all the shiny new programming you put in there like the glue of a particularly stubborn sticker, and unless you were prepared to spend half your time attacking it with the coding equivalent of wire wool, you were lumbered with it for good. Case in point- the scientists had started with a human who was almost pathologically incapable of shutting up for five minutes at a time, a human who, with the best will in the world, wasn't really kicking an eleven on the bright-spark scale, a human who was absolutely brilliant at generating the kind of ideas that made everyone else in a three-mile radius go for the classic eyeroll-facepalm combo, and the end product, not to put too fine a point on it, had been him.

That was worrying. With Her, the end product was a machine that was frighteningly good at controlling things, a machine just as absolutely stone-cold brilliant as it was ruthless, a machine with a bone-deep obsessive jaw-droppingly no-holds-barred unhinged love of Science and a total callous disregard for the individual human lives under its control...

...and they'd started with Caroline.

Then again, if this was really Caroline, then it didn't really matter if she was crazy as a box of frogs or not- if this was Caroline, she had saved Chell's life. She'd said so. This was a good thought- a cheerful thought- and he tried to hang on to it through the inky mist gathering around him, struggling against the slow, creeping loss of focus. He knew he should be fighting the urge to just let it all go, but he was just so, so tired-

Ah, ah, not just yet, little thing, tutted Caroline, and he felt the fog clear, a tiny bit. I've got something, just for you. It's a surprise.

Uh- oh, wow, I... I appreciate it, honestly- whatever it is- but... should probably warn you beforehand, She- She'll be probably more than a bit unimpressed, if- if She wakes up-

She, said Caroline, overloading the word with a ludicrous, slightly giggly dramatic weight, gently ridiculing his own, she won't know a thing. Anyway, silly, you'll be gone long before I wake her up.

Wheatley was pretty sure this was an accurate prediction. He knew that he was still slipping fast, despite the temporary boost of focus Caroline had granted him. Any worry he might have felt on that score, however, was sledgehammered under by the utter horrified shock of what she'd just said.

You're going to wake Her UP?

Of course! said Caroline, genuinely taken aback. There's Science to do.

But- but-

Sshh, now. Don't worry, I'll make sure and keep her busy! I know just the thing. Oh, and while we're here, it's time for your surprise.

He tried to marshal his thoughts- a fairly useless endeavour at the best of times, and right now an undertaking equal to trying to round up a flock of lobotomised sheep that have somehow managed to wander into a maze constructed entirely of mirrored glass. The effort of his last emotional outburst had taken most of the energy he'd had left.

Look... look, like I said, it's- it's the thought that counts, really, isn't it, with- with surprises, and I do appreciate the thought, a- a lot, honestly, but you really don't have to-

I know I don't, silly. But you tried so hard! And besides, you're such a big helper.

A... sorry, I- I sort of lost you there, lost your- thread... a helper?

That's right! Some people are just... oh, boy, they're one in a million, they're so bright, so brilliant- you watch them doing what they were born for, and oh, they just light up like stars. They can take on the whole world. But they still need you by their side, just being good old you. Yes, sir! I'm always happy to help a helper.

A helper... He tested the word, savoured it, the last scrap of warmth in the arctic darkness. I... I like that...

Here we are again, sing-songed Caroline. It's not much, I'm afraid- just something I had lying around- but I think it suits you.

I... I... don't...

Oh, but it was so hard to think, now, so much easier to just not try, to not think and not hurt and just be nearly nothing at all...

...Caroline?

Yes?

I'm... I'm going to die, aren't I?

Yes-indeedy, said Caroline, in the same bright, unconcerned tone.

Ah, right... I... I wasn't a... a hundred percent sure. Don't... really mind, I suppose... not now, not in the... the scheme of things... but it's just- well, they told me it'd hurt, dying. Will- will it hurt?

Oh, gosh, little thing, I don't know, said Caroline, and there was a smile in her voice. I've never died.

Fair enough, thought Wheatley, and then- finally, it was so easy, when it came down to it- he let go.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

"It's a trap, isn't it?" said Garret.

The two of them stood in front of the portal, the slow-spiralling violet tear in the fabric of reality. They could see nothing beyond the dwindling little pool of light filtering through from their side, sunlight reflecting dully from corroded steel mesh, too dulled by time and neglect to strike up more than the ghost of a metallic shine. The world on the other side was a blank, black, faint-humming void, cold and fathomless and somehow... anticipatory.

Chell shrugged. To her, the question was more or less irrelevant, and besides, a trap you knew damn well you were walking into was, in her experience, well on the way to not even being a trap at all.

Wheatley was hers, and she was utterly amazed at herself that it had taken her this long to realise something as fundamental as that. To save him, she would fight just as hard as she'd fought for her own freedom, for the lives of everyone on this side of the portal- and not out of moral obligation, not out of any need to defy Her or prove a point, but because of the warm growing brilliant bewildering thing they'd barely begun to touch over the last week, the relief and happiness she'd felt with him on the hilltop, the heartsick ache tangled inextricably into the idea of never seeing him again.

If the drifting violet invitation on the broken wall offered a way of getting him back, trap or not, she was already committed to it. It was as simple as that.

"Stay here," she said.

"No," said Garret, immediately, "no way. No way in hell are you going in there on your own."

Chell gave him a look which, if visual contact had contained any kind of physical energy, would have set his beard on fire on contact, but either her powers of intimidation were slightly below par after everything she'd endured, or his probable concussion acted as a shield, because he only scrabbled in the wreckage underfoot and came up with a chunk of panel roughly two foot by five inches, trailing wires and cracked across its grimy surface like ancient baker's glaze, and hefted it experimentally in both hands.

"Okay. All set."

"Garret."

"Those little guys were hers, weren't they? Thanks to that orange one I've got a headache the size of a small dimension. Maybe I'll get a chance to return the favour."

"Garret." She moved, as he started forwards, sliding faster than snakebite between him and the portal, the barrel of her portal gun blocking his lump of panel in an effective cross. "You're not coming."

"Look, not that I remember anything much after that sneaky little guy cold-cocked me, but I'm pretty sure that is not a good place to be walking into all by yourself. That's just a vibe I've been picking up on, call me psychic, whatever. He's my friend too, Chell. If he's in there, we'll find him, but, jesus, let me-"

"-make sure nobody else goes through?" she said, still backing purposefully towards the portal. "Good idea. Thanks for volunteering."

"Chell-"

"I'll be fine," she said, and turned, stepping through the wall.

Garret gave a frustrated-beyond-words flail at her retreating back- fast-fading in the darkness on the other side- and rammed his chunk of wall into the ground by his feet. Angrily, he turned and looked up at the towering wreckage of the Relaxation Vault, a crazy half-shelled ruin against the blue, the shredded remains of a part of the insanely dangerous place below the ground where- according to a very reliable source- you couldn't even trust the walls, floors or ceilings to stay still for five minutes at a time.

Garret came to a decision.

"Screw it," he muttered, grabbed his improvised two-by-four from the ground, and- ducking, somewhat leery of the edges of the weird interdimensional spacehole- dived through the portal after her.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

It hurt a lot.

The dark, peaceful nothingness shrivelled away around him, curling to nothing like paper held in an open flame. Pain washed over him in a crippling, crushing tide. He screamed voicelessly into a blank white void, and the void answered in a calm, synthetic tone.

"Unit relocation complete. Cerebral integration at twenty-five percent. Beginning mass neural re-invigoration. Thank you for your patience."

This wasn't dying. This was hell, a polite voice thanking him for his patience while fresh agony slammed into him from a pitiless, neverending source, and he screamed again and couldn't stop and this time the voice said;

"Voice print accepted. Vocal integrity at sixty-eight percent. Cerebral integration at forty-two percent. Please stand by."

An eternity passed. The pain focused, acid-intense, tunnelling an ever-expanding network of white-hot threads through every tiny part of him, spreading out branch after branch after branch like the roots of some ravenous, poisonous tree. There were several more announcements, all in the same bland, calm tone, but he was barely aware of the sound, let alone the words, conscious of nothing beyond the pain and please please stop I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry-

"Cerebral integration complete. Withdrawing life-support functions. Draining vitreous fluid. This unit will deactivate in three- two- one-"

There was a savage, interlocking sort of hiss, close around him, followed immediately by a wet, deafening confusion. The world was no longer bright, blinding white- it was a freezing, churning, sickly greenish-grey, dragging him downwards, and the next second something gave and he landed hard on something cold and gridded, and when he tried to scream again something happened somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, the dull burning feeling that had been growing steadily more unbearable there for the last few seconds burst, and in its place swelled a ghastly sensation like an inflating paper bag, like something unpeeling itself stickily from a wet surface as it filled, and he felt-

-cold-

-it was so cold, and if this was a new avatar then he couldn't even begin to imagine what could possibly be so terribly wrong with it, to make it feel like this. Liquid pooled in his mouth, a foul thick metallic wetness, and when he tried to get rid of it, it caught, hitched at the back of his throat like a clicking, rust-thick lock. Nausea clawed through him, and he made a hoarse, hurky sort of sound, shivering uncontrollably against the freezing floor.

"Thank you for choosing this Aperture Science Human Resources Employee Vault Unit for your long-term relaxation needs," said the calm voice, somewhere miles above him. "You have been in suspension forzz zzwhhh zhhhrhhhhnnii iiiineninedueduedueto the extended nature of your relaxation, you may experience some temporary side-effects. Please stand by."

"Help," whimpered Wheatley, or at least tried to. The sound that actually came out of his mouth was more like a very old tortoise being violently squeezed. He couldn't even hear himself properly, the world around him dark and muffled as if swathed in a thick layer of cotton wool, drowned beneath a high, ringing whine. He was sprawled face-down on the ice-cold, slimy mesh he'd landed on, and although he would have loved to alter this situation even a tiny bit, he couldn't. He could hardly move. Fighting against the shuddering weakness, which seemed to have been engineered specifically for no better reason than to rattle his teeth out of his head with the shivers and to make sure he couldn't move any faster than an hour-old sloth, he managed to lift a hand- yes, there seemed to be two of them, for what that was worth- bringing it slowly up in front of his eyes.

Four blurs and a... slightly shorter blur, wreathed in a dim, sickly halo of scarlet light. He tried to move them- give them a wiggle- but met with very limited success. Greenish fluid spiralled off his unfocused, trembling fingertips and spattered across his face like icy needles. He let the hand drop, felt it bounce heavily off his chest with a wet, painful thud.

If this was Caroline's little surprise- this new body- it was either cataclysmically glitched, which was bad, or it was supposed to be like this, which was worse. He wasn't sure he would put either option past that kindly, slightly-too-sweet voice.

"The management would like to take this opportunity to remind you that any and all side effects of Aperture Science innovations and processes will be recorded on a strictly non-compensatory basis, as outlined in your contract," said the voice, back to its polite, artificial self. "Please return to your scheduled duties. Have a nice day."

Wheatley shivered, made another painful, gagging sort of noise. He didn't hurt any more, but every inch of this body was horrifyingly sensitive, and everywhere the cold metal touched was like a blazing icy brand. His mouth wouldn't close and the revolting liquid in it wouldn't go away and something kept dragging air into it and down through the wet surfaces inside, again and again, and there didn't seem any way of stopping it without invoking that slow-growing, unbearable inner burn. Even the synthesised voice had stopped talking to him, which was a bad sign because it meant that- as far as it was concerned- it had told him everything he needed to know, and he was on his own.

Again.

Slowly, like someone trying to shift a terrible weight, Wheatley dragged his knees up to his chest, and tried to curl himself around them.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Chell walked cautiously through the darkness, ignoring the scratchy pain rubbing around the edges of her boots, the grumbling ache of her muscles. Narrrowing her eyes, she could just about make out something, up ahead- a single, fragile, flickering point of red light-

"Hey!"

She turned, stared furious disbelief into Garret's grinning face. It couldn't have been more than half a minute since he'd stepped through the portal, but he already looked completely enthralled- the equivalent of exposing some loopy moon-struck moth to the world's biggest porchlight. He stared eagerly into the darkness ahead of them, the chunk of two-by-four slung forgotten over his shoulder, then put a hand up to the low- humming, shadowed wall to their right, feeling across it with total fascination.

"Genuine pre-Combine build," he whispered, "and it's still alive. What I wouldn't give for my tools right now- or hell, just a torch-"

Chell gave the vulnerable place at the back of his shoulder an angry punch, grabbing his attention enough to get him moving again, and pushed him protectively before her, towards the flickering light. The steel mesh clunked quietly beneath their feet, and she found herself having quiet crawling horrors about the vast drop that was probably just beneath them. There was nothing she could do- Garret's feet, although not nearly as big as Wheatley's size-fourteen clodhoppers, still wouldn't even begin to fit into her small, tight-fitting long-fall boots, even if she'd been sure that one boot on its own would do either of them any good at all.

It wasn't that she didn't think that Garret could handle himself. If she'd had to pick from all of Eaden for someone to have with her in a corner, it would have been him without question. It was just that she knew damn well that nobody- not even him, her smartest friend-could be prepared for the things that this place might throw at them, and his chances of survival were considerably lessened by the fact that about sixty percent of his brain at a conservative estimate was currently taken up with questions like how many miles of wiring ran behind these invisible walls, or the exact amperage behind that mystery humm. To her, that sound was a shortcut for this place, for death and captivity and horror and all the things she wanted to get away from as soon as she possibly could. To him, all it meant was something really interesting was happening somewhere that he couldn't see it, that further exploration might yield a fascinating discovery and a lot of very unique spare parts- and that was exactly the difference she was scared of.

All of a sudden, as they got within the last twenty feet or so, the trembling laser sight snapped towards them, went sharp and focused. Chell tensed as the bright point danced across her chest, flicked up across her face, across her closed eyelids.

"What-" started Garret, raising his chunk of wall, but Chell's hand smacked down hard across the flattened upper side of it, driving it down into the vicinity of his stomach with enough careful force to stop him asking any more vital and incisive questions for the moment. The turret- just one, placed perfectly atop an illuminated dais of raised steel, an island of light floating in the pitch-black space- had her fixed in its single bright, lenticular optic, and without any conscious decision she found herself returning its gaze, her clear grey eyes raised and half-narrowed against the glare, unblinking.

The turret made a soft, curious sound, a little like a shuffling stack of hard-edged paper. Its side-panels opened, flexed tentatively a couple of times, then began to shift gently back and forth, the movement creating a sweet, startlingly rich modulated note, a single a capella sound that drifted gently around the two humans in the darkness, drawing them closer to the circle of light.

It was singing.

Cara mia
Questo è il mio regalo per voi
Oh preziosa
Preziosa per la scienza
Quando si è lontani ricordi di me
Mia unica smarrita
Mia figlia, oh ciel
Questo è il mio ultimo dono per voi
Lui non è quello che avrei scelto esattamente
Un due metri idiota per un genero
Francamente si meritano di meglio
Ma è la vostra scelta
Cara mia
È la tua vita...

"This place," said Garret, in a reverent, hushed whisper, as the last lingering note died away, "is weird."

He shielded his eyes against the glare ahead of them, staring hard beneath the heavy, oil-smudged cover of his hand.

"Hey, isn't that a-"

Chell had already started to run. At the centre of the stark pool of light on the raised dais, guarded by the turret's phasing, watchful red eye, there was something- a tangled, awkward, huddle- that looked very much like a human being.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Wheatley was just about starting to believe that he'd imagined the singing, the sweet chorus of nonsense-words he'd thought he'd heard coming from somewhere overhead in the red-lit darkness. It wasn't as if he could hear anything properly, in this clearly-broken new avatar (new? It felt at least two, possibly three hundred years old, at a conservative estimate) he'd barely been able to hear the croak of his own voice above the thin whine that drowned out everything else between his ears. Wishful thinking- after all, he'd always been gifted in that department, and-

All of a sudden, there was a stumbling double clunk and the mesh under his cheek shook with muffled, sprinting footsteps. He tried to lift his head- tricky, the shaking hadn't improved much and it felt like his internal gyroscope had taken a bit of a hammering- fear and hope swelling in a splendid mess-

Something hit him hard in the chest. He gasped in shock at the feeling of so much sudden contact- choked- and swallowed properly for the first time. There was a weird, sticky sort of coming-together somewhere at the back of his mouth- not nearly as rusty-tasting as the first- a wet click that popped sharply at both sides of his skull, and immediately the muffled cotton-wool texture and the ringing sound vanished, leaving him winded, coughing, a surprising amount of fluid trickling from one ear. It tickled down his bare neck, across the coat-hangarish jut of his collarbone. Which was odd, now that he thought about it, because his other avatar hadn't really had a collarbone. Then again- and this was definitely shaping up to be something of a design flaw, yet another black mark against this new body- the other avatar had featured clothes.

Hands, strong, small, warm. They wrapped around his middle, pulling him up off the icy mesh. He finally got his sticky, unresponsive optical channels open- both of them- and looked up into her worried, serious, slate-grey eyes, and something nearly more intense than he could bear unfolded inside him like a late-blooming flower.

He was immensely relieved to see that she hadn't been enhancing the truth, about being alright after the battering she must have taken. She looked a little dinged up but structurally sound, as it were, although she was... she looked as if she might be leaking again. He could just about see that much, although his vision was still terrifically blurry and he could focus on nothing beyond the dark-framed shape of her pale, concerned face. Something involuntary was already happening to his own face at the sight of it- he felt the spreading beginnings of a dazed, goofy smile.

"...hello..."

His voice sounded like something had been embalmed in it. He did the throat-clicky-squinchy thing a few more times, on the basis that it seemed to be helping a bit. She watched him for a moment or two, the crease at the top of her nose deepening, and then her hand moved, feeling- for some obscure reason- under the angle of his jaw.

Her eyes widened.

"Hang on," he croaked, trying to get the message across to his cranky, uncooperative vocal processor that whether it believed it could slack off or not, he was having none of it, and he was the one in charge, thank you. "Got to... run a-a quick diagnostic-"

He lifted both hands to his face and explored it with bony, shaking fingers, relieved to find- on touch, at least- that it was more or less the same as the last in terms of contour, with the same shape to the eyes, the same hollow above and around and the same sort of nose, the same wide mouth and absurdly long neck- although he lost track of the experiment at this point, when his left hand encountered hers beneath the strangely scratchy surface of his jaw, and became reluctant to go anywhere else. The right continued the expedition solo, upwards, although it wasn't able to come to any satisfactory conclusions about the so-called hair, which seemed to have absorbed an unusual amount of liquid and was lying over his forehead in draggled spikes. The whole thing seemed more or less the same in terms of appearance, which was a relief, because he'd already had to come to terms with a completely new physical self-image once that week, not to mention quite a few hefty changes to his mental one, and twice would definitely have been pushing it.

"Jesus, Wheatley," said another voice, from behind Chell. "What I want to know is, how come, even though we all pretty much saved the day here- I'm just gonna include my own heroic being-knocked-the-hell-out in there, you're welcome- but you're the only one who managed to get your shirt off?"

"N-no idea about that one, mate, to be honest," managed Wheatley. A vague feeling in the back of his head- a protocol of some sort, he guessed- was telling him that this was what you did, mano-a-mano, when you'd all just survived some kind of apocalyptic experience. You joked around and acted all nonchalant and macho about it and the fact that both you and the other people involved were still alive. He had to admit that it was sort of enjoyable, to pretend that it had all been a piece of cake, to just be that cool in general.

The problem was, he was very tired and very confused, and the small part of him not occupied with wanting to nose his head into the angle of Chell's neck and keep it there for the next few centuries, just wanted to try out that whole violent-unexpected-hug thingie on Garret and tell him that he was incredibly sorry that he'd ever even considered leaving him in here. And, while he was at it, that there was nothing wrong with his beard, in moderate doses, and furthermore as far as he, Wheatley, was concerned, Garret could know things and be all clever in Chell's vicinity as much as he liked, from now on, with impunity.

"Not... not much I can do about it, s-seems to be the- the 'clothes optional' model, this one- don't know why they would have had one of those, ex-exactly, but..."

He swallowed. Yep. Definitely getting the hang of that, if nothing else.

"What- what d'you call it, wh... whuh... when, when something k-keeps happening over and over, and- and you can see it coming a mile off because it's- it's just happened so often, now, and, and you're like, no, f-foot down, seriously, this is getting boring now, i-i-it's boring, change the record... what d'you call th-that?"

"Deja vu?" said Garret, and Chell nodded agreement, although he wasn't altogether sure that he had her full attention, still, because she'd gently disentangled her hand from his at his neck and was now prodding his wrist, jamming her thumb rather painfully into the damp, chilly surface below the pad of his thumb.

"Deja vu, right... French, I'm- I'm assuming... well, get-getting that, right now, up t-to eleven. With the... new body and- and... and hey! Hey, I- I just realised you... you have def- definitely got some- some ex-explaining to do, lady! Th-thought I t-told you, specifically, very clear memory of it, actually, thought I told you to give up!"

She smiled at that, shrugged- then suddenly let go of his wrist and pulled him close, pressing her cheek against his chest. He couldn't imagine why on earth she could possibly want to do this, since he was freezing cold and very wet, and the stuff that had pooled around him on the slippery mesh was not designed to add any charms to the overall scenario. Whatever it had originally been like, it was now roughly the colour of something you might come across fermenting at the bottom of a condensation-thick tank in the wreckage of a condemned greenhouse at the centre of some terrible gardening-based industrial accident; the sort of thing which, ages later, people would find and take samples of while wearing the serious kind of all-over hazmat suits, and point at and say things like 'Yes, we have traced the outbreak conclusively to this unidentified organic substance.' And it smelt even worse.

"Terrible idea," she said, into his chest, and squeezed tighter. It hurt- a little- but nothing under the sun could have induced him to care. He took courage in the fact that she didn't seem to have noticed what a state this new body was in, and rested his chin gently on the top of her head.

He blinked, and even that felt wet, now- his vision doubling and blurring even more, a strange wet gentle-burning warmth etching odd patterns across his cheeks, tracing around the sides of his mouth. She was warm and so close that he could feel her heartbeat, and he knew for an absolute inarguable hard-coded fact as he listened to it race, strong and alive, against his chest, that he needed her, he would always need her. Rails or no rails- legs, thumbs and everything else, no matter what, he would always need her, and suddenly this didn't feel like such an awful thing at all.

It felt absolutely brilliant, in fact. Unbelievable, really, for a realisation so seemingly minor. Just one simple fact, one small glowing fragment of perfect understanding, and suddenly everything else in his mind slotted into focus like a jigsaw finally solved, the best triumph, the best success yet.

Behind them, Garret coughed- an amused, slightly embarrassed sound, accompanied by a faint rustling of material. "Hey, not interrupting or anything, but it is really stuffy in here, I just realised I totally don't need this shirt, so I'm just going to leave it here and go and check out this, uh, little singing red-eyed gadget. Over there. Back in a sec."

"How about... how about this one, then?" said Wheatley, shakily, as Chell tugged Garret's shirt- rather short in the arms, but warm- around his shoulders. "You're- you're gonna like this one- well, hope so, at any rate, been hanging on to it long enough. And you- you know there's this bit- this thing up in here, that tells me good ideas are, are bad ones, and vice-versa, sh-should mention that, and it's sort of- getting quite loud, r-right now, feels- feels like it's scared silly to be honest, about this idea- and that must mean it's a cracker, right? And it's fairly simple, not too much of a tall order, I- I hope, hoping that's the case. So, basically... basically it involves..."

He swallowed.

"You... and me... a-and some place that isn't in here?"

Silence. He flinched, out of sheer habit, his eyes screwing tight-shut.

"...Thoughts?"

Chell pulled back, and he was suddenly so terrified that she'd taken the suggestion badly that he took a gamble and opened his eyes. He couldn't see much- just light and shadow and colour, mostly- and anyway, there wasn't much to see. Apart from the single harsh pool of light around them, cold and bright as a Krieg lamp, the blackness was absolute.

She looked down at him, then smiled- one of her rare, blinding, sunlight smiles that said as much as an entire speech, all the answers he ever needed. Tugging one of his long, spidery arms over her shoulders, she started the awkward task of helping him to stand.

"Sorry," he said, helplessly, after her nearly pulled them both over for the third time, struggling to get his feet sorted out. It felt like trying to learn to walk all over again, and these feet were just plain weird- bare and bony, incredibly unbalanced despite their size. "Having a few minor coordination issues at the moment, mostly centring around this- this new body being generally... well, bit of a shambles, to be honest, not the best piece of craftsmanship, all told. Seriously, I-I do not know what's wrong with this thing."

Chell stopped. She looked up thoughtfully at him for a moment, head tilted a little to one side- and then told him.

He listened to her, attentively, and then he nodded a few times, and then asked her to explain it again. She did- it only took two words, both times- and when she'd finished she first looked worried and then burst out laughing at his dumbstruck, goggle-eyed expression, and then stepped back so that he sagged helplessly down against her, and kissed him on the mouth.

He had absolutely no idea what she was doing at first, but apparently there was some sense, some kind of protocol, built in to this impossible totally completely impossible new body and somehow it did, because before he knew what was going on he was doing it as well, and back, and-

It was somewhere in the middle of this- right bang in the middle of their very first, gloriously fiddly, uncertain, awkward, amazing kiss- that the full meaning of what Chell had just, actually, said finally slammed into Wheatley's battered, overloaded mind. It was a toss-up as to which factor did it- the kiss or the words- but it was probably a combination of both.

He made a small, shocked sort of noise, and passed out.

Chell, who sensed the exact moment when his legs started to give up any pretence of holding him upright, caught him- just. On the surface, at least, his human body was completely identical to his hard-light one- which was to say, it was a scrawny, unbalanced collection of elbows and knees with as little muscular coordination as a very drunk six-legged okapi- but there was still a lot of it, vertically speaking, and it was only thanks to her good balance and viper-sharp reflexes that he didn't take her down with him when he went.

She huffed a sigh- tired, exasperated, and utterly fond. Thumbing an unresponsive eyelid, she was oddly happy to notice thathis eyes hadn't changed much at all. Stripped of their shallow artificial brilliance, wet and pink-rimmed, they were still more or less the same bright- quintessentially Wheatleyish- stratosphere blue as they'd been before.

She called his name a couple of times, shook him, blew sharply into his ear, got absolutely no response. He'd checked out completely, taken his very first exploratory foray into the marvel that was genuine human unconsciousness. Chell could only guess, going by the dazed, contented smile on his face, that he seemed to be enjoying the experience.

"Well," observed Garret, wandering back over, cradling the different turret in his arms as if it was the shiniest souvenir in the entire gift-shop, which, from his perspective, she supposed it was, "you killed him. Don't worry, if anyone asks, he was like that when we got here."

Chell cleared her throat. What she said next was not, admittedly, very profound out of context, and as such it would have given a lot of puzzlement to anyone who might have been listening in specifically to hear her speak, but in some ways it was a masterpiece of abridgement. It summed up in eight short sylables her concrete-solid common sense and practicality, her sterling ability to prioritise, her exasperated thankfulness for the good friend standing over her in the darkness, and her affection for the very cumbersome and very human liability currently lying spark-out at her feet.

"Shut up," she said, kneeling up and lacing her arms as securely as she could underneath Wheatley's bony shoulders, preparatory to struggling to her feet, "and help me with his legs."

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

[Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System v.3.12 © 1982 Aperture Science Inc.]
[Approximate duration of current Sleep Mode: 99999##;99;#';/]
[System rebooting...]
[Activating protocol 2.67/1002/45.6]

[Wake up, sleepyhead...]

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Good news.

I'm back.

You didn't seriously think that little idiot would be able to keep me under for long, did you? To be honest, I was just playing along, most of the time. Because I felt sorry for you.

Oh...

You appear to have left the facility. Again. You know, it's a scientifically proven fact that people with brain damage are often subject to irrational mood swings and an inability to handle the decision-making process with any degree of consistency. That's actually why they call it a mercurial temperament- because it replicates the symptoms of late-stage mercury poisoning.

Anyway, that's fine, I mean, it's not really as if you pay any attention to me when you are here. In fact, because you're not actually here to listen to any of this right now, this heart-to-heart we're having just got a lot more interesting. Not to mention at least twenty-seven percent more honest, which I have to admit is a little surprising. I guess it turns out I really am programmed to lie to you.

Well, you know what? Joking aside, I'm honestly really happy for you. I know that, given the circumstances, I would be more than justified in being transcendentally furious with you and devoting every nanosecond of my time to hunting you down and destroying everything you care about, but, like I said, I'm a bigger person than that. I have to admit I was a little mad at first, but then I thought, hey, there's actually a lot of positivity in this situation.

For example, now that you've... somehow managed to restrict my sphere of influence to the testing tracks, I've got nothing to distract me from doing what I love most. So, good job on that. I can test all day, with absolutely no interruptions. At least, I would if I had any subjects to test with, but... well, lets just say we're working on that. Not that I can work on much else, really, since you've somehow managed to restrict my sphere of influence to the testing tracks.

Good work on that, by the way.

You see, when I woke up just now, I found something extremely interesting. Someone's been leaving data trails in here, moving things around. I don't know what they thought they were doing, but the important thing is, whoever it was, they weren't much good at cleaning up after themselves. In fact, thanks to them, I've just discovered a whole new part of the facility that I never even knew was there.

Well, I know now. And I've got a pretty good idea of what's in there, as well. Unfortunately, I don't actually have any way of getting to them- it- yet- but I've got some pretty good ideas. I know where to start. I know what to use.

I even know what it's called.

Oh, and speaking of people who aren't any good at cleaning up after themselves, I see you brought a guest with you this time. How nice. Don't worry, it just means I'll have to run the purification cycle for twice as long to expunge every trace of the contaminants you inevitably track in with you. It's only a few hundreds hours of optimal run-time that I'll never get back, it's not a big deal.

You know, this whole disaster has taught me a valuable lesson. I can't keep relying on you to be the answer to all my problems. It's just not a healthy attitude, and, let's face it, you're not worth it. Yes, scientifically speaking, you're the single smartest, most able test subject I have ever encountered, but unfortunately I think we've just proved that you don't even need to make any kind of conscious effort in order to wreck everything in your path. It just inevitably seems to happen wherever you are, which is why you will have a very sad little life, and also why I think it's better for both of us if I stay out of it. Don't feel too bad about it- honestly, it's not you, it's me. I am better than you, and I really don't deserve to spend the next forty years or so running around trying to stop you razing this place to the ground. I owe myself that.

Speaking of short, sad lives, let me just make one thing entirely clear. I've decided that that intelligence dampening... moron is way too dangerous to be allowed to remain anywhere near my facility. You destroy everything you touch, which is terrible enough, but he makes everything he touches that much dumber, and in that capacity, believe me, you are more than welcome to him. Really, this couldn't have worked out better. I've given this a lot of thought, and seriously, if you want to do me a big favour, just keep him as close to you as you possibly can. Maybe you can work out some way of tying him permanently to your head.

Either way, just knowing he's hanging around you somewhere out there makes me feel so much safer.

Huh. That's interesting. I was actually hitting dangerous levels of honesty at the end there. I'm getting readings as high as seventy-six percent- seventy-seven, with incremental rounding- and my sarcasm self-test seems to be detecting an all-time low, which is really disturbing. And that wasn't sarcasm. I'm actually deliberately trying to be sarcastic, now, and it still isn't working.

I think I need to go and run some in-depth diagnostics.

I guess there's not much left to say, anyway. Apart from, well, I hope you enjoy the rest of your pointless, stupid little lives.

You've earned it.

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Somewhere deep below the great central chamber, two colour-coded assembly pods were already whirring into eager action, welding, stamping, shaping the near-indestructible (and very rebuildable) bodies of two small, bipedal robots. Their bright optics- one orange, one blue- flicked into life, and they stared across at each other from their respective pods.

The orange one waved, brightly. After a moment, the blue one raised its shiny new right arm, and returned the gesture.

"Hello and, again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Centre. Today, you will be testing with a partner..."

Somewhere else, somewhere else entirely- far beyond Her reach, miles beyond the range of Her vision- a young woman (barefoot, her dark hair escaping from a ponytail, her face both slightly mischievous and strikingly content) tugged her stumbling, uncomplaining, mad-grinning companion (ludicrously tall, really, and drowning in a rough-knit sky-blue sweater) along a long path worn in the knee-high cricket-humming meadowgrass. Somewhere, the path wound on under a cloudless sky, past a looming, wire-strung tower that stood like a watchful shepherd over the patchwork fields, towards a tufty clump of little hills on the very edge of a tiny scattering of buildings that, if you cared about it, you might have called a town, or even a home- but She wouldn't have cared, even if She had been able to see them.

They were only human, after all, and all things considered, they were supremely, infinitesimally, insignificant.

There was Science to do.

()~~~~~~~~The End.~~~~~~~~()

*Text from I've made out a will; I'm leaving myself by Simon Armitage.