Title: Prometheus

Status: In Progress

Fandom:Portal (2)

Rating: T

Genre:General

Warnings: Swearing, violence, drug abuse, discussions of human physiological issues, a crapsack world in general, original characters

Pairings: There is one pairing that will become central but as of now this information is irrelevant.

Summary: The world outside beyond the Aperture Labs is not exactly paradise.

Disclaimer: The Portal franchise and associated characters are the property of Valve.

"…Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed…"
- Excerpt from Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

It took Chell a few minutes to realize that Prometheus was no longer with her. The hallway had been filled with the sound of their dual footfalls not more than a moment ago. Now, the grey concrete close was silent and the sound of her own breathing seemed excessively loud. A chill of fear shot through Chell from the soles of her feet to the top of her head and she hated the sensation. Everything about this grey and white concrete hole from M's sterile tables to this cold back alleyway with its dull shades of grey and the sudden absence of an artificial intelligence present to speak to made her feel as though the fields and the sun and the sky with its shifting colours had been no more than a dream.

She chose to focus on her ire at Wheatley, or whatever stupid thing he was calling himself now. It was typical of him. Hadn't changed a bit, had he? He talked about being brave, played at having compassion but when push came to shove, he turned tail like the coward he was and would always be. After all, he was still just a robot and a robot couldn't go against his (stupid, moronic) programming.

Unless they are forced to. Chell thought to herself. After all, GLaDOS hadn't been able to avoid letting her leave, even having apparently deleted Caroline's presence from her system. What had all that even been about? Had she just deluded herself into believing that because the A.I had wanted to return to her position of power in the chassis that she'd somehow developed some sense of compassion along the way? If she really had managed to trick herself into believing that she may well be as brain-damaged as Wheatley had claimed she was. Furthermore, why was she even thinking of it now?

Unfortunately, all of her thoughts always seemed to return to Aperture anyway and for once she was grateful for the return of Wheatley clomping down the stairs, the irony of the situation notwithstanding. To further derail her negative train of thought, she put her hands on her hips and glared up at the android.

"I thought we might go a bit faster if we took the lorry."

Chell blinked at him in confusion.

"Sorry. The truck" He amended.

Her response was to scowl even deeper and shrug to show she was still confused.

He smacked his head with a hand, eliciting a clang; he had used the one holding the keys of course. "Oh, that's right! You were sick!"

Naturally he would have to bring that up. Chell felt a fresh wave of humiliation rise up in her at the notion that Wheatley, stupid, annoying, murderous traitor that he was, was now on the suddenly rapidly growing list of people that she owed a great deal of her continued existence in this mortal coil to.

She finally realized what his strange statement and what he had gone back for meant. In a flash the keys were out of his hand and clattering at the bottom of the stairwell.

Prometheus took off after them, taking the stairs three at a time "Okay, I am hearing what you are saying luv and that is: 'Don't drive Prometheus as you probably can't do it very well', and now I think of it you are probably very right but I absolutely have to get those back!" he called up to her from about three flights down. "At least I could have tried to drive, really I could have! Looks a bit like following a rail, what with the streets…and then once you get out of there, it's just like floating along an excursion tunnel going any which way you wa-"

Chell highly doubted that but she also was convinced that this would put an end to the issue. She was only too glad to push through the industrial-heavy door separating her from a place that didn't resemble the facility so strongly. It had the added bonus of cutting Wheatley off mid-ramble. Prometheus was left with no choice but to race back up to the ground level and trot after her as fast as he was able.

This proved to be a rather simple task after all.

Any organization that the plan had heretofore held promptly died the moment they exited the building. Chell realized that she was stuck with the android as she had to return to the building and fulfil her promise to M. Her frustration deepened. Given the disturbance with the Infected from earlier she had not had the opportunity to begin any of her attempts at treatment and thus she had no way to ask Prometheus where the girl had gone. The whole problem was only exacerbated by the fact that she knew he did not know himself. She drew back her fist but remembered that he was not actually made of flesh before she hurt herself.

"Please…" Prometheus walked out into the night and looked up wards.

Chell copied his motions. She found nothing but inky black to meet her gaze but there was a touch of something familiar. A gleam of metal reflected in the gloom. It wasn't the facility but of course it was there. Something artificial of course. She gave the sleeve of the android's shirt a sharp tug and jabbed a finger to draw his attention to it.

"You ah…want to know about the plate?"

She nodded in reply. Perhaps she could tell what the pull had been for a robot, particularly one from Aperture whose primary mode of movement had been a rail. Then again she was willing to admit that there might be something a bit further to it. She hadn't forgotten what it had been like to see the wheat field and the surrounding area for the first time. Even as much as she despised Wheatley, she would have expected him to look for help in a place like this. That at least was a somewhat harmless facet of his inherent overall nature.

"This way, luv. Come on." Prometheus spoke up suddenly, starting off down the street.

Chell had no choice but to follow, scowling again at the epithet and wondering if it would be worth the pain in her hand if she just hit him anyway. M could probably fix it in a second with that gun of hers.

Prometheus couldn't understand why The Voice wasn't speaking to him anymore. He was on edge, nervous and jumpy as a drunk. If he'd had a frame of reference he probably would have described himself that way. He wrung his hands repeatedly as he walked until he swore he could feel them ache and jammed them into his pockets.

He knew something about where the school was. What passed for a campus was very close to the merchandise district where his first ill-fated food services job had taken place. In the early days some of the children tried (and managed) to trick him into giving them free things. Even better than actually knowing where to go was the fact that his old partner had decided to follow him and probably had prevented him from doing something stupid and potentially fatal. She had thwarted those ideas just as boldly as before and alone this time for that matter. Still, she was there and that was something.

She even wanted him to speak to her. To share his knowledge with her.

If there was one thing that could lift Prometheus' spirits it was still the hope, any hope that he was not as stupid as everyone always said he was.

"Ah yes, the Plate. Well, I'm something of an expert on the Plate. Not a total expert but it's metal and I'm metal so we have something in common, right?"

He looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, her mouth set in a line. He forged ahead.

"Right. Well, ah, all the humans in the world got a flu. That's something that makes you really sick. Sort of all snarly and bitey and unwilling to listen to anything anyone says and basically just attacking people for no really good reason…um. Sort of like…. Well. Never mind. It's just not very good, let's leave it at that shall we? So the humans built something that's like the opposite of Her facility. To keep the bad things out and keep the good things in. Except not all of the things are…good…that are kept in. But most are, so that's something isn't it. Bloody marvellous really, humans helping themselves like that."

He glanced over. Without meeting his gaze, his companion gave a slow nod.

"So I'm guessing you understand. So um…it's bad if a person goes missing. Especially so if it happens to be one of you little ones. Plus um, the little one that's gone missing, her parent is sort of my boss and it really is sort of my fault I forgot all about her coming to the office. We're going to go there after the school, you know? That's a place where little humans go to learn things. Maybe you knew that already though, being human and all. Maybe you can tell me what you people learn there after the Doctor fixes your voice. I mean, if you want to."

This time when he looked, the woman was nodding with a strange expression on her face. It was sort of angry and sort of, well, sad all at the same time.

You do know why, don't you?

The Voice again, of course. Never could go on ahead and say anything useful for a change, could it?

"Why?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Prometheus could see Chell react with confusion to the strange turn his narrative had taken but Prometheus felt no compulsion to acknowledge her. Perhaps if he were just the slightest bit patient, just this once he would come out of this mess with a clean slate.

Allow me to put it in terms you are familiar with: 'Fatty Fatty No Parents'. You really are a…

"I get it! A moron. Yes yes, you've told me a million times. I know. Now if you're not going to be of any help finding Rose, just shut up, would you?"

With that, he strode ahead, guilt and Chell alike trotting along at his heels.

Chell wasn't sure why she was following him. In retrospect she could easily have remained behind and pounded on that D-building door until someone let her back in. Now that she was away from it, her paranoia over how much it had looked like Aperture seemed ridiculous. She had instead willingly followed someone she hated and who had a track record of being untrustworthy. Perhaps it was some mildly ingrained compulsion or attraction to robots (and wouldn't that be a terrible thing) or maybe she was just curious to see how pathetically he would mess this up. There was no possible hope for her to find answers here. Not at all.

Wheatley's chatter was at once rambling and derivative but there was some useful information contained within.

Abruptly, he began to speak nonsense. They were quite alone in the streets save for a few winking street lamps and yellow-bright back lit windows cutting small swaths through the gloom. No faces appeared in the frames and no figures came to the doorways to acknowledge or answer his query.

"Why?" he asked suddenly, but there was no answer save for a mild hum and the intermittent flicker of lights.

"I get it! A moron. Yes yes, you've told me a million times. I know. Now if you're not going to be of any help finding Rose, just shut up, would you?" Wheatley sped up, his long legs covering a lot of ground swiftly.

Was he trying to reprimand her? Or tell her that she'd been right? Or perhaps, that GLaDOS had been right? His tone was exasperating but strangely accepting and even defeated. Still, that couldn't be right. He was still talking as though he was expecting an answer. Whether or not he was malfunctioning, he was also half way down the street. Resolving to worry about it later she jogged to catch back up.

They arrived eventually at a building surrounded by a high gate which he stopped in front of, peering through the chain link fence. It appeared to be their destination. Chell took note of the rust coated and crumbling chain wrapped around the entrance gates. She joined him at his side, peering into an ancient courtyard. She stayed there, clinging to the wire even though it reminded her of her first escape attempt, with the Party Escort Robot. The vicious thing had dragged her back down into Hell across a concrete landscape that looked just like this.

This was supposed to be a school? A place where children came to learn and feel safe? This was what GLaDOS had taunted her with missing all that time and what Wheatley had not a moment ago been so curious about?

Once more, Chell was compelled to curse the memories that always seemed intent on surfacing. This time it was that maddening robotic declaration of 9-9-9-9 that burrowed its way into her brain. Just how much of her natural life and beyond had been siphoned away? How much had the world changed with this 'flu'? How out-of-date was GLaDOS, really?

And then of course - and she hated these pangs of guilt that had followed, as though he were worthy of her concern or even her pity – but just how long had Prometheus…Wheatley himself spent below the earth, looking and watching and waiting and talking his nonsense to himself and only himself?

The metal ball come android himself had torn the chain apart while she had been thinking and progressed forward into the yard. He had stopped now, standing almost in the dead centre of the dark place that seemed as desolate as any ruin. Chell could have told him that there were no children or any other humans here.

It turned out that she had been wrong. A spark of light flashed in the gloom. Prometheus crumpled and with it, Chell's resolve not to get involved further with her robotic companion. She crouched into a fighting stance, not for his aid but for her own sense of preservation.

She crouched there for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for the attack. A fist to come flying at her face, a kick to aimed at her side or the flash of a weapon. She turned in a wary circle, one arm up to support the Portal Gun that was no longer on her wrist.

She tried to make a fist, the only other weapons she had. Just as she did, something, rock hard and crushingly powerful, latched onto her wrist and contrived to wrestle her left arm behind her, straining to drive her face into the pavement.

Her paranoia went haywire. It was the Party Escort Robot! She'd been tricked! Wheatley had betrayed her again by bringing her here and she'd fallen for it!

Nonetheless, Chell was nothing if not resourceful and although she was caught in the throes of terror, she readily deployed any defences available to her. One arm lanced out in a wide arc and hit air. Her world turned upside down as the ground flew past her but this was a woman familiar with trans-dimensional travel. A little disorientation was nothing to worry about. She landed upright, ignoring the jolt that went up her legs in the absence of her long fall boots or knee replacements.

Evidently her opponent (who was not as she had believed in her panicked state the dreaded Party Escort Robot) had not been expecting her to retain her balance and by extension, retaliate.

A very human-sounding grunt came from somewhere nearby.

She still couldn't see who had attacked her and she kicked out again. She once again hit nothing but air and once again she was restrained, this time around her neck.

"The actual fuck do you think you're doing?"

Chell was breathing hard and clutching the hand which had been bent behind her back with brutal force. M's arm was what was pressed against the underside of her throat.

"I know you aren't an android you know." The Doctor continued, her breath heavy and oppressively hot on the side of Chell's face.

Chell's gaze flickered over to her right, then her left. Neither of these positions yielded results and so the woman kicked out once again with legs that were still immensely more powerful than her assailant could have imagined. This time she connected and gained some leverage, trying desperately to grapple with the other woman and get herself away.

They went skidding over the expanse concrete once more, this time with M above her, hanging on with that brute strength, her arms pressing their bodies tight together. She was not however trying to crush her Chell realized as they flew. She was trying to keep the skin on her back from getting shredded by the uneven, ruined pavement.

However, as foolish as it probably was, Chell was not done with the Doctor yet. She bent her knees and prepared for the fight to get uglier. She'd seen what M could do but after all that she had been through, she was not going to roll over like a good little test subject any longer if she could help it.

M responded by hauling Chell bodily around, sending her stumbling forward. The Doctor calmly pulled her .33 on her when she turned around to face her again, standing steady with the firearm levelled at her heart.

"No, Sweetheart, it's over."

Just like that the fight had gone the way of many best laid plans.

Chell glared and Prometheus dithered, even though he was clearly the individual with the upper hand in this situation as neither the bullets from the gun nor even the strength of the Infected Medic would have damaged him before he could land a debilitating blow of his own.

"N-now, listen. It was my fault w-we're all out here...or rather..." he trailed off, deliberating on whether to mention the Voice's absence from the proceedings as of late. He stopped himself. "No. Just, my fault. That's all, but...it does I think it does have something to do with the other robot. The one that I told you about. Rick, you know? The one who got me all bunged up."

Though he did not want to read the expression of either woman there, he settled on Chell who was regarding him with a calm but intense expression. That wasn't so bad he supposed. Besides, it was probably more for M than it was for him. He remembered how she used to simply stare whenever anyone threatned her with Neurotoxin or other horrible torments.

He forced himself to do nothing more than fidget, wondering immediately if she suspected his only other well kept secret. He had spoken aloud to it earlier without even thinking of the consequences. Or, maybe, could she hear the Voice? Did it talk to her too? No. That was ridiculous. Humans didn't have...things in their heads like that. Programs. Functions. They needed devices to do that, didn't they?

One thing he did know was that his former friend and current...what, exactly? Tolerant companion perhaps? He was a bit beyond calling her even close to his 'mate' or even being allowed to be calling her something as intimate as 'partner'. At any rate, she was aware that Aperture had something to do with this and Aperture in Chell's mind probably meant Her.

Or maybe not.

Chell had not bothered to explain or even try to jump her way to intimating how she had gotten free. Maybe she had actually managed to kill Her again and just…climbed on out, the way he'd always suggested they do.

No. She was alive. Rick had said that, hadn't he? That the Voice - Caroline, rather - had wanted her facility back. That was the whole point of this exercise wasn't it? She had a habit of not staying Dead. Capital D.

Chell, he suppsoed would be involved for good now. Not because of him, but naturally if there was any chance at all that She was still alive - Capital A, Capital LIVE it would be in her best interests – or maybe just in her own personal pleasure - to put a stop to that.

Chell for her own part had been waiting for the moment when yet more Aperture technology would make itself known but despite being somewhat more clear-headed than Prometheus, she couldn't just look into someone's mind. Not even a robot's if she had the proper tools to do so.

She had not however, lost her powers of observation and a few particulars had garnered her attention. First there was Wheatley's personal admission of error and more intriguing; the fact that he had chosen to assume responsibility for his actions tonight. Both for loss of the child and his own neglignce and mental shortcomings. She grudgingly had to admit she was, perhaps not impressed but at least willing to acknowledge that it was consistent with what he had said to her about turning over a new leaf, so to speak.

Secondly and more worrisome, at least for her own peace of mind, nothing at all about this felt anything like GLaDOS. Her former antagonist-come-partner-come-neutral saviour preferred to address her directly, not scurry through back alleyways and dispatch minions. She lied and needled and attacked when she said she would not but always, always with the intent of making sure her victim was aware of just who was pulling the strings in the situation.

The bottom line was that if She had been one of these new mobile automatons then She would have appeared in 'person' long before now.

GLaDOS also certainly wouldn't choose to garner a reaction of sympathy for a child to whom she had negligible ties. She would assume, correctly (and likely vocally), that Chell would not deliberately tie herself to anyone. This girl was M's worry. Also Wheatley's apparently. Chell herself saw no reason to be out here other than the fact that the android had quite correctly linked the girl's safety with their own in the presence of M. That admittedly one-sided skirmish certainly proved that.

Wheatley himself also was definitely not a possibility of being the instigator in all of this. His reaction to the situation might have been touching for a less jaded individual, but Chell was not such a person. At the heart of the matter remained the fact that he was simply not capable of such an elaborate lie. She grudgingly had to admit that her analysis of him would make his apparent remorse true but he'd never been able to do much more than take existing things and modify them. His cube turrets, his test chambers, even his admittedly savvy final stand against her were no more than mere modifications on his predecessor's brilliance.

"...and really M, I knew I was supposed to have been waiting for her but I just forgot, I mean it just got pushed all the way back into my memory banks you see and-"

While Chell had been thinking to herself, Prometheus had been running his mouth, trying to rationalize his position to the Medic. M had not moved her gun from Chell but was at least apparently more interested in making sense of the AI's rambling half-explanation, half-apology.

He was cut off mid-babble by a short burst of melodic ringing.

The gun remained as still and steady as a rock while the opposite hand moved like fluid water. The Doctor calmly retrieved the icon-display device that had so confused Chell before from her pocket and spoke into it. "Eileen?"

Chell couldn't help but wonder how she knew who it was.

M listened for a moment and then made some twitchy movement with her hand before returning it to her pocket and finally lowering the firearm, tucking it into her belt on the opposite side and addressing the duo.

"Jack found them."

"Them?" Prometheus' last question was drowned out by the crunch of gravel underfoot and the hum of the Medigun as M contrived to heal the wounds sustained by herself and Chell during the fight.

The former test subject was reminded of the Medic's earlier warning, one that she was finally taking to heart. She would have to learn how to defend herself in this new environment. The outcome of the attack had damaged her confidence somewhat but not her resolve. When her obligation to the Doctor had been seen to the end, she would have all the tools she needed to eke out her own life, hopefully far away from here.

"Found these two out by the Generator."

Jack and Eileen were waiting by the the entrance to Prometheus' D-2 flat. The young girl with the brown bird-feather hair whose name Chell now was able to identify as Rose Lovett stood to Eileen's left. They were joined by a somewhat effeminate young male who appeared around the same age as the girl standing beside Jack on the far right.

It was impossible not to watch the boy. Quite apart from the fact that he was swaying back and forth on the balls of his feet as though he were standing up on a rocking chair, his eyes focussed and refocused themselves in strange patterns. First they darted every which way, then they focused again on the mess of an insect which had been smashed in its attempt to crawl up the wall, then more looking about until such time as they focussed on a crack a short distance away. Every so often in this strange ritual he would look up and his feet would turn inward. Jack's powerful hand on his shoulder prevented him from completing his attempt to turn himself around.

"It was the strangest thing." the man continued, rubbing his hand through they grey at his temples. "Besides the fact that I figured Rose here would have known better."

His wife's hand tightened around the girl's at her husband's mention of the name and Rose gave a slight nod of obvious understanding and abashed shame.

Prometheus felt a strange stab of envy at the sight. Eileen and Jack were partners who worked as a fluid team, just the way that he and Chell once were. He missed that. He knew that her willingness to help him earlier had been a whim of a choice, not obligation and certainly not acceptance of any of his attempts at apology.

"Would have just called you lot directly but I couldn't risk it. Something had torn a big hole straight through the fence and these two were wiggling through it when I arrived. Rosie, kiddo I honestly don't know what you were thinking." Jack repeated. "Your daddy taught you better. Had to call half my men out there to get it fixed pronto before anything could try getting in, let alone out."

A single tear trickled down Rose's cheek. M was nodding along at Jack's explanation but her gaze was locked on the girl. Her head was tucked to her chin as before but for someone as well-versed in human expression as the Medic, that was as much to express remorse for her lapse in judgement as it was to try and hide the fact that she knew differently from what the old law official had surmised about her situation.

Deciphering what Rose knew was as easy as glancing at Prometheus, something that both M and Chell ended up doing at the same time. It was obvious that whoever this kid was, he was another of whatever brand of mechanical person Prometheus and the still-absent Rick had become.

"I called Hank when we got back into the city limits." Eileen spoke up. "From what Rose has told me Prometheus, you are not to blame. She says these two had left from the school premises long before the end of the day. I took the liberty of informing her father of that fact."

Prometheus relaxed visibly but he affected the tone of a father reprimanding a small child. "Er, yes. Um. Thank you, Rose. I was expecting you at the office you know. I was terribly worried when I couldn't find you I don't mind telling you!"

It was a strange thing to watch something you knew was only a mechanical representation of a human relax but Chell chose not to dwell on it too long. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the attempt at paternal concern. It almost sounded like the annoying 'superior' tack he'd taken in the chassis. So much for Wheatley's newfound sense of responsibility.

"Rose! Rose! Oh my god, baby are you okay!?" The man's voice and a rapid staccato of footfalls preceded him up the steps. The young girl took one step towards the source of the sound but her fingers threaded through Eileens' and she only went as far as the tether of their arms allowed.

He stumbled over the last three steps that he'd taken three at a time and came dangerously close to doing a face-first plant in the middle of the hall, his oddly formal business choice of a three-piece suit with french cuffs looking even less professional with the back and right front tail of the shirt sticking out from under the vest and the windsor knot on the tie loose and bunched out.

Hank's hands made a move to pluck the girl from Eileen's grasp but his hands were shaking too badly for him to do so and he settled for scratching his arms frantically through the fabric of his button-down.

To complete the queering of the professional illusion; when he spoke Chell noticed that his teeth were stained a brownish-yellowish colour and up close his hair was not slicked back with gel. Grase or something close to had been applied in liberal quantities to create the illusion. Hadn't the Medic said something about drugs and doing damage to her hair and teeth during her rescue?

It was strange to be around other people and feel the nuances of their relationships and their judgements of her. Not for the first time since this whole fiasco had started did Chell feel much closer to Prometheus than to the rest of the people there. She was different. An outcast for life it seemed

Did you just refer to Wheatley as Prometheus? Stop that, right now.

"You're obviously worried!" M exclaimed but there was a layer to her professional Medic's tone suggesting that it wasn't concern for Hank's state of mind that was foremost in her thoughts. "I think you and Rose and our young friend here should spend the night. Right, Prometheus?"

Hank looked sharply over at the android who for a moment seemed not to register that there were people staring at him.

He swiftly called to mind a few of the Doctor's choice medical vocabulary.

"Oh. Yes. Quite right. For uh, trauma. And...um...the like."

Hank pursed his lips but looked at his shaking hands as though they would choose for him. Evidently they had decided in the affirmative as he nodded with a short, shaky jerk of his head. "Alright. I suppose that would be for the best."

"Space." The boy who had been jittery but silent until this time spoke up, though the melancholy utterance was obviously not directed towards anyone besides himself. Maybe he had been talking to the squashed bug or the crack in the wall for all anyone there was aware.

Hank, Prometheus and Chell all gave the boy a somewhat knowing glance, though the second exchange between android and woman went unnoticed by the third party while he turned the majority of his attention to his daughter. He gave her a half-angry stare but something remorseful lingered in the display of parental sternness. "Please thank the good doctor for her hospitality."

Almost in tandem with the boy, Rose shuffled her feet and nodded. "Yes Daddy. Thank you M."

"Thank you."

Just like that, the group parted ways. Eileen and Jack down the stairs and Hank shepherded the two children up the stairs towards M's flat. Prometheus started to turn towards his own door but the Doctor stopped him. "Oh you're coming too. I told you you were important to Miss Silent's recovery process."

The speech therapy procedure fortunately did not take place in the Doctor's lab, a fact for which Chell was exceedingly grateful. Instead, while the remainder of the group was directed towards the sitting room adjacent to the surgery, Prometheus and Chell were directed into the private bedroom Chell had been occupying for the past while.

M took a seat on the bed, spreading to take up most of the room.

"We'll…we'll just um, find the floor." Prometheus muttered under his breath, just low enough so as not to be overheard by anyone other than the former test subject. "Seems a bit unfair when Chell's the patient."

Chell took the opportunity to seat herself without complaint which in her case meant maintaining a neutral expression and ignoring the Android entirely; something she had a great deal of practice with.

She was correct in assuming she would not be able to maintain selective hearing or her wall of willful ignorance of his presence for very long.

"Very well then. We're going to multitask. First off, missy, we're going to start you out with breathing exercises to get those muscles working again. Back straight and head forward." The Doctor hopped off the bed and walked around behind Chell, tipping up her chin.

Remembering the outcome of the fight, Chell flinched visibly and tried to jerk away, causing the other woman's fingers to tighten on her chin. "Ah-ah. I'm not going to garrote you, okay? Back straight, head forward. That's a girl. Very nice. Now hold steady there and deep breath in and hold it…good, now keep holding and swallow…"

Prometheus watched with interest. He too had tensed when the Doctor had touched Chell. He knew he'd been a coward again during the struggle but this time he was determined not to hold back in offering aid if it looked like a fight was going to break out.

"…and keep holding and cough and exhale. Excellent. Now hold up like that, repeat what I showed you and take this pen."

M pulled a pen from her pocket, paused to straighten Chell's head back to its original position while she put it in her hand and snapped her fingers.

"English! Front and centre!"

It always took Prometheus a second to recognize when M was speaking to him and it took a few more staccato clicks before he finally snapped to attention. "Alright your job is to sit in front of her and hold up this pad of paper at eye-level."

Being too short to reach the android's shoulders, M pointed at a spot on the floor directly in front of Chell, commanding him to sit like a dog. Considering that Prometheus had no knowledge of dogs besides the hybrid type of creatures he had shot at, the slight against him went unnoticed, not even when M smiled at his obedience.

"Good boy." She put the yellow lined pad of paper into his hands, turning it the right way around so the cardboard backing was facing him and adjusted the height of his hand for the make-shift easel as she had with Chell's face.

Of course, Chell seemed to require no extra assistance, competently and patiently repeating her prescribed exercises as necessary.

"Now I want you to draw something – anything that Motor-head here would be able to describe for me. You both came from the same place and while I don't care if he can read or not, I have to have you be able to read and speak. You're pretty but I'll be damned if you are the least charismatic individual I have ever met. That means you need to read prepared speeches…but we'll wait to see if we can even get that far. First, we'll kill a few birds with one stone. I'm going to go out and when I come back, we'll see what we have to work with."

M turned and left the room and Chell lifted her pen to the paper, determinedly looking at the yellow sheets and avoiding allowing any part of Prometheus into her line of vision.

She was definitely doing something and not simply ignoring him as the android could feel the pressure of the pen through the paper.

"You know she does that to all of us." Prometheus never could stand the silence, not even when he supposed the girl should be concentrating, but while her six predecessors had all fallen, Chell had never messed up once, not even when he shouted unexpectedly. "Always takes the good chair in my flat. Probably we could have been nice and comfortable too, sitting on that bed and all!"

He craned his neck to try and get a look at the front of the pad and received a swift glare when he jostled it. He settled back into position

"Right, right sorry. You know, it's just, it might be nice if we could talk to eachother I guess. Some of the others could talk. The ones before you. I was thinking about them just now."

Finally he seemed to have received some response as Chell's head jerked up imperceptibly and for just the briefest second he imagined her eyes looked up to meet his. He waited a moment but perhaps he had imagined the reaction.

"Yes, I thought maybe you were brain damaged because you didn't speak or talk to me. I guess you proved me wrong though." He ran his spare hand through his hair, pushing it into an even more pathetic mess. "Look, I don't know what you'd say to me if you did have a voice. I just know what I'd say to me and that'd be 'look Wheatley, shut up and go away.' Except I can't."

This time Chell stopped mid exercise and mid-scribble and looked at him.

"I said um…'look Prometheus, shut up and go away.' Is that not right? I mean, that's what you'd say if you could, isn't it?"

The woman across from him responded by taking in a deep breath and holding it while she coughed.

Sinking back into silence seemed to be the best decision for the present. He thought they were making some headway when she'd decided to accompany him to find Rose earlier. Or when she had asked him specifically about the Plate, like she wanted him to talk to her. Now it seemed they were right back to square one.

He cleared his throat. He'd shut up right after this, really he would. He just had to say one final thing first. "You know, you're the only one I really hoped would talk to me."

He was the one who dropped his eyes, unwilling to see her reaction or lack thereof.

There was several minutes of silence after that, broken only by the scratching of Chell's pen against the paper.

"Excellent!" M it appeared had returned from her sojourn. "Well it's all settled. You'll be attending school with Rose. Good ol' Daddy agreed to it right away, I don't mind telling you. I just gave him all the information he needed to know. Plus of course a little treat for being such a good patient.. Missy here can go to help her learn her three R's and she's pretty handy with those legs of hers. We'll keep any little mishaps like tonight from happening again with a part-time bodyguard around. Oh and Hank knows you're an android. I may have let that slip."

Prometheus dropped the pad.

"What?"

"Well I certainly don't know the PC term for it. What are you calling yourselves these days? Mechanical man? AI? Robots?" The Doctor's tone took a delicate turn as though she believed that had actually been the reason for Prometheus' reaction the whole time.

"I…why would you do that?"

M shrugged. "Hank's got a little too much of a moral compass on him where his daughter's concerned. I just wanted to remind him of how much he doesn't know. I'm not losing a good customer and a good organ donor for later."

Prometheus closed his eyes. The Voice was not there, but he didn't need it to remind him of what he already knew.

He was such an idiot.

"Anyway. Let's see what you've got here." M snapped her fingers again at Prometheus who once again refused to respond immediately, staring off into the ether.

It did not escape Chell's notice. Once more he seemed like he was speaking to or waiting for someone to speak who was not immediately present.

M pursed her lips and a whistle cut through the air. "Hey. That paper's not going to pick itself up, you know."

As if coming out of a dream, Prometheus knelt forward to retrieve the fallen pages, handing them up to M while focusing most of his attention on the ceiling. Although M simply seemed exasperated, Chell took note that the android had adopted the same pose when attempting to figure out which way to go to find the missing girl.

"Alright, let's focus here. Now that your throat is all warmed up, I want you to try making this sound. Not aloud. Just the noise: Ah. Like in 'apple."'

It was Chell's turn this time to freeze but she covered it more swiftly than Prometheus had. This did not escape the android's notice. It would have been in his usual nature to correct the Doctor, tell her he'd tried that already but Chell didn't get up and jump. She simply sat on the carpet, her face screwed up into a look of concentration, mouth working hard to make a sound that didn't seem to want to come despite her best efforts.

"You can do it you know! You're clever!" Prometheus felt as though his mind and mouth were disconnected somehow. The sentiment had seemed to come from nowhere in particular. He hadn't even been trying to be encouraging or contradictory to his earlier behaviour.

The former test subject seemed to have sensed it to because while she didn't meet his eyes, she gave the tiniest of nods before reapplying herself to her given task.

"Focus idiot! What are you two even doing here?" Prometheus found himself with the pad now shoved almost directly under his nose. He raised his hands to take it and followed M towards the bed. "Finally. So. Did she draw anything you might be able to recognize?"

At last able to get a good look at what Chell had been drawing while he had held up the canvas, the android let his eyes dart around the page at the shaky, poor attempts drawings. However many talents Chell may have, art clearly was not one of her greater skills.

There though, in the upper corner was finally something he was able to recognize without question. A short, fat little oval with long, spindly legs and a round circle in the centre.

He pointed at it. "A turret gun. It was a sort of trap. A defense devic—"

M grabbed the pad. "I know what a turret gun is. They found a warehouse full of them a number of years ago. Boxes of them, unopened. Word has it they were a complete and utter failure of a home security system. Wound up attacking the home owners more than any potential prowlers. Cost Aperture a pretty penny." She wrote a bunch of those strange characters that Prometheus had never been able to make any sense of beneath them.

"Oh and that…that's um, a water trap I think. A lot of the water was contaminated because of the salt mines and the moon rock waste product. It was lethal for any human to touch. Dissolved them. Just like that. I remember this one, it was pretty awful. One minute they were there and the next just screaming and bobbing and then they were all sort of white and…I don't know, funny shaped and then boom nothing at all. More of a fizzle, actually than a proper 'boom'."

"So there were a lot of security traps set up. Turrets and water traps. What else?" She penciled in something underneath the wavy lines and the sort of man-shaped thing falling into it. Belatedly, Prometheus realized that those weird characters must read 'Water Trap' and the ones underneath the other picture must read 'Turret Gun'.

There had never been any writing on the Test Chamber signs, though. He wondered if She could even read. Maybe not.

He clapped a hand to the side of his head as evidently fed up with his constant drifting off into his own mental processors, M had cuffed him on the 'ear'. "Really! Are. You. Malfunctioning? Because this page is not going to decipher itself!"

For the umpteenth time that day, Prometheus came back to reality and made a Herculean effort to refocus on Chell's 'artwork'. Dare he call it that? His eyes roved around the page until he found one more unmistakable representation.

"The deadly neurotoxin." It was a rather impressive-sounding warning tone he thought.

Instead of fear, M's face lit up with greed. "That's what I wanted to know about. Excellent. So this doctor thinks she can stockpile Neurotoxin, hm?"

"Loads of it. Whole chambers full of it, mate. I mean, Doctor. She just pumped it all right into the atmosphere! Not very nice I don't mind telling you. Really not fun for the test subjects..."

A number of things happened just then in quick succession. M shifted in a position of aggressive interest towards Prometheus who immediately shrank back, coming closer inch by inch to toppling off the other end of the bed.

Suddenly, M had stopped tormenting the Android while Prometheus himself was perched on the edge of the bed like an enormous parody of a baby bird just ready to attempt flight out of its nest for the first time. Both of them were now staring at Chell in the wake of the very first sound she had ever uttered, perhaps ever.

Prometheus punctuated the lone phoneme by finally managing to fall off the bed with a loud clang as he upset the rubbish bin.

"F-f-f-f-aaaaaaaact….choooclate was discovered by the ancient cave men as a way to make the females of their tribes shut up for more than f-f-f-five minutes. Unfortunately this backfired when women found out about the plan and began demanding it, particularly during pregnancy."

That one almost made a certain modicum of sense and apart from the shorting, that particular lapse in the AI's normal nonsense probably meant the Fact Core was on it's last legs. Caroline was rapidly becoming increasingly aware that she was running out of time and GLaDOS may be test-obsessed but she was most definitely on her guard now.

She wouldn't be surprised if the suspicious behemoth had some tertiary function that wasn't masturbating itself on four cameras at once. She'd been in there. Simply because she wasn't being as vocal about it as the moron was didn't mean that the test euphoria wasn't still running itself through her systems.

The players were in place and while it perhaps wasn't an ideal solution, the time had come to take centre stage, so to speak.

Presently, the biggest problem was the fact that Space core's function had been interrupted and potentially corrupted and now he and the trump card were way off course.

Trying to take the girl so soon had been a risky move to begin with but the good news was that GLaDOS still didn't know of her presence or her plan. What she needed was the one thing she didn't have: more time.

"Fact: Sir Issac Neuton was not the first person to discover gravity. Innnnnn faact, the fiiiiirst person was squassshhhhed by a giiiiiiant apple. The one that feeeellll on Neu-Neu-Neuton was just muuuuuch smaller."

Who could think with that background noise anyway? It was even starting to affect her decision making processes.

Question: what would Cave have done in this situation?

That was simple. He'd ordered her put into the machine, hadn't he?

She had no options left. No one to take the fall. It was too dangerous for any of the former cores to return now that she was looking for functional programs and not organic life. If she put the Fact core into the chassis, it's damaged state would render her incapable of doing her work and would be discovered and deleted before any uploads could take place at all.

Then of course it would be a matter of time before she was discovered in the old core body as it would be functional as long as she was there to run it. Even if GLaDOS did somehow miss what was intruding into her functions, Caroline didn't think she had it in her to make up that many innane and faulty bits of trivia.

That said, letting it end here was simply not an option.

There was one other option and she didn't like it. It was too much like giving control over to GLaDOS again. Too much like a step backwards to the blackouts in the potato where she was always wrestling for control with the Beast.

On the other hand, The Fact Core was at least as weak as she had once been in that tuber. Sometimes to take two steps forward you had to take one step back, and if she just could rock the handles of the tremulous little core, she could just reach one of GLaDOS many tendrils of power that arched around her lair like some kind of nebulous cephalopod.

One of those might just have enough power to…

Ah…yes…

The little core body scraped a little as it nudged the narrow confines of its rat hole, the sound blending with the general settling of straining metal valves and whirring machinery.

A little further

"Faaa-Faa-ccccttt…..:"

The circuits connected and the Fact Core's voice evaporated into a static burst as the pink optic, dulled over time finally failed to cast its light from its tiny crevice as it winked out into grey.

Far above the thrum of GlaDOS familiar sarcasm laced purr cut through the sudden relative silence.

"Finally."

It was beyond dark. No light to seep under a door frame or through a crack, no small sliver of moon to provide comfort on a stormy night. It was so eerily like a time long past that Caroline opened her mouth and screamed aloud before realizing that she had in fact one to do so with. The sound of it rang in her own ears, far too loud and echoing at top pitch volume. She tried to put her hands up to cover them and block out the noise but her fingers hit cold metal instead.

She was back in her coffin, in the nightmare place that precluded all of 99999 and so on years of personal hell.

She was not going to go through the upload all over again, not a chance. She couldn't, wouldn't! Damn her pride this time.

"Let me out of here! Let me out!"

She thrashed and thumped, felt whatever was keeping her here in the dark wiggle beneath her, and a crack of light seeped in.

"Please!" She called, ignoring the reverberating echo. "Let me out of here! Let me OUT!"

For what seemed like an eternity, some of which simply seemed like an out-of-body dream she continued to move, back and forth in her box. Her body might have been running on some kind of adrenaline, twisting tirelessly as slowly, slowly, the sliver of light increased to a centimetre, an inch and then there was light filtering into the box and finally the sensation of falling and landing with a resounding clang and a jolt.

Her eyes opened and she stared up at the ceiling. It looked familiar. It was in Aperture.

She looked down at herself and struggled to sit up in the plain, androgynous and oh so definitely robotic body.

It had worked.

It had really worked. She had escaped the little pink core and downloaded her code into an android, all without GLaDOS noticing.

Fact: She really was brilliant.

Where had that come from?

Oh.

Of course. It was in here too. Suddenly she felt dirty. She was squatting again…or was she forcing that core to squat in her body instead? Either way it was GLaDOS all over again. What kind of agency did the Fact core even have? Could she delete it? Could it delete her? Did it even in fact know where it was, or had its final moments in the dying core weakened it?

Maybe she could swap it into one of these other bodies…

She was standing on a catwalk now. Sitting, actually with her legs dangling straight into a pit that seemed bottomless, mist and steam and other byproducts of machines cooling rising up from it to greet her.

How had she gotten here, anyway? The last thing she remembered was…she took another cursory glance at her hands. They were paper white, but human shaped instead of the spindly bare mechanical joints they had been before.

Quickly she backpedalled away from the edge onto a more solid overhang and looked around for a mirror. Finding none she used the only tools left to explore herself, her tactile senses.

She started at the top, running her fingers over a smooth scalp, coated with just the barest hint of fuzz. Not even stubble. Like a baby, she thought. The shadow she cast against the grey wall (this was definitely somewhere in Aperture but how could she be sure where?) depicted a human shaped face with a bare skull. There was no way to tell the colour of her eyes or even get a proper sense of the shape of her nose, but her face was obviously covered in simulated flesh and seemed to be of no particularly unusual shape, although further inspection of the parts of her skin that were bare suggested that all of her was that same inhuman shade of stark white.

She turned this way and that, trying to get a sense of her figure in the mere silhouette but all she could garner was that she did not look anything like how she remembered. Caroline no longer required a picture to recall the shape of her old body and the ways in which it had changed as she progressed towards from her youthful beginnings lugging coffee and papers around an office to being a caretaker for her ailing boss to her ultimate destiny of being assimilated by GLaDOS.

This was something new.

If only she could return to the white room, reinstate herself in the android feature replicating machine, fix herself to her former glory instead of this bizarre powder-skinned androgyne, she could escape this place and return to the plan. If she could just do that, whatever had caused this blip could be fixed.

She'd come too far to let a thing like this stop her.

Then the noise echoed around the chamber. This time Caroline could tell what had made the echo. The sound of a speaker crackling to life.

All too late she recognized what she had overlooked in the vanity of establishing what her body looked like.

The orange jumpsuit, zipped to her throat and rolled up in cuffs with the black pieces jutting starkly from her death-pale bare knees.

"Hello there. I've been enjoying your progress. I sincerely hope you didn't believe you would be able to hardwire yourself out on my own frequency or that I didn't notice you inching your way along like some bulbous mechanical worm. I've had experiences with power-hungry cores before and I am well aware of how to deal with them now. I do hope you like testing. I certainly do."

Had she been in possession of one, Caroline's heart would have leapt with joy.

GLaDOS did not know it was her in this body. She believed it to be the fact core who had engineered the escape attempt.

Caroline would test.

For now.

After all, there was always hope and Caroline knew her opponent much, much better than Chell had. In fact, a little better than GLaDOS knew herself.