Chell is running again.

The alleyways are a labyrinth of endless turns. The paths twist and switch and bait, and lead to towering brick wall dead ends. She can barely see her way in the dark, but there is a faint light ahead, just around the next corner, just at the end, just a bit further, and she's scrambling to keep going because if she stops, she'll be eaten, devoured, destroyed, annihilated, dead.

The sound of grinding gears echoes up the alleyways, swelling in from all sides. The ground tremors and quakes; she can feel their pursuit. Pools of black oil slick beneath her boots, but she continues to run. If she turns to look, they'll be right there, right behind her, but if she keeps going and looks ahead, following the glint of glowing light, she might have a chance of escape.

Lungs heaving, she rounds another turn—and an open maw is there to greet her.

An inferno is raging inside. Fire unspools past teeth of onyx and jet, and she can feel the heat as it engulfs her feet, her legs, her arms, her face; it's fierce and burning and consuming and this isn't what she wanted, it's not, it never was, and she can see her reflection in the sheen of its fangs, her eyes, the fear. Her throat is raw, smoke is swelling in her windpipe, and she wants to scream, but she's coughing, choking, breathless, and there is nothing but fire.

Chell awakens to see Thaddeus standing overhead in the dim lamplight.

She thrashes away, throwing back the blankets and adrenaline pooling in her blood. Her heart is drumming inside of her with frenzied beats and she suppresses a scream with her palm shoved over her mouth.

"It was not my intent to frighten you."

Thaddeus is standing beside the length of her bed, prim and proper, hands folded behind his back. He's shed his greatcoat, she notices, and she's now able to see the white dress shirt tucked beneath his grey-black pinstripe waistcoat. It's a handsome look, though the vibrant pink of his hair clashes far too much.

"I apologize," he says, holding a hand to touch her shoulder. She can feel the gentle warmth of the metal through her shirt, and the lingering panic from the flames against her skin drops shivers down the length of her spine. "My Maker says everything is ready. It's time. He waits in the Underhall."

Willing herself to be calm, Chell rubs at her eyes with the heels of her palms. Sweat seeps down her hairline and collects in rivulets along her temples, and she dabs it away with the undersides of her wrists.

"You dreamt." Thaddeus tilts his head to the side, as if puzzled. "This was distressing for you."

She waves him away with a flick of her hand as she lifts herself out of bed. With a slight bow, he obeys and twists away to wait for her by the door. Chell collects her things, her stomach roping into knots from the drop off of the adrenaline high. She doesn't bother with a full ensemble; instead, she fastens her wrench's harness around her pale long-sleeved shirt and pulls it tight. After shoving on her boots and snatching her gloves from the intricate surface of the carved bureau by her bed, she grabs her wrench by its hilt, fastens it in its clasp, and goes to meet Thaddeus.

"I will escort you down to the Suspension Chamber," he says, leading her from her new quarters. "He has been restrained there for your safety. As my Maker stated, there is a sixty-seven point three five percent chance there will be other anomalies involved due to his sudden severance from the Grid. We do not wish any harm to come to your person, so precautions were taken."

The descent to the Underhall is a blur of white-black marble and steel. Chell is on his arm, watching the guildhall melt past through the dusk spilling in through the windows. He leads her to a lift somewhere on the ground floor, a thin cage of rickety metal, and then it's carrying them downward with slow and halting movements, gears and pulleys shifting together. When the bottom comes, Thaddeus tucks the door away and ushers her forward with an arm in the small of her back.

Ahead is a long corridor. The walls are composed of some sort of metal alloy, and miniature lamps are ensconced in etched out spaces at eye level that give off a cool, gentle glow. Thaddeus leads her down the length of the hall, passing by its children as they branch off into other wings and rooms. The air is chilled and their steady footsteps are a rolling echo in the film of her ears, and Chell starts to wonder how far down they are.

"I advise using the utmost caution during this process," says Thaddeus, pausing before the end of the corridor. His eyes radiate a soft pink in the gentle gloom. "We will initiate the procedure. My Maker requests that you do not attempt to interact with him until he is fully awake, and it is suggested that you retain a distance of four point five seven two meters at all times."

She nods in reply, and Thaddeus guides her through the final door.

The world inside is a deep, unfathomable blue.

The broken automaton is hanging in the center of the chamber, suspended by various cords and wires upon around his chest that snake off and disappear into the depths of the walls and ceiling. His titanium shell has its limbs clasped in thick, black ringlets—shackles perhaps?—and they lay spread apart, as if to prevent him from walking should he come ever undone from his web of wires.

As she and Thaddeus approach, she's forced to squint. The sustaining light from the Core is the only light the room could ever need. It's bright, blindingly bright, and growing brighter still in a sort of gradual pulse. Intrigued, Chell leaves Thaddeus's side and starts to circle the room. She keeps a careful radius of space between her and the metal man, but she's close enough to make out the finer details of his body.

The nodes she saw that afternoon are paired down the entire length of his prominent spinal column. The metal is lobstered among them; overlapping plates of titanium cover the individual pieces of the spine itself—hinged in some way, she suspects, to allow him to bend and flex. His arms and are thin and have an almost willowy look to them, but she knows their component metal will give them massive strength and the ability to be nearly unbreakable. His legs have a similar build, and with long, flat feet attached at the ends. She can't examine him fully from where she is, but she finds the detail the engineers that went into creating his body is rather impressive. There are spherical ball-joints in the shoulders and hips, and simpler ones in the elbows, knees, and wrists. The most remarkable thing, she thinks, is how his hands have been constructed—slender fingers with small and precise joints, each piece smoothed and polished into the likeness of its human counterpart, with sectioned portions of metal on his palms working in concert to enable mobility. It seems as though each joint was replicated and sculpted with great purpose, though she can't say why. To accommodate the Core, she supposes, or perhaps a sense of aesthetic.

Chell rounds him again, and pauses at his front with her hand in front of her eyes to catch the glare. The Core stares at her through the glass window into his body, a fiercely glowing sphere of pure blue. She can't look at it for too long, but she swears to god it's moving. If she didn't know better, she would think a fist of azure fire had been thrust inside of him. His head hangs downward, but she can discern the distinctly cut shapes of what would be cheekbones, chin, and jaws, and the finely chiseled edges that compose his nose. His hair has been cropped, she realizes; someone has trimmed it so there's barely an inch around his neck and thick sideburns, but it flares out at the top in a longer and layered disheveled mess.

Bizarre. For an automaton, he has extremely human features. Even Thaddeus doesn't have such a realistic looking face. Chell doesn't have the most experience in metalwork, but she knows good craftsmanship when she sees it. Whoever worked on this shell was very, very skilled.

"Ah, good, you're here," says a familiar voice. "Glad you could make it to the show."

Chell halts mid-step and looks over her shoulder. Cave Johnson stands in a far corner of the room, his arms folded. Thaddeus and two other unknown automatons stand at his side. Cave gives her a beckoning wave, taking a step or two forward, and she draws away from the metal man in the center of the chamber.

"How do you like your new place?" asks Cave, mouth pinched into a smile. "I think it's pretty generous. I'll have you know it's on one of the better sides of the hall, and with quite a view if you care about things like that. Don't tell anyone else, though. They'll most likely fight you for it. Anyway, I'd like you to meet two more of my creations before we get underway." Cave gestures to his left. "This one here is Apollo. He's actually Mark III of the Apollos, but he's the only one still alive, so we just kind of drop that part of his name. Seems a bit disrespectful."

Apollo cocks his head, the light from the Core reflecting off of his brass skin. His synthetic hair is a cool, pale blond, the most realistic she's seen, and it's kept in a spiky mess. "Lady," says Apollo, fidgeting with the arm of his midnight tunic, "you have the eyes of stars. I like stars. Wanna go see the stars? I do. Stars are beautiful. Beautiful stars." He peers out past her, focusing on the broken automaton. "Did you see our brother's star? It's so blue. It's like the moon. It's Neptune. Pluto. Nebulas. Blue nebulas. Blue burning so hot it's cold. It's going to burst."

"It's not going to burst," sighs Cave. "The lab boys made sure of that. It's completely safe."

"If not, then we'll probably have a pretty big explosion on our hands," says the other automaton, his voice touched with a hint of southern drawl. He glances over to Chell, his eyes two glinting emeralds in the chilly light, and she notes the prominence of his square jaws. "You ready for some explosions, angel?"

"And this is Rickard," says Cave, placing a hand on the automaton's shoulder. "Don't let him intimidate you. He's harmless. Really. He's just a big bluff."

"That's not what those Black Mesa chimera bastards said when they hit the floor with bullets all through 'em like Swiss cheese," says Rickard, flicking his wrist. One of his silver hands splits and the barrel of a gun stares out of the stump of his arm. "They… actually didn't say much. It was just a lot of yelling. Because it hurt."

"They don't feel pain."

"I like to think they did."

"They didn't. Rick, for god's sake, put that away." Cave rubs his forehead, seeming exasperated. "We don't need you riling up our problem child when he finally comes to. As much as you love explosions, I really don't think the rest of us want to be caught in one. Now put it away or I'll have Gladys rip it out of you."

Grudgingly and with a sulking scowl, Rickard does as he's told.

"All right." Cave turns to Chell, folding his hands. His countenance is weary, she notes, and she wonders how much of it is from what's to come and how much is from keeping his own creations in line. "Well, now that you've met everyone else, let's meet the star of the show, shall we?"

"I like stars. He has a pretty star. We should go see the stars."

Cave eyes Thaddeus. "Start it up, would you, Thad?"

"Understood."

Thaddeus strides across the room, giving the hanging automaton a wide berth. He approaches a console of some sort, and after a few moments of clicking and tinkering, the entire room comes to life with the sound of a deep hum. Chell can feel it beneath her feet and in her bones; it rumbles underneath the floor and through the walls. The sharp release of steam escaping a valve can be heard from somewhere beyond the chamber, and then the cords begin to tremble.

"We drained the leftover water when we shut him down," says Cave, leaning in close. "That's coming back in now. The boiler will take care of the rest. After that, his startup commands should run. Key word being 'should.'"

A minute or two passes of the uninterrupted thrum, and then the hanging automaton jerks his head upward. The rest of his body remains limp, tangled in the wires; she's not sure if it's by choice or whether it's forced by the strength of his binds.

His eyelids slide halfway open, brilliant blue irises staring back. "Protocol four-five-seven… complete."

Cave makes a face. "He's British?"

"South-English," corrects Thaddeus from across the room, halfway drowned out from the purr of the machinery.

"Why does he sound like that? I don't remember asking for him to sound like that." Cave exhales noisily through his nose. "I think I need to pay a few of my engineering friends a nice visit. That was not the voice they told me he'd have. Actually, I think I need to show a few of my engineering friends what the door looks like. Maybe they could engineer a better door on the way out that would deny entry to idiots."

"Protocol seven-six-three… complete."

"Could be worse," says Rickard. "He could always sound like Apollo and his stars."

Chell glances to the side, where Apollo is standing in awe of the Core, oblivious to the rest of the room. Cave concedes Rickard's point with a grumble, but his frown and the etched lines by his mouth say he's not convinced.

"Protocol eight-five-two… complete."

"There should be only a few more," says Cave. "After he boots… well, we'll have to wait and see what happens. Hopefully nothing. Rooting for that. Everyone should be rooting for nothing."

"Batch file four-two-five-seven execution… complete."

Chell watches the automaton through squinted eyes. His body dangles like a ragdoll in the cords, but his hands look like they're starting to twitch. She tells herself it's the light from the Core and the tricks from its pulse. The pitch in his voice begins to crescendo, but she tells herself that it's just another part of the reboot process and it will be corrected once it's finished. His eyes slowly open, and she tells herself that it's normal—

But it isn't.

"Batch file six-five-two-nine execution nine-nine execution nine-nine-nine-ni-ni-ni-ni-n-n-n-n-n-n-nnnnnNNNNIIIIIIAAAAAAAAGH—"

The room erupts into a primal shriek, and his body has come alive. He's thrashing in his shackles and bonds, trying to tear at the cords and rip them apart with a vicious, feral rage. He's shouting and his voice is earsplitting and tremors sink their teeth into her spine. A part of her tells her to run because what if something happens, what if he breaks free, what if the Core becomes unstable, but her feet are cemented to the floor and so she's stuck watching this broken man scream.

"What have you DONE," he yells, pulling at the shackles on his wrists, his ankles, his chest. "What have you done, what have you done, I don't—I-I'm not—I can't, I can't, you can't do this, no—please, it hurts, god, it hurts, please, st-t-t-top, make it stop, make it s-s-stop, make it STOP!"

Chell has never heard an automaton sound so anguished in her life. She doesn't know how he can feel pain because by everything she's ever learned that shouldn't be possible but it must; he sounds so tormented and lost and Thaddeus brought her over the rooftops at incredible speeds and there is a smouldering blue fire in that man's chest and she was chased to exhaustion by a steam-powered killing machine; she doesn't have a say in impossibility anymore. Frantically, she looks to Cave for an answer or for some kind of guidance, but he only stares at his creation with blank eyes, his arms folded and his mouth a firm line.

Fury knotting in her chest, Chell hits his bicep with the back of her fist. "What's happening."

Cave raises an eyebrow at her. "I said there was a chance other problems could happen. He was connected to the Grid for too long and was shut down without warning. This is one of those problems. It'll pass. It's just a glitch."

"No," she says through clenched teeth. "It's pain."

Without a second thought, she breaks away from Cave and the others and plunges toward the center of the room. The light is in her eyes and the automaton is struggling with his bonds, but she approaches him with hurried steps. The instinct to grab her wrench twists up her arm, but she suppresses it because she doesn't know him, she doesn't what he's like, and brandishing a weapon might only provoke him further. Instead, she stops in front of him, five feet away, and lifts her head just in time to watch the cords about his right arm snap in two—the sound is a sharp crack among the machinery's thrum.

"L-let me go." Despite her close proximity, he doesn't seem to actually see her; he looks straight through, out to the walls, the console, Cave, the other automatons; he can't keep still. His body gleams in the glare of the Core as the rest of him continues to struggle and thrash. "Make this stop, please, please, I can't—I ca-ca-can't be—I can't."

Chell has no power in this place. She has no idea how to help him short of severing the cords that construct his prison, and even then she has no weapon that could do that kind of damage. The knife in her right boot is far too small; the blade would break before severing anything. Her wrench is blunt and made for both fixing and smashing, so there would be no way it could cut him down.

"Get back over here!" Cave shouts somewhere behind her. "You don't know what he's capable of! Get back!"

Cave is right, she knows, but she has no plans to obey.

Above, the automaton has managed to rip the bonds off of his other arm. A spike of anxiety sparks under her Chell's lungs as he knocks the black cords away. His strength must be incredible, she thinks; he shouldn't have been able to do that, he shouldn't, but he has, and he's still strung up by his torso and ankles but he shoves his fingers under the shackles on his legs and starts to pull, and the creaking sound of metal and the slice of wire punctures her ears and then she does something so incredibly stupid—

She reaches up and pulls, too.

It's hot on her skin and it reminds her of the roaring flames, but she swallows her unease and works the muscles in her arms and pulls. It won't help, not compared to him, but she pulls and pulls and then one of them is coming loose and he crunches it in his fingers and then it's withered away, whipping out from his ankle. She twists to the other side and tries to pry another from his leg, but it's too tight, she can't, so she tries another higher up and that one has some give so she brings her weight into it and yanks it down. He rips that one apart, too, and then everything else is too high for her to reach, so she ducks back and prepares for the fall.

When he snaps the final bond, he crashes to the floor with a shout. His sheer weight sends a rolling shock through the ground, and the room floods with darkness. Chell grimaces, catching her balance, and as she waits for her vision to adjust to the sudden shift, she glances over to the crushed tile where he fell.

Among the nodes of his spine, two great sapphire starbursts stare at her in the quiet black. Something jumpstarts beside her lungs; she knows she shouldn't have helped, she should have stayed back, she should have obeyed, and now she's right beside a possibly unstable automaton that might kill her without so much as a thought, but all she can do is stare back. After a few moments, the metal scrapes at the floor in front of her. He lifts himself up to his knees, and brilliant blue light saturates the chamber once again. With the radiance spilling from the glass-glossed cavity in his chest, the underside of his face is lit in a cool shimmer. He's still watching her, but he makes no further moves.

Out of the corner of her eye, something flashes with movement. She pivots to see Thaddeus sprinting toward her from the console, an azure sheen illuminating his copper skin. Sucking in a breath, she holds her hand out, motioning a silent command to halt. The automaton slows to a stop just a few feet away, yet he remains poised to charge and strike.

"You are in danger," says Thaddeus. His gaze is focused on his fallen brother, as if gauging whether or not he should intervene. "You must not come to any harm."

Lowering her arm, she ignores Thaddeus and locks eyes with the broken man. He's on his knees, stilled, and she can see the glow from the Core as it continues its gradual pulse in his chest. She takes cautious steps toward him, closing the distance, and she watches as reality slowly bleeds into his perception and the frenzy cools into a brittle calm.

"You… helped." It's a low, fragile murmur. She has never heard emotion expressed in an automaton's voice before tonight, and awe is present in his.

Chell says nothing. The overflow of adrenaline has rushed to her head, and she finds herself slumping to the floor. Arms hook themselves around her before she lands; she recognizes the pinstripes of Thaddeus's waistcoat and the burnished copper of his hands. She thinks she can hear the susurrus of Cave and Rickard approaching somewhere close, but their voices are rushing water in her ears and the outskirts of her vision seem to blur.

Slowly, the broken man's eyes follow her into the coming dark.