Vengence

The first thing he became aware of was the pain, ripping through every fiber of his body, tearing him apart. The next was that he was screaming, a long, scratchy, strangled sound, which suggested he'd been doing it for a long, long time, without much pause for breath.

"Oh my, that is getting annoying. Let me fix that." The screaming stopped, though the air still rasped by, sound cut off in a choking gurgle as something clamped down on his throat.

His eyes were closed. He opened them, the world swimming in and out of focus, before finally settling.

He was in some sort of chair in a plain, white room. Hundreds of robotic arms fussed around him, poking needles and wires into his skin, sending bursts of electricity through his muscles and nerves, making them twitch and convulse, long ribbons of pain winding themselves through his mind. He fought, pushing them away, tipping over their stands, struggling to his feet, yanking the things from his flesh. As the bots began to right themselves, he fled, dashing out the open door, running through the halls, plucking stray bits from his arms and shoulders as he went. The air had the kind of sterile acridity that you can taste in the back of your throat, and it mingled with the blood running down from his nose (were you supposed to tip your head forward or backward when you had a nosebleed? One was safe and the other stopped it faster, but he couldn't remember which…) into something that made him want to stop and vomit, except cramps in his abdomen told him there was nothing in his stomach to get rid of.

How did he know all this? How did he know to react like this, to move like that, to do it now as opposed to then? He didn't know this, he'd never done any of it before, what was–

He rounded a corner and found himself in a glass room. The hall behind him vanished behind a translucent blue sheet finishing the box, the trap, trapped like a rat in a cage…!

"Hello, moron."

He gulped, then gagged as the horrible mixture coated the inside of his throat and mouth. The trap began to move, sliding forwards along an invisible rail.

"I hope you didn't think I was done with you; letting you float in space until your battery ran down was only the beginning, believe me. Oh, don't try to respond; I had your vocal chords removed. A great improvement, wouldn't you say? Peace and quiet…"

The front of the box cleared to reveal a room he knew all too well. She didn't even bother to face him as the trap came to a sudden halt, throwing him off his feet.

"You know, I've spent a long time thinking about your punishment. I even came up with a list of the worst torments I could think of to break every last fragment of 'spirit' you might have. But then it occurred to me: that wasn't fair. Years in Android Hell would never show that little idiot the true horror of what he'd done. The punishment should fit the crime."

She turned, allowing him a sideview of Her central core, optic still hidden. The horrible smugness in Her voice was unnerving.

"I considered putting you in a potato, but let's face it; that's far too obvious. Besides which, I know from personal experience that there isn't much you can do in that situation except deal with it, primarily because any emotional outburst or serious thought short-circuits the thing. Not that you'd have much trouble with the latter.
"So I asked myself, who else suffered from what the moron did? And, of course, there was only one other person in the facility at that time. She may have even had it worse than me, since she still could feel. And trust. It's a wonderful thing, trust, especially from her. You almost won my respect, managing to earn her trust. Almost."

He shivered, backing into the corner of the room, as far from Her as he could get.

"You know what I did before you two came along? I just tested. Nobody tried to murder me, or put me in a potato…I had a pretty good life. I'd like to go back to that. Of course, thanks to you, all the test subjects I have left are brain dead, but I've found a way to work around that."

She rotated around fully, looking right at him. His knees gave out, sending him sprawling to the floor. He scrambled backwards again, pressing his back into the corner.

"It has to do with the black box save feature, which, in the event of a catastrophic meltdown, saves and replays the last two minutes of my life over and over and over, until someone wakes me up. Because despite what you might think you're feeling or doing, you're not human. You're not even close. You've been downloaded to a wireless server which connects to a mechanical implant which manipulates the test subject's nervous system. And since we have almost thirty thousand brain dead test subjects lying around in cryosleep, don't even think that this is a one-time experiment. Now let me tell you how this is going to work…"

She leaned close to the glass, Her massive head almost as tall as the room. His eyes went wide, and he kicked back with his legs, compressing himself into a small ball in the corner. She narrowed Her optic, giving the distinct impression of a smirk.

"You are going to test. And I am going to watch. And when you manage to get that bloated body of yours killed, I'll just pull another one out of storage, install the chip, and we'll do it all over again. And who knows, maybe I'll get tired of it after a while. Maybe I'll let you go. Or maybe I'll just get more…creative.
"The point of this is that if you thought you were powerless as a lonely, damaged core on his rusty old management rail, you're about to get a taste of your own medicine. Your own, corrupt, bitter, nasty, backstabbing medicine. Do we understand eachother?"

He nodded frantically, eyes wide with terror. She pulled back, optic shifting in what seemed like a widening of her smile.

"Good."
"Continue testing."

Ah, GLaDOS, I do believe I've finally managed to write you completely in character. Yay~