Portal 3

The Miracle Is Born From A Star

Wheatley
The surface was cold - and hard, uncomfortable. Wheatley opened his eye, and groaned.

"Anti-gravitational software activated, sweetheart."

It was a woman's voice - something kind of familiar - motherly and sweet. Was that inside his head? Or was someone speaking to him? Either which way, Wheatley started to rise up, floating from the floor as if his weight didn't matter. This was a new, strange experience. It was like the low gravitational pull of the moon, but more controlled.

He could look around properly... like he was human.

Somewhere not too far away, was the limp body of Chell. Immediately, Wheatley went over, reaching for her wrist and checking her pulse before he even realised he could do so. He sensed her pulse, and could see the subtle rise and recede of her chest.

That meant she was alive. He was relieved.

Turning to calculate his path, Wheatley saw the elevator. Somewhere inside him was regret, but he focused on seeing the yellow blinking light. He looked behind him. Of some fortune, the control room for the power supply for the elevators sat carved in the walls above them. With extra luck, there was some means of reaching it - a tower; three testing chambers GLaDOS had obviously discarded. He wasted little time heading over, entering the lobby and awaiting some sort of prerecorded message. There was none, so he was on his own.

The tests seemed pretty simple - the kind that taught the many previous test subjects what does what. The first of which, a laser and a cube with a built in reflective centre. He placed the cube so the laser headed into its receptor in the wall, powering the door open. Where there once were a lobby with the elevator to the next level, there was a winding walkway instead. That he preferred.

Onto the next one, where looked up immediately at where ceiling of this chamber and where the floor of the one above should be. From a controlled point on the floor, a portal opened up, the second above on a tilted panel.

There was only one way now - FLINGING!

Up the built in stairs, then Wheatley peered down. The portal and its glow rendered out in his sight, the view streaming out its partner. Through it, he could just about see himself, remembering not to stare directly into his own eye, just about to jump through the portal below. He did jump. Down through the portal on the floor, out the other at straight at the door which opened. He landed well, sinking a bit because he didn't have human legs to stand up with. That was the final test he could clear, the office not too far away.

Wheatley landed on the catwalk before the offices without difficulty. He peered into the open door, his machine senses alert. Suddenly, a high pitch, tinkling sound rang out from somewhere. Floating in, he glanced around at whatever it was - and noticed a tiny, shiny red bell hanging on part of the window's frame.

How such a precious little thing got to be in hell like this, he didn't know. Also, how it were swinging gently as if in a breeze - about... a few miles under the crust of the earth - he didn't know. Maybe GLaDOS's claims to "recycling" air down here were true. Maybe it was an elaborate trick from his audio and visual receptors, happily rendered out. Either which way, he could see it, and he could hear it.

For a moment, he watched, waiting to see if his rendering stopped this trick and finally showed him what actually was in front of him. It stayed, chiming faintly to itself. Relieved that it was really there, he peered around at everything else. There was a control panel here, for the elevator. He took hold of the switch with his antigravity, and flipped it down. Wheatley peered towards the elevator, raising himself over the mutilated railings. Just within the rendering distance's handicap, the light of the elevator had became the steady blue dot. He heard something else - the subtle fluttering of fabric near by. Looking in the direction of the sound, he spied something rectangular, dulled red and being manipulated by a breeze. So... the recycled oxygen thing is true, Curious, he floated over, and hovered beside it. It still fluttered relentlessly, caught on the snapped end of the railing.