Blue Sky - Chapter 14 - The Terrible Idea [3/3]
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.
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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.”
Art by Rubitinmyeyes
“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.”
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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.
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“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…”
ssszzzrrrrrwwrrrwrrrrrchhhhhsss
“…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!”
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()~~~~~~~ Chapter 15 - The End~~~~~~~~~