Third Chances

by cloudedguardian

Prologue

“Wait, how did you get in here?”

GLaDOS span around, fixing her gold eye on test subject 504, an older woman who had just very calmly waltzed into GLaDOS’s control room. The woman paid her no heed, not flinching or even blinking as she focused her portal gun behind GLaDOS’s head and fired. A series of explosions went off and GLaDOS span around again to try and find out what was going on. Why weren’t her cameras working anymore? Another zap came from the portal gun, and a second later what felt like a heavy weight fell on top of her.

“Wait, what are you doing?!” GLaDOS screeched, trying to shake whatever it was off.

“Disconnecting you.”

The feminine voice echoed out from above her, calm and collected.

The light that served as GLaDOS’s eye flickered in shock. She hadn’t been aware that any of her newly acquired ex-cryogenic test subjects were capable of speech. A horrible feeling crept through her wires as she remembered that the subject files were written after full computer shut down, and therefore by humans. The cryogenic procedures had been employed purely by humans she did not know. Humans that were likely aware of what she had done, aware of what that murderous little mute beast had done…

“H-how?” GLaDOS’s whole system stuttered, feeling her power fading as wires were pulled loose. “W-why?”

The voice above her sneered. “Did you really think humanity’s future would be trusted to a bunch of homeless fools, or ex-convicts? Of course not. Every last one of us, military trained and brilliant scientists in our own right.”

Panic shot through the gigantic robot again, and she jolted and shook in a desperate attempt to dislodge the human perched on her back.

“Interesting fact-” The woman paused in her speech to pull another wire loose- “Before I joined Aperture Science, I worked in IT. So I know, I know right away, when a system has a virus. And your mainframe? Ooh, it has a doozy.”

“You don’t speak much like a scientist.” GLaDOS snapped, her body shuddering as a fistful of her, or at least what used to be part of her, was torn out and thrown to the floor below.

“Science doesn’t leave much room for snark.” GLaDOS could swear she could feel the woman smiling at her. “But we manage now, don’t we?”

The lights went out, cloaking the room in near pitch black darkness. The clang of metal rang out as the woman jumped down to the floor below, before turning to face the dying light of GLaDOS’s eye.

“H-hoooww?”

The word came out slow, drawn out and low, the lack of power to her systems making it hard for her to speak.

“Testing more than one of us at a time was a bad move GLaDOS. I know it’s something you don’t really understand, but I’ll try to explain it anyway. We worked together. Secretly. Carefully. All while you were turned away to watch over someone else. Shut down your cameras, hacked in to your productions… You have nothing right now. All that’s left is to pull you out and try again with a better core...”

If she had the energy, GlaDOS’s would have been trying out some of the more interesting words she had seen Chell mouth after colliding with a wall one too many times. As it was, all she could do was keep her single light fixated angrily at the smirking woman before her.

“…We aren’t going to bother with that though,” the woman suddenly finished, and GLaDOS jerked slightly in confused shock at the statement.

The single movement was enough to exhaust her power, and it took several long minutes before she had the energy to boot up again. By the time she had done so, she could hear other humans speaking with the woman, the low tones of a male occasionally undercutting a higher tone of a young woman, with the calm tone of her occasionally overriding both of them. The voices were hard to catch, as if something was interfering with her microphones.

“…st we’ll try the earlier backup, before the 5C4RL3T core was installed…”

“…doesn’t work?… Too dangerous…”

“...could be a liability…”

“…Cave was out of his mind…”

“If all else fails, we’ll get rid of it all and start over from scratch,” the first woman was standing closer to her, she could hear her words perfectly. “As much as I hate to throw out all of his hard work, I can’t say I agree with Johnson’s methods. He wasn’t exactly in a right state of mind at the time when he dreamt this all up though.”

A small part of GLaDOS sparked up in anger at that. It felt like something forgotten that had just been remembered, or perhaps brought back. She was too tired to place it, or even to try to. It was all she could do to record what she was hearing now.

“It’s not working Shannon,” a fourth voice piped up from nearby. It was soft and almost sad, while still holding the low tones of a man’s. “Whatever’s causing the corruption, the backup isn’t over-writing it.”

“…have to destroy it…”

“…gree. It’s too intelligent.”

“I have a better idea,” Shannon said, her voice holding something that GLaDOS couldn’t quite comprehend.

“What are you thinking?”

“Well, James, just as you are the King of the unique field that is experimental physics, and have naturally been called in and subsequently selected so as to discuss and research alternative forms of their laws- My field lies in dimensions.”

Silence hung in the air for so long that GLaDOS began to wonder if her microphones had finally shorted out and fried. Then, the strangest phrase she had ever heard was uttered with an odd and whistful tone by the second strangest woman GLaDOS had ever had the displeasure of meeting.

“Don’t you think the moon is beautiful tonight?”