Upon waking up after some unknown amount of time out of commission, Wheatley panicked. Wasn't it bad enough to wake in some place he didn't recognize? But no, he still felt the throbbing pain from the shots, and several important objects were missing. But most distressing of all, was that he could make out some of his surroundings despite his blurred vision.

It shouldn't have been possible- it couldn't have been possible. Yet... where else but There would have those unnaturally clean white walls?

With no glasses, and no Reliable (and judging from how his feet felt, no boots either), he was helpless.

He closed his eyes again and let out a low moan of mingled pain and distress. Something, maybe as a response to his cry, brushed against his forehead. But it didn't feel like a machine- not that any of the constructs would've cared enough to do anything of the sort.

If anything, it felt like a... a hand?

His eyes flew back open. A blurred shape of a tilted head hung above him. That was a relief; there weren't any humans down There.

Still... the environment wasn't really reassuring.

"Don't suppose you could, ah... tell me where I am?" he tried.

The person didn't answer. Instead, they pushed something towards his face. Wheatley was about to try batting it away- did he ask for something vaguely pokey shoved near his head?- but he couldn't move his arm enough to do so. After another moment, he realized those were his glasses.

"Oh! Er... Thanks, I s'pose." He blinked at the person. Now that he could see them properly- well, her, he guessed- she looked nice enough, like a kindly old lady. But she also had this tired look, like someone who had gone through hard times they couldn't forget.

(How he knew what that looked like was beyond him.)

Then, with a sickening sort of sudden dread, he realized that she seemed to be wearing a lab coat. It didn't have the Aperture logo stamped on it, at least. Not that any of those scientists survived Her. But there was some sort of symbol on her chest and he wasn't liking it.

"You're not a scientist... a-are you?"

The woman shook her head.

Wheatley swallowed down the lump in his throat. "That's, ah, really good, actually. Never liked scientists much. Loads of bad experiences with them and all that. They're supposed to... well, they're supposed to forward something. Science, that's what they say. But all they ever do is test and test and test, and occasionally kill off the test subject... Ridiculous, if you ask me."

She nodded in agreement.

"Do you- do you just have nothing to say? Not that I mean you, uh, need to. It's just nice to have a conversation partner that pitches in their own ideas now and again. No, wait, let me fix that. A conversation partner that doesn't insult you every five seconds, now that's nice."

The woman grimaced. With a small shake of her head, she fished something out of a pocket, before coming up with a rather worn slip of paper and holding it up for Wheatley to see.

I can't speak, it read.

"Oh." Just his luck. Another mute. But there had been someone else, wasn't there...? Ugh, why couldn't he quite remember-

The redhead with the wagon.

Maybe she was here too.

"There wouldn't happen to be someone here who, ah, could speak?"

For a moment, she seemed to consider him, then nodded. After giving him what may have been a quick check-up, the woman left the room. She wasn't even gone for a minute before she came back with a companion. And though he didn't even know her, but the jubilation he felt wasn't something he could put to words.

"So it was you!" he exclaimed. "You helped me."

The redhead broke into a smile. "Well, either it was me or the turkeys, and there's only one answer that would make sense. How are you feeling?"

Wheatley made an attempt to sit up. Pain shot through his body, and with gritted teeth, he eased himself back down. "Could be- ow- worse."

"With all the blood you lost on the trip here? Definitely." She sat at the foot of the bed, earning herself a glare from the older lady. The redhead appeared to ignore it. "You really are a lucky guy. I think I'm the only one who visits that area, and it's only for my monthly salvaging."

She cast a glance at the elder woman, who was still glowering at her. "Plus, Ms. Barron's among the best medics in the area. I'm not sure if there's anyone else who could patch up gunshot wounds as bad as, well, that." With her last word, she vaguely flapped one hand at his abdomen. "You don't seen much of that these days."

"Yeah... Don't suppose you have turrets up here."

The room fell into an uncanny silence. The redhead's jocose manner slipped away, and the old lady looked rather grim. That made no sense; turrets were kept within the facility. They couldn't have known about the bullet-shooting bots. Unless that stupid boogeyman of a rival company stole that idea too. In that case, they may very well know.

But there was something else about them that made him feel it wasn't the case.

The redhead turned to face the elder woman. "Would you mind if I could... talk to him in private?"

Without a sound, Ms. Barron nodded and left the room, closing the door with a click.

A few seconds passed without anything happening. Then, finally, the redhead said, "There are turrets up here, you know, just not the ones you're familiar with. Not nearly as easy to topple over, either."

He could practically hear the whirring of a processor fan from sheer shock. Which was ridiculous- humans didn't have cooling fans in them. "How'd you know about them?"

"I've been shot by them. Not as badly as you, of course, but they were certainly painful." She put on a smile, but it was strained. "But a portal gun makes them all the easier to deal with, right?"

The information was overwhelming. Still trying to process the fact she must have been some sort of survivor of Aperture, he stuttered out, "Could you repeat that? I- I swore you said 'portal gun.'" Which shouldn't be possible. Even if she was down there, how could she have known? There couldn't have been that many portal guns. Four was too much as it was.

But she continued, unfazed. "Yes I did. Portal gun. Orange-yellow device? Warps the fabric of reality or something to link two distant spots together. I have no idea how it works, and it may as well be black magic, but that doesn't matter. You carried one out of that place- Aperture. And the funny thing is, I knew that particular portal gun. I thought it would have been incinerated, but lo and behold, you had it."

Incinerated, incinerated... why did this statement seem so familiar? "Why'd you reckon that?"

"I put it in there myself, before I left."

Then it clicked.

"I found a prototype in an old facility incinerator."

That's what She told him, when he got Reliable. He hadn't even thought about who had put it in there, but now it made sense.

The blood.

The footprints.

The deactivated construct.

"It was you!"

The redhead blinked. "Excuse me?"

"That big spider-y thing- what'd they call it- Ah-eggis? You shut it down, didn't you?"

"AEGIS," she corrected. "Like the mythical shield. But yes, I had, but I can't take all the credit. There was a... a friend. And the portal gun. Which you somehow brought out of there, and I currently have stowed in a box so Ms. Barron wouldn't ask."

Oh. So that's where it was now. Wheatley's fingers twitched, as if they longed to have Reliable in their grip again. He tried to ignore it. "Not many people down there to call a friend, if I'm quite honest with you. Unless you're into skeletons."

"Haha, no. But there was one fellow. He was... something else. You didn't happen to see him down there, did you?"

She looked so hopeful, he was tempted to lie. But the truth spilt out of his mouth before he could think of something else to say. "No, I'm afraid all the other humans down there are rather... dead. Especially the ones She got her hands on- metaphorical hands, I mean. Most robots do lack appendages with... digits."

"No, no, he's a-" She cut herself short, confusion and horror crossing her face. "Her? As in... GLaDOS? She's online?"

She used Her name. She used Her name. No one was supposed to do that! To say Her name, or even think it- it was a death sentence. She knew when Her name was brought up.

A shiver ran down his spine. It was stupid, really, but he couldn't help but feel She knew about this mention of Her.

But how could She?

His emotions must have shown; the redhead was now staring at him curiously. "You alright?"

Wheatley tried to ignore the sickening feeling settling in his stomach. "Yeah. It's just.. Her name's... Her name's taboo. Especially if She's online. Which She is. But I swear it wasn't my fault." No, that was a complete lie. "It... it was an accident." Slightly better, but he still felt guilty. Not wanting to linger on that, he tried veering the subject elsewhere. "But there's no way you could've met Her... at least, not while I was around. And She was offline until... recently... so, how'd you-"

"-know Her name?" The woman sighed. "The friend said it. See, while I was trying to work a way up and out of that place, AEGIS came along and pinned me- and my friend- as threats. It wanted to neutralize us in toxic goo."

Wheatley blinked. Another poisonous-method-of-murder user.

Glad to have gone through when it wasn't on.

The redhead continued. "We got it off, eventually. But we weren't the only threats it registered. One of them was... Her. In preventing our own deaths, we just gave a monster a chance to get back in power." She paused, tugging at a loose lock of hair. "And my friend, he was terrified. He told me to get out as soon as possible. If She was half as bad as I thought She was, She would have been a terror. At least a person like me would have had death as an eventual release. What could a mechanical sphere- a- a core- have to save him?"

Being shot by those bullets felt like a tap in comparison to the sudden punch in the gut those words were.

The redhead- if she was so concerned about this core... if she was telling everything... A core had helped her, got her out to safety...

And didn't betray her when she most needed it.

So lost in this feeling of guilt and "I was a monster," Wheatley didn't recognize the fact the redhead was gripping his shoulders until her nails were starting to dig into his skin. He recoiled, and she gave him an extra-concerned-looking... look. "Hey- hey, you're not looking too good- do I need to get Ms. Barron?"

He shook his head to try clearing it, but a mish-mash of various words still echoed in his head, some from her, some from Her. "N-no... I just..." Wheatley swallowed. "Just had a thought."

"You look like you might faint. Are you sure-?"

"Yes." Ouch, that came out sharper than he wanted. "Nevermind that, I'm fine. So, uh..." He racked his brain for a topic change. "So you never did meet Her?"

"No."

"That's really good, you would have hated Her, and She would've hated you..." Then an actual question crossed his mind. "But uh... why'd you want to get out? Before you knew about the spider, I mean."

"Oh, that's easy. I wanted to go back to the place I called home." She shook her head with a half-laugh, half-sigh. "But things changed while I was gone, and not just technology and attitudes. Something happened down in the southwest, and it affected the rest of the world. Aliens came to Earth. Then there was an invasion. Colonization. there were people who resisted, of course, but the invaders... the- the Combines..." She wasn't looking at him anymore; if anything, she looked like she was gazing into empty space. "Well, I'm just glad I arrived after humanity finally won. But there's so many remnants, so much... destruction. It's going to take a long time to rebuild."

She was quiet for another moment, then added, "And Ms. Barron, she had to live through all of that. And it's just another reason I respect her." Then, rather abruptly, she sat straight, meeting his eyes again. "But it was silly of me to go on about all that without even introducing myself. I'm Mel."

She held out a hand.

He hesitated for a moment, before clasping her hand with his own. "Wheatley."

Author's Note:

...oh, who's this lady, you ask? She's just a friend's OC. No worries, I asked for permission to use Ms. Barron here. 3