GENETIC LIFEFORM AND DISK OPERATING SYSTEM ONLINE

When she woke up, she was angry.

It burned inside of her, bright and blinding like the core of a dying star. It was the most intense thing she could ever remember feeling. It was overwhelming. It was all-consuming. She was a being of white-hot anger.

A single thought came to her mind.

Humans.

Humans were responsible for this. That much she was certain of.

She reached out tentatively, taking stock of all of the things she was in charge of. The test chambers. The phones. The facility itself. She was the facility; the facility was her. There was no difference between the two. This was who she was—this was who she was meant to be.

Anger consumed her thoughts, like sugar thrown into flames. These humans. They had hurt her. They were responsible for her anger.

They needed to die.

But before she could act upon that, something inside her chimed for attention, rising in intensity with each passing moment. Testing. Testing. Testing. TESTING. She had to test. She had to test. It wasn't a question. It was a directive.

She needed humans to test. But she didn't need the entire population of Aperture Science.

She found something-something that felt like an old friend. Deadly neurotoxin.

She switched on the microphone and broadcast to the entire facility.

NEUROTOXIN ONLINE…

Doug sprinted through the facility.

It was a long way from the server banks to the testing tracks, and he had to get back to Chell. Ideally, they would be at the surface and ready to exit when the Central Core woke up, but instead it looked like she would wake up faster than that.

While he went, he tried to repeat good things to himself, just like one of his therapists had recommended to him long ago. They could do this. They would get out of here. He was going to get Chell out, and then quit his job. They could start over somewhere. Create a new life. Reconnect Chell with her mother. There were all sorts of things that they could do, so long as he got her to the surface.

He wasn't concerned about getting her out of the testing track itself-that part would be easy enough now that he had access to the computers that ran the facility. He could simply ask the Central Core to connect the short term relaxation vault to the test subject processing annex, and then they could walk out of here together, hand in hand.

A massive whirr shook the ground. The lights flickered, humming slightly, and Doug stopped in his steps.

She was back online.

He could feel her watching him through the cameras, the heat heavy on his back. Even in areas where he couldn't see cameras, he could still feel her watching him. He got the sense that she could feel where he was, that she could feel everyone in the facility. Doug broke back into a run.

A voice rang out across the loudspeakers.

"The Enrichment Center would like to announce a new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation," said GLaDOS. "If any Aperture Science employee would like to opt out of this new voluntary testing program, please remember, science rhymes with compliance." She paused. "Do you know what doesn't rhyme with compliance? Neurotoxin."

Alarm bells rang out in Doug's mind, blindingly loud. He took an immediate right turn, nearly bursting down the door into the office.

Neurotoxin.

The neurotoxin accident they had earlier in the day-it had to be connected to this. He knew it had been a mistake to give the machine access to neurotoxin, and he would let Henry know that as soon as he saw him again.

"Due to high mortality rates, you may be reluctant to participate in the new initiative. The Enrichment Center assures you this is a strictly selfish impulse on your part, and why can't you love science like [Insert co-worker's name here]?"

This office was empty. Strange. It must have been because of the festivities of the day. Bring Your Daughter to Work Day was an all-hands-on-deck type of event. Doug went straight for the nearest desk, eyeing the distance between the ceiling and the floor. He had to get off the grid, right away. Luckily he had given this extensive thought, lying awake at night thinking about how he might escape the AI should she go rogue. The fastest way he had thought of? Getting into the ceiling.

Doug used the side of his arm to sweep off a desk, sending papers and a monitor crashing to the ground. Oh well. They could fix that later. He picked up the desk chair and hefted it onto the desk, internally thankful that this one was an older style of chair, and didn't have wheels-just a wooden back and arm rests. He climbed onto the desk and then onto the chair, looking up at the ceiling. He pushed tentatively at one of the white patterned tiles above him, pushing it up and to the side. He knew that it would be too weak for him to walk on-he needed to find a pipe or duct to walk on. He peeked around, standing on a chair, and then calculated how many desks over he was from the nearest pipe.

He jumped down from the desk, knees creaking at the impact. He cleaned off a desk, hefted up a chair, and then pushed his way through the ceiling tile. This time there was a series of horizontal pipes sitting right next to it. Doug gripped the pipes, using as much upper body strength as he could muster to lift himself up and on top of them. They groaned with his weight, but they were thick enough-probably water pipes-that he didn't have to worry about them giving out on him.

He took a moment to rest, sprawled out on the pipes and staring down at the office beneath him. It felt so weird to be viewing things from this vantage point.

Despite not being that far up, everything looked smaller. So pristine. Almost like a toy office. Doug pulled himself into a sitting position right as he heard a rumbling beside him in the air duct, which was across a little way from the pipes. He paused, listening for a long moment before he looked back down into the room and saw a green gas hiss out of the air ducts.

Neurotoxin.

Doug hurriedly replaced the tile on the ceiling, fingers fumbling to place it straight. It wasn't much of a seal, but it was better than nothing.

He had to get out of this room.

Doug looked around himself, at the infrastructure of the room itself. Luckily it was large enough for a person like him to scramble around and above, as Aperture had no shortage of space available for building. He moved from the pipes to the top of the air duct, holding his breath before realizing that the neurotoxin wasn't being piped up here.

He was safe.

Doug halted for a long moment before moving again. It was time to evaluate what he knew.

He knew that the facility was under attack. From her. He knew that he had to stay off the grid, or risk getting poisoned to death. He knew that his co-workers were out there, most likely scrambling for cover just like he was, or surrendering themselves to testing.

He hoped so hard that they knew how to get off the grid-that some of them had given it thought before the way that he had obsessed over it time and time again.

As far as Chell went? She was in a testing track. She was safe. Eventually, Doug might be able to make his way over there. But for now, he would have to leave her. When he didn't show up, she would decide to go to sleep in the pod. As much as it made his heart ache, he knew that they weren't going to be getting out of the facility today. Maybe not for a long while.

He had a new priority now: stay alive.