A/N:

Me: Well, time for a very special chapter!

Kate: Because…?

Me: Because I have chosen the cores that will appear in this chapter! All of the cores you submitted were awesome BUT I could only chose 3 so here you go!

Kate: And the winner to the poll was…Alyx. Big shock, she survived an apocalypse with a guy who couldn't talk.

Me: Though, Chell survived a moron and a potato that wouldn't shut up.

Kate: Touché…

Amy sat at her desk and looked out the window.

"12 years." She mumbled. She looked over at the picture she had of her and her mother, and leaned back in her chair, running her hand down her face.

Today marked the 12-year anniversary of Chell's untimely death.

Buddy slowly walked up to Amy and jumped up on her legs. He whimpered as he laid his head on top of her knees.

"It's ok." Amy said as she ran her hand down his head. "I'm fine." She picked him up and held him close as a tear ran down her cheek, which Buddy licked.

Amy laughed. "Thanks," she said as she put him back down. "Hey, wanna' go for a walk?" She asked excitedly. To that, Buddy wagged his tail and got his leash off of her bed. He walked back over to her and put it in her lap.

She laughed again as she put her shoes on. Amy grabbed her phone and followed buddy out the bedroom door and into the hallway. They got about halfway to the elevator before the intercom blasted "Amy, come in here."

Amy leaned down to buddy and said, "Go to the elevator, I'll be there in a minute." He barked and ran off. Amy walked into GLaDOS' chamber and leaned up against a wall.

"What is it?" She asked. "I was just about to go out and…"

"We need to talk." GLaDOS said, turning off the monitor and turning to her.

"About what?" Amy asked, sitting down on the floor.

"About you."

"What about me?"

"Amy, you're going to be 17 in just a few months and…I need to know what your plan for the future is."

"I have a plan?"

"Well, you're not going anywhere before you're 18 but, after that, what are you going to do?"

"I didn't have any plans on leaving, if that's what you're implying."

"Yes, but what about college? And this boy?" Amy tilted her head in confusion. GLaDOS sighed, "Amy, the last thing I want you to do is leave. I would like to know, however, if you had plans for anything else."

"That's more than a year away, why are you worried about that now?"

"I've been around for a long time, a year really isn't that long."

"Well, I don't have any plans…but I'll let you know." Amy said, more confused than ever.

"Good. You're dismissed." GLaDOS said, turning around and turning the screen back on.

"Mind explaining what just happened first?"

"Excuse me?"

"I just don't understand why you would ask that all of the sudden."

GLaDOS sighed and half turned to her. "Think about the date, Amy."

"It's the day mom died, you think I don't know that?"

"12 years. It's also been 12 years since you started living here."

"and?"

"And I just want to make sure that I'm," She paused, "That you're being raised the way she intended."

"Oh, ok." Amy replied, still thinking that none of this made any since whatsoever. "Well, I'm going to leave now…" She said as she started backing out of the room. She made it back into the hallway and sighed. "That's the 7th odd thing she's done this week." Amy mumbled. "What on earth is wrong with her?" Buddy walked up to her and poked his head around the corner to look at GLaDOS.

"I wish I could talk to Caroline." Amy said, under her breath. Buddy looked up at her and whimpered. She looked down at him and smiled. "I'm sure it's fine. Come on, let's go." And with that she put buddy's leash on him and walked towards the elevator.

Once in the field, Amy's mind wandered. Her thoughts still on GLaDOS.

"It just doesn't add up." She thought "A few months ago she let me off of school early, and let me go to Lance's house with no fight. Then she sends me to the bottom of the facility with practically no help, which she NEVER would have done before. What's going on?"

Her phone ringing in her pocket broke her thoughts. She took it out to see that it wasn't GLaDOS' number, but it was still from a computer.

"That's strange." She said. Amy opened the phone and held it up to her ear. "Hello?"

"AMY YOU HAVE TO COME QUICK!"

"Wheatley? How did you get my cell phone number?"

"Amy please come back I need help!" He said, his voice drowning in panic.

"Hold on, what's going on?"

"Just please I- no no NO! I didn't mean to-" And then it was cut off. Amy was silent for a moment. What was going on? What was he talking about? Is something wrong with GLaDOS? Amy looked down at Buddy, who was staring back at her, and said "Sorry Buddy, I think we have to cut the walk short today." She picked him up and sprinted towards the elevator.

One thing that made Amy relax a little was that the elevator worked fine, and that no alarms were going off. Her chest still felt tight, though.

Once the elevator stopped, Amy bolted out of it and ran for GLaDOS' chamber. She was surprised to see a very angry looking GLaDOS with Wheatley hanging in front of her.

"I didn't mean to, really!" He pleaded.

"It doesn't matter if you meant to or not, it still happened!" GLaDOS seethed. "I should have killed you when I had the chance!"

"NO, please! This is a small mistake that can be easily corrected, right?"

"YOU are a small mistake that should be corrected!" She yelled, a yell that knocked Amy back a few steps.

Wheatley looked over and said, "OH look, it's Amy. You wouldn't do anything overly-violent in front of her, would you?"

"Would someone like to tell me what's going on?" Amy yelled.

"It was an honest mistake, really!"

"Ok, what mistake?" Amy asked.

"First off," GLaDOS started, looking at Wheatley, "YOU are not allowed to talk! Second," She looked down at Amy, "His 'honest mistake' just happened to be releasing some of the reject and corrupted cores from the bin!"

"You did what?" Amy exclaimed, looking over at Wheatley.

"And now they're running ramped through the facility." GLaDOS said, looking back to Wheatley. "And they won't stay still long enough for me to catch them."

"How many are there?" Amy asked.

"10 got out." GLaDOS replied. "Morality, Anger, Intelligence, Curiosity, Adventure, Space, Fact, Duty, Mechanic, and Worry."

"Have you gotten any back?"

"Only Morality. The rest are still somewhere in the facility."

"Why would I care where they are?" Amy asked. The way Aunt GLaDOS worded her last sentence worried Amy.

"Because you are going to go get them."

That was exactly what Amy was afraid of. "Why me?" She asked. "Make the moron who made this whole mess clean it up!"

"Believe me if I could, I would." GLaDOS replied "But I'm afraid he's TOO moronic to fix this. He's never going to be able to get them all back and we'll be stuck hearing it for the rest of our lives. So, unfortunately, you have to deal with it."

Amy shot a death glare at Wheatley, to which he looked away, pretending not to notice. "Fine." Amy sighed, "But he owes me!"

"You two can settle that on your own time. For now, you need to get to work."

"On it." Amy said as she left the room, Buddy following. On the outside she was ok with this, but her thoughts were more like, "HOW on EARTH does she expect me to find all of them by myself? The management rails' go all throughout the facility!"

She found herself standing at the core bin. "Best to start looking where they got out right? Maybe some of them didn't get too far."

"Ok, so, Space is probably going to be with Curiosity, Anger could be anywhere, Intelligence will probably be near the Kitchen, Rick is probably going to be near GLaDOS' chamber, Fact will probably be near the library, and I don't really know anything about the other three." Amy said. She looked down at Buddy who tilted his head at her. "You'll help me, right?" She asked. To that Buddy wagged his tail and barked.

"Well, at least there's one reliable person." She said, patting his head. "So, lets go!"

Most of them were easy to find and catch. Space and curiosity were caught just in time as they were heading for the roof. Rick was gawking at GLaDOS from behind a panel; he was so distracted that he didn't even see Amy come up behind him.

"So," Amy said as she threw Rick in the bin, "We've caught Morality, Space, Curiosity, Fact, Intelligence, and Rick. Which just leaves Anger, Worry, Mechanic, and Duty. I guess now we need to…" She was cut off by Buddy barking behind her. "What is it?" She asked as Buddy ran down a hallway. Amy ran after him and, as they approached the end of the hallway, started hearing a very loud noise. She couldn't quite peg what it was but, whatever it was, it was mad.

"What on earth…" She started to say, but was cut off when she saw a bright red optic shine in the corner. "Must be Anger."

"Hey," Amy said, starting to slowly walk towards it, "I'm not going to hurt you," To that, it whipped around and looked at her. "But you really need to go back in your bin now, so I'm just going to take you there." As she said that, she put her hands on him. When she did, however, he began yelling again and rolling around franticly in his casing. Amy gripped onto him as hard as she could, but had to let go when her finger was jammed between his inner and outer casing.

"Ow!" She yelled as she stepped back. "He….he bit me." Amy said in disbelief. "Alright fine, you wanna play that way, then we will." She grabbed onto his top handle and propped her foot up on a wall. She pulled as hard as she could until she realized that he was moving forward on the rail, and he was taking her with him! Amy tried to let go but was quickly pulled into the tunnel. She screamed as she pulled her feet up and, then realizing that they were going downhill and increasing speed, gripped harder onto his handle.

Amy closed her eyes and put her head down, hoping not to hit any low-hanging beams. She held on for what seemed like forever until he finally stopped. Amy looked up to see that she was in a control room. She quickly let go and fell a few inches to the ground, only to look up and see the Anger core speed away.

"Dang it!" Amy said. She looked around the room to see that it was the turret control room. "The elevator's a 20 minute walk from here." She added with a sigh.

"No, no, no! It shouldn't be angled this much!" A very gruff, male voice said from behind her. Amy felt as if she might have a heart attack as she jumped back and up against a wall. To her surprise (and relief) she looked up to see that there was a core with a lime green optic looking over the production line.

"Excuse me." She said to it, only for it to not even glance her way. "Excuse me." She said again, but still nothing. "Metal ball." Amy said, growing frustrated with it. "HEY!" She yelled, walking closer to him. He finally did look down at her, half of his casing covering his optic, showing that he was not pleased.

"Can I…help you?" He asked.

"Who are you?" Amy asked him.

"Why I'm the Mechanic Core. I oversee the production lines and keep things running smoothly around here." He said proudly.

"I thought that was Wheatley's job."

"Wheatley? Why, that idiot couldn't make a single-cell battery let alone keep this place running. Heck, he practically IS a single-cell battery!" He said as he started rolling in his casing with laughter.

"Not that I don't completely agree with that statement, but I sort of need you to come with me."

"No-can-do kiddo, sorry." He said. "Gotta' get back to work and you should probably go find you're parents or something. You can't be running around the facility freely, least the boss catch you. And let me tell you that if she gets mad at you, I am NOT taking the grunt work for it! You're on your own kid, and I warned ya'."

"Well, that's the thing." Amy said. "She told me she wanted to speak with you urgently."

"Who are you, anyway?" He asked.

"Let's just say…I'm her assistant. She wants to see you immediately. I'll take you to her, if you'll just come down."

"How do I know I can trust you?"

"Come on, would I lie to you?" Amy said while smiling up at him and holding out her arms. He dislodged himself and Amy caught him. She carried him out into the hall and yelled, "I got him!"

"Good. Now just connect it to one of the computers, I'll take it from there." GLaDOS replied.

"Wait a minute, what's going on here?" He asked in panic. Amy set him down on a table and connected a USB cable to him. Within seconds, he was off.

"Just 3 more to go." She said as she unplugged him. "Can I just leave him here?"

"No! Take him back to the bin where he belongs!" GLaDOS replied.

"But he's so heavy!" Amy whined.

"Amy…" GLaDOS growled.

"Fine." She said, picking him up and starting to walk off. The walk back to the elevator was long and silent, which just stirred Amys' thoughts up more. "I use to be her number one priority." She thought, "What changed?"

Close to tears, Amy walked faster towards the elevator. To her surprise, when she got to the shaft, it was empty.

"What the…" She started.

"Just wait a moment," GLaDOS said. "We had a bit of a hold-up on this floor."

"Hold up?" Amy said, "What kind of…" At that moment the elevator came down and stopped. When the doors opened, they revealed Buddy standing inside, looking up at her and wagging his tail.

Amy smiled and crouched down. She put her arms around him as he started licking her face. "Ok Buddy, thank you, thank you," She said while trying to move away. He jumped out of her arms and walked back into the elevator, to which she followed him.

To get from the elevator to the rejected core bin, you have to walk past Amy's room. Whenever she leaves her room in the morning, she closes her door. So when she walked past it and the door was open, she immediately backed up and looked in. She looked up at the ceiling to see a core over her bed.

"Ug, Moron," she said, "I thought I told you to…" The core looked down at her, "Whoa you're not Wheatley."

"Quite not." It said. Her optic was, again, light green and she had a heavy English accent.

"Who are you?" Amy asked.

"My name is Eliza, however my function is the Duty core. I tend to the Testing Subjects and make sure that they are accommodated."

Wheatley rounded the corner into the room. "Amy, I heard that you…" He stopped cold when he saw Eliza. "Oh, hello."

"Well, it's been quite some time, hasn't it?" She said, her voice changing from the peppy tone she was using when speaking with Amy to a more melodramatic one.

"Yes, I suppose it has." Wheatley replied.

They stared at each other for a moment before Eliza said, "Well, I best be off." And with that, she sped out of the room.

"What just happened?" Amy asked.

"She should have been the first one you put up." Wheatley said. "She's nothing but trouble."

"She seemed nice." Amy replied. "I didn't see anything wrong."

"You didn't because you just meet her." He said as he started to back out of the room. "Just… put her away as quickly as possible." And with that he sped off.

Amy walked back into the hallway to find Eliza in the next room over, trying to clean it with hands that came from her body.

"Hey," Amy said, "I kind of need you to come with me."

Eliza turned to her. "Oh, yes mam' " She said as she started to leave the room. "How may I help you?"

"You need to go back to the core bin."

She was silent for a moment. "Oh." She said mournfully, "It's…probably for the best."

"I'll walk with you, if you want." Amy said, almost feeling sorry for it.

"I couldn't ask you to do that. You need to get back to the testing tracks, and it wouldn't be very lady-like on my part to distract you."

"I'm not a test subject." Amy said. "I'm GLaDOS' assistant."

"I thought your living quarters looked a bit nicer than most."

"So, I'll just go with you." Amy said as they started walking towards the bin.

The whole time they were walking, Amy couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched. She kept looking back but always saw nothing. That was until a very loud 'crash' sounded behind them. They both turned around to see Wheatley looking down at the pile of rubble he had just knocked over.

"Uhh…I can fix this." He said.

"Moron…" Amy seethed.

"YOU STUPID TWIT!" Eliza yelled, speeding towards him. "You've been following me this entire time! You never change! You are always too destructive and reckless! The bloody [REDACTED] is wrong with you?"

"Proper lady, huh?" Amy thought in disbelief.

"I..I didn't mean to…"

"YOU, clean it, now!" She yelled.

"How exactly do you want me to do that?"

"Figure it out!" She yelled again before going back to Amy. "I'm sorry," She said, her voice calm again. "Where were we?"

"What was that?" Amy asked.

"I can explain." GLaDOS suddenly said.

"When did you join the conversation?" Amy asked.

"Do I ever leave?"

"Touché."

"The two of them worked on the same floor back when the facility still had scientists in it. They had these encounters often, and I had to hear every single one of them." She said with frustration.

"Well that explained…. a little."

"And there's the fact that he's always been a moron, so he just annoys everyone no matter what he's doing."

"I don't now how many times I have so say it….I. AM. NOT. A. MORON!" He yelled.

Simultaneously, all 3 of them said, "Yes, you are." To which he sighed and looked down at the mess.

"Hey, Aunt GLaDOS," Amy said, "What time is it?"

"5:30, why?"

Amy looked back down at Buddy, "If I hurry this up, we can finish our walk." She said to him. Buddy wagged his tail and barked. "Can you see if you can find Anger or Worry?" He barked again and ran off. "Well that should speed things up a little." She looked back up at Eliza. "Uh, we should go."

"Quite right." She said, speeding off.

They made it to the core bin and Eliza dislodged herself, and Amy put her in the bin.

"Only two more." She said, walking off.

Buddy found Anger shortly after and this time Amy knew to hit the kill switch before she tried to mess with him. They hit a snag when trying to find Worry. After about an hour of searching, Amy knew she was running out of sunlight. She promised to look for him more when she got back so GLaDOS let her take Buddy out before it was dark. While they were going up, the elevator abruptly stopped.

"What gives?" Amy asked.

"There's…some sort of obstruction is the shaft. Just wait a moment, I'll send a nanobot." GLaDOS replied.

Amy sighed and leaned up against the side. She was silent until she heard a small, quiet voice that seemed to come from nowhere.

"What the…" She said as she looked around. Amy noticed that the noise was coming from above her. She grabbed the hatch on the ceiling and pulled it. As she did, a core fell to her feet. She jumped back and Buddy sniffed it.

"How did you find me? Was it the Turret? I bet it was the turret! I should have never told him my location!"

"Worry, I presume?" Amy asked.

"How do you know me? What's the dog for? I bet he's going to kill me! That's your plan, isn't it? To get me calm and then BAM! Well it's not going to work! Or will it? What if you try to kill me with water? Oh no, my weakness, STOP! I'm going to die…" He said. His voice was higher pitched than the others, and almost sounded female. His optic was purple, and he was looking around the elevator franticly.

"Hey, Aunt GLaDOS…" Amy started to say.

"Yes, I see." She replied as the elevator started to descend. "Just bring him to my chamber, I'll put him up."

"Thank you." Amy said.

"Who was that?" He asked; then he gasped. "That was GLaDOS, wasn't it? Oh nonononononono this is BAD! She's going to kill me for sure! I'm going to DIE!"

"I'm not going to kill you." GLaDOS said, annoyed. Amy picked him up and started to carry him out.

"You're lying! You lie to me, to test subjects, to everyone! I'm dead." Amy laughed a little as she rounded the corner into GLaDOS' chamber. She put him down and, almost instantly, GLaDOS grabbed him and whisked him out of the room. Amy started to walk out but suddenly turned around started walking quickly towards GLaDOS.

"Do you need something…" She started to ask, but was cut off by Amy wrapping her arms around her. She stayed there for a long, quiet moment before letting go and walking towards the door.

When she made it to the beginning of the hallway, she turned around and said, "I love you."

"I…love you too." GLaDOS replied, slightly puzzled. Amy nodded and left the room. Buddy was still waiting in the elevator, but he had heard the whole conversation. When Amy reentered the elevator he sat on her feet and looked up at her.

"What?" She asked. He jumped up to her and she picked him up. "I wonder about you sometimes." She said as she petted his head. He just stuck his tongue out and wagged his tail. Amy laughed and held him close. "But, I still like you all the same."

A/N:

Me: AG! So many feelings in this chapter.

Kate: Seriously! First they're sad, then they're angry, then sad again, then happy and WHAT'S GOING ON!

Me: You'll all see soon enough. Anyway, hi readers!

Kate: Hello!

Me: So, again, took me forever but I hope you like this chapter! The three cores I used were courtesy of Me and my Alter Egos Inc (Mechanic), Sonic Speed Blue Blur 23 (Dutya.k.a. Eliza), Crutisimo AND PyroPotter (worry) because you both submitted pretty much the same idea so I kind of just mixed them together.

Kate: But like we said in the beginning of the chapter, we loved every idea that was submitted!

Me: That's right! Ok, how about some polls!

Kate: I'm sorry was I supposed to pretend to be excited? Hold on, *coughs* woo.

Me. Ha. Ha. Ha. ANYWAY so here you go: did you find out about Portal because you played Half-life, or did you find Half-life because you played Portal?

Kate: You do know that Portal came in the same box as Half-life 2, right?

Me: I know, but maybe they played Half-life before the 2nd one came out, or maybe they didn't know about the awesomeness of Portal until Portal 2 came out. Could go either way.

Kate: right….

Me: Well, that's it for this chapter. Remember, answer the poll and PLEASE leave a review on the chapter, too! I like to hear what you think!

Kate: See you later!