Summary: One year after Wheatley's return to Earth, life is pretty much back to normal. Well, as normal as it can be with a personality core in your life. Within that time period, Chell and Wheatley have grown apart and their friendship is deteriorating. Back at Aperture Science, GLaDOS continues running her Cooperative Testing Initiative until she notices personality cores disappearing left and right. Looking into the matter, she discovers people long dead walking around outside in the city. To investigate, she forces Chell and Wheatley back for one more "favor," failure in doing so within the two week deadline will result in Wheatley's detonation. Just for fun, GLaDOS decides to switch the dialogue roles to see how the two can cope. Alongside ATLAS and P-Body, Chell and Wheatley must solve the mystery as old faces pop up in the most unexpected places. Their only clue lies in the mind of an old rat and his box.

A/N: Here it is; the sequel to Forgiveness. If you haven't read Forgiveness, don't fret; I made this a standalone. I actually discourage you from reading Forgiveness since it's (from my own critical standpoint) an overrated piece of crap. I would compare it to Twilight, but that's a bit too harsh. Anyway, this is the only time I will actually comment on this story since I tend to go overboard with these A/Ns. If you have any questions, concerns, or just want to talk, feel free to PM me. Also, tell me how this is going; I want to make a proper sequel that I can enjoy as much as everyone else rather than becoming discouraged again and rewriting an entire story. I want to get this one right. So, sit back, relax, and read away.

Prologue

One week into the systems failure, nothing had come back online. That little flaw was probably due to the fact that nature and time had worn down on the facility, despite what She did to try and fix the damage. No matter, She hadn't come back online yet either, remaining comatose in that huge body of Hers. In all honesty, he didn't really care about Her condition, only of escaping.

Imagine how surprised he had been when he woke to a decrepit room, Weighted Companion Cube by his stasis-chamber. The minute he sat up, he thought it was all a dream…or life after death. But why would he be sent to the place that took his life away?

Once his cube began speaking to him, he knew he was alive and semi-well.

"Get up on the wrong side of the cryo-bed Doug?" she had asked him. Doug Rattman rubbed his eyes before replying.

"I shouldn't be alive…" he stated while running a hand through his gnarly, unkempt hair.

"But you are alive and that's all that matters. It's been three hundred years since you put the woman into the relaxation chamber."

"That long? Wow…" Rattman turned his head, trying to get a good look at his surroundings. While it didn't look as nature-worn as he expected, the room was dimly lit by the emergency lights overhead. With a more careful eye, he noticed the panels were a clean white and the floor just too clean.

"As you can probably tell, She's awake again." the cube informed him. Rattman nodded before carefully getting out of the chamber. Miraculously, all the bullet wounds inflicted by the turrets had healed without a scar. Musing on that detail for a minute, he turned his attention to the emergency lights once again.

"So…GLaDOS is offline once again." he stated, but made it sound more like a question.

"Temporarily, She'll be on soon enough."

"As of now, there's nothing stopping us from getting out of here?"

"Yes."

"And that woman escaped already?"

"Yes." Doug smiled before placing the cube on his back.

"Then we've got some work to do. Remember the old reversal equation?"

"Of course, I do. Why?"

"We're going to test it out."

"And with what?"

"A personality sphere."

"Why don't you just try it on Her?"

"I would, but Her programming is different. There's a special code for Her that's been lost through the ages. Plus, Her body's somewhere deep in the facility. Well, deeper than we can reach without the power or a pair of Long-Fall Boots. The place has been sanctioned off since the 1980s. I don't think we're getting through anytime soon."

"Alright then genius," the cube seemed to sneer, "where do you think we're going to get a personality sphere?"

"Remember our old friend Chell?"

"Yes…and this place has her written all over it, doesn't it?"

"Well, if I came out of stasis, it's obvious that she had before me…which means that some robot was overlooking the Relaxation Vaults. But She deactivated those robots and opted for overlooking the ones within the testing track."

"Well, we're not going to learn anything by just standing around, so why don't you get a move on before She comes back to kill you?"

"What do you mean by 'you get a move on?'"

"I'm a cube, not a box with legs. Now that is just a stupid idea."

"Agreed," Rattman said, walking to the left of the stasis pod he had locked himself in so many centuries ago. "So, any ideas as to what we're doing now?"

"Actually, I have been thinking something over." the cube said. "Do you remember the emergency code?"

"That depends, for undercover policemen or health inspectors?"

"No, not those emergency codes! I mean, the emergency override sequence for-"

"-the personality cores…" he finished. After a brief pause, he replied, "Yes, I do. What do you have in mind?"

"I was thinking, if you could test out the override on a personality core, then maybe you could try a similar procedure on Her."

"To take Her out of control? I…you need a body…"

"Pardon?"

"You need a body for the core transfer. That information has to go somewhere and Caroline's body (albeit a myth) is lost within the depths of the facility."

"…Does it really have to be Caroline?"

"Yes. All the other personalities were only segments of a person. The only full-mind transfer was from Caroline. We'd need a completely empty mind to house Her."

"What about another personality sphere?"

"None of them would qualify. The programming has to have some purely human element to it and not be malfunctioning. Let's take the Anger Core as an example: while it exhibits and violently displays anger, it's…not compatible with Her programming. If we did a programming transfer, She'd be sent right back into that damned supercomputer."

"What about a core that was meant to be human?"

"No, the Adventure Core wouldn't work. It's too…I don't know how to describe it. Just, not good at all; the programming too hardwired into its systems. Rather than be destroyed upon entry, the supercomputer would just become a womanizing bastard. Same would go for any other core; they're too personalized. They all have some sort of 'specialty' program."

"I wasn't talking about the Adventure Core. I was referencing project F-Stop."

"…It's still here?"

"Even I don't know that."

"But it didn't work on Her the first time."

"The first time, nobody thought She would neurotoxin the place. They just plugged it into Her and believed the job to be finished. What it was really meant for-well, you know that already."

"Yes, but I thought She destroyed it."

"Wow, your memory must be failing you. It was critically damaged, but not destroyed. The system's still online."

"Ok, there's a start. Now, do we know where it is?"

"How should I know where it went? I'm a cube! With no legs! What, did you think I was going to walk around the facility without you? I can't move!"

"No need to be snippy about it."

"I'll be as snippy as I want to be! I waited well over three hundred years for you to get your sorry ass out of bed! Yeah, I'm going to be impatient!"

"Alright, I'm sorry!"

"Apology accepted…almost. Anyway, she might have it."

"GLaDOS?"

"No, that testing lady! She escaped the facility, so maybe she took it with her."

"Let me check the storage room first, just to be sure."

"I don't get you. An opportunity to escape arises out of thin air and you go to check the Personality Core Storage Room."

"If it's not in there, we could try transferring the personalities back to their original owners, just to make sure the Emergency Coding is still intact."

"Whatever you say genius." Doug ignored the sarcasm-rich statement from the cube and continued into the undergrowth that was Aperture Science. If GLaDOS was indeed on Emergency Shut Down, she could wake up any minute and neurotoxin him in a nanosecond.

"Come on, we're going on an 'adventure.'"