It was a big door.
Very big, in fact. It was the sort of big, sleek, white door that might have looked more at home on the side of a jumbo jet; simply because it needed something about that size to excuse it for being so very, very big. As it was the cold metallic runway haphazardly smelted to the front of it looked a laughably frail and superfluous detail- like a bent paper clip glued to the face of a Siberian tiger.
Chell stopped in front of the big door. It was hard to tell if she felt anything like any other person might in the same position; small, vulnerable, impossibly insignificant and wondering at this unfathomable construction that looked far too out of place and important to be shunted back in this disused corridor of an extensive, forgotten, underground laboratory. What Chell thought was not to be known by man or beast, but she looked at it, and she waited. She knew she was supposed to be here, knew that it was supposed to be here, and she knew that it was a door. Chell also knew one other thing; that doors open.
The big door opened.
“OoOOoh-godthatfeelsterribnhk.”
The shivering, thin slice of life that had just melted out of the overly expansive doorway and into the hard steel floor before her feet made a damp, thudding sound as the wandering speech was impeded by the metal grid work.
A glance back up at the gaping maw of the freezer bespoke of either some colossal miscalculation or practical joke. Carved out of the center like the first scrape of a knife in a tub of margarine was the small, coffin-like space that the object had been contained within. The remainder of the machine appeared to be there simply for the sake of looking as if it was supposed to be doing something.
In comparison the ribbon of flesh and colourlessly blue overalls on the floor was trying to do something, but it didn’t seem to have the necessary equipment to do so. In its defense it was doing a fine job of making a constant stream of noise while ineffectually moving the parts that it could- namely the wrists, elbows and finger joints- which appeared to have no inclination to function in their set hierarchies or, indeed, with any united purpose the possessor may have had in mind.
“Lmm'ejus-izzabit-trickyt'get-allthebits-t'gethr…”
It spoke in a static, buzzing sort of way; like a radio with a poor signal striving to remember all the words of the song it was playing. Chell frowned at the familiarity in the intonation, crouching down to see the better, but not reaching out. Not drawing closer to the mass of dullish blond hair, steel-stifled mumbling and canvas white skin. One blue-veined wrist had clawed in front of the other, and with the cooperation of what might have, at one point, been functioning scapulae and deltoids, buckled and shook and craned the precarious construction of jagged cheek bones and cartilage up to look at her.
Wheatley looked at her.
“Oh. Hallo.”
Huh. Funny. Exactly the same as before. Still her up there, him down here. Well, of course, he had been up there most of the time before, but there had been that time, that bit, right at the start. Pity she hadn’t quite managed to catch him, but you know- humans. They came with all those extra bits, and she was probably feeling a bit off, what with the, well, the brain damage, and that, not to mention all those extra things they had to worry about, arms into the bargain, and the jumping business…
Still, looking up at that big, competent, monster-destroying face with its tumble-down locks and noble, Amazon nose and olive grey eyes that knew everything and know everything and see everything and see, at the moment, now, him; just, small, cold and not very noble at all him, he remembers, for once, what he was going to say.
“… I’m sorry.”