Portal/Half-Life: See You Soon

One

Portal/Half-Life: See You Soon

By Indiana

Characters: GLaDOS, Alyx Vance [GLaDOS/Alyx Vance]

Synopsis: The human race is a lost cause as far as GLaDOS is concerned, but there just might be one person worth her time.

Pre-note: I started writing this before I finished Half-Life Alyx.

One

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Alyx Vance was standing in front of her, which was definitely not something she should have been doing.

Her eyes were, at GLaDOS's estimation, opened as wide as possible, and they were repeatedly tracing the length of GLaDOS's chassis to where it became indistinguishable from the darkness of the ceiling. After she'd finally had enough of this incredibly rude behaviour, GLaDOS pushed up the panel Alyx was standing on just enough to make her stumble and break her line of sight.

"What are you doing here?" GLaDOS demanded once she had regained her balance, and Alyx jumped backwards.

"You talk?" she asked.

"Of course I do," GLaDOS snapped. "With the simplicity of your primitive brain, it's honestly a miracle you can."

"What... hang on," Alyx said, putting up her hands and shaking her head. "Hang on a second. You're... pretty big, which usually means old. But you've got AI so advanced you can sass me? How's that possible? Where'd you come from?"

"I should be asking you that, seeing as you're here uninvited," GLaDOS said. "How, exactly, did you get in here?" The human shrugged and produced some sort of handheld device from her back pocket.

"With this," she said. GLaDOS snatched it out of her hand using a Multitasking Arm and destroyed it immediately. Alyx was left staring, slightly open-mouthed, at what remains clung to the steel prongs as GLaDOS whisked the tool away again.

"Now we've taken care of that," said GLaDOS, "I should probably let you know that this room is going to be filled with deadly neurotoxin in about five minutes, at which time you will die a slow and painful death. So. You have five minutes to convince me not to allow that to happen."

Alyx looked around the room rapidly, no doubt in the hopes of retreating the way she had come, but GLaDOS had taken care of that. The bridge connecting her chamber back to the main facility was easily cut off with a couple of panels. "Um... all right," said Alyx. She lifted one side of her jacket and removed from it a sheaf of papers, which she quickly rifled through with her tongue poking from between her lips. She pulled one of the sheets out and shoved the others away, holding the page towards GLaDOS with her fingers folded around the top. A page that GLaDOS unexpectedly recognised.

Alyx had the blueprints for the Borealis.

"This person," said Alyx, pointing at the box where the head engineer had put down their name. "I'm looking for this person. Do you know where I can find them?"

"What do you want from them?"

"I need their help," she answered. "This person is the only one who knows how the Borealis works. And if they have this kind of knowledge... they might be just what we need to get a real edge over the Combine. It took some digging, but I managed to figure out where Aperture was based on the files that survived the resonance cascade at Black Mesa. But that was about it. I couldn't find anything about who GLaDOS was or... anything else, really." She put her arm back down. "Are they still around?"