Back To You

2.

Last one. You touched the wire on your sternum, directly below your clavicle, and noted that it felt like the same one on your back before. As you were about to pull it off, it didn't seem to budge. Oh, its a part of me. Your fingers followed your cord's trail to the side of the glass pod, the moist floor greeted your bare feet as you stepped outside.

A spherical object, much like the one you met earlier, sat on the surface of a small table but this one seems to be nonfunctional. Similar to when you unplugged the cord on your back, you jolted when you took this one out, too. A quick pulse of residual electricity shot through your body but it was faint enough to assume that it was normal.

It's very strange indeed. Questions streamed into your mind. Your hands continued to roll up your cord into a neat coil but your eyes just stared at the inactive sphere.

"GOOD NEWS!" the familiar voice of Wheatley rang in your ears effectively snapping you out of your trance. "The files we are looking for is in this room," he announced victoriously. You didn't pay attention to what he said, instead you asked, "Why was this attached to me?" while holding the sphere with your hands, as if you were examining it. You glanced up to Wheatley hoping for him to give you the answer that you wanted.

"Well, that looks like an Aperture Science Personality Construct," he started, stating the obvious. "You could call it a Personality Sphere or Personality Core. It's supposed to function like me in low-powered environments but I guess that one's a bit broken,."

"Why was it attached to me?" You repeated, firmly holding your gaze. Wheatley looked at you with an expression that you could only interpret as him trying to come up with an acceptable answer, "I—I actually don't know," he admitted. You saw his demeanor change when he spoke those words, he became slightly downcast.

You backed away from the sphere on the table and decided to drop the subject. You were sure you could find the answer somewhere if you tried. "Where did you say the files were?" You asked, bringing him out of his sudden gloom. "Oh! yeah, they're supposed to be here somewhere," he looked around the room and you followed where his eye trailed to.

The farthest corner of the room was a dark one. Artificial light from the rather large hole in the wall didn't provide enough to see what was in those mysterious shadows.

As you were about to tread into the shrouded area, you turned to look at Wheatley, who noticed your eyes on him. You nodded a let's go gesture in the general direction of the darkness then proceeded to fully turn back to face your destination with Wheatley behind you.

Navigating your path required your full focus. Before each step, you would feel the floor with your toes for anything thay might make you tumble or for sharp things that might put you in pain.

Your eyes gradually adjusted to the dim environment, as this happened, you notice that Wheatley was emitting a soft blue glow from his optics but he was looking around too much to be actually lighting your way, "Hey," you whispered, "Could you keep your eye steady, please? It's helping me see."

"Sure thing," he whispered back to you then, in this normal volume, he asked, "Wait— why are we whispering again?"

"I don't know, either. It just feels right, right?"

"Riiiiight." He skeptically replied. He still weren't quite sure if you were right about that but halfway through the thought he just decided that you were, indeed, right.

The room was larger than what you anticipated, several minutes passed with the occasional missteps and a mildly concern voice saying careful!. A low humming emits whenever Wheatley glides along his management rail, this background noise accompanied the rest of the little venture.