GLaDOS and Me

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Wheatley's head was pounding.

He stared blearily at the ceiling, not wanting to move for fear it would make things worse. Though he didn't think anything could be done about that. He raised his arm to look at his watch. Half past six. Though work was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

Wait.

He rolled over slowly, squinting for his glasses. He was on his couch. Why wasn't he at Aperture with GLaDOS?

"Here."

Wheatley's fingers closed around his glasses, which he shoved onto his face, and Henry came into view, sitting on the armchair next to the couch. He looked... he looked like he'd been crying.

"What... what're you doing at my house?" he asked confusedly. "And what've you, what're you doing on my computer?"

Henry rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "You don't remember a thing, do you."

"Remember what?"

Henry picked up the laptop and placed it on Wheatley's lap. Wheatley's face drained of blood as he realised what Henry had been doing.

"You've been... you've been reading..."

Henry pressed a pair of Aspirin tablets into his hand and put a glass of water on the table next to him. "No. She deleted those."

"She wouldn't!" But even as Wheatley searched frantically for them, his heart sank. They were gone. All of the emails were gone. "Henry, what's going on?"

"Read the ones she sent me."

"You've been talking to her." For a long moment, Wheatley was horribly, wildly jealous. Only he was supposed to email GLaDOS. GLaDOS was his!

"I had to," Henry snapped. "You were – just read the damn emails already."

Wheatley started at the oldest, scanning through them quickly. It seemed to be a discussion between Henry and GLaDOS about something Wheatley had said in the bar...

"What did I say?" Wheatley asked in confusion, not finding it in the messages. "What happened?"

"Long story short, you spilled the beans. You got plastered, declared to everyone that you loved GLaDOS, decked Greg for accusing us of screwing her, and then I took you home."

"And she rearranged the camera footage..." Wheatley said, following the relevant information on the screen with his finger. "She... called me?"

"That's right."

Wheatley looked down at the keyboard, clenching the tablets in his fist. "I don't remember."

"That's a shame," said Henry quietly. "Take those. Before you get sick."

Wheatley did as he was told without thinking about it, still following the emails as fast as he could. "Why's that a shame?"

"Because you're never going to speak to her again."

Wheatley looked over at Henry, startled. "Wait, wait... back up... I did what?"

Henry sighed and folded his arms. "You were drunk. You told us that you loved GLaDOS. Greg started accusing you of... fooling around with her. So you punched him out. I brought you here. He went to Aperture. To check the cameras."

"And?"

Henry motioned with his head. "Keep reading."

GLaDOS had retooled all the camera footage as best she could, erasing all of the nights he had stayed and slept there as well as replacing the parking lot footage with that which she'd lifted from other days, but there was no way she could satisfactorily patch everything. There was still plenty of evidence of a relationship. She had deleted all the emails, erasing them from every server they were hosted on, as well as her own hard drive where she'd stored hers.