Repurposed 10.40

Interval 10.4
November 13, 2007
0700, Fairport, AL
Enrichment Center / GLADOS Primary Function Containment Unit




The days had gone by in a blur for some, but with aching stillness for others. Martin's review of the Cores led to some interesting discoveries. There were Cores that had only the most marginal operating systems on them, and ones which contained very specific programming. Many of those in the latter category were contaminated by Cave's overwhelming reprogramming efforts. How he'd managed to affect the Cores that were stored separately, Martin determined, was that they had their own power supply. Cave had reached through tiny batteries, ones that even Martin's power couldn't have used to sense through, or at least to move through.

By the end of the second day, Martin had to be forced to take breaks. He was starting to babble to himself, argue with the Cores. Some wondered if he had been affected by the Cave-imposed virus. He'd be fine, Tina linked him up with Sandy – she fixed him.

While he was busy, the corridors and paths they would have to take to get into the Containment Unit had to be checked and secured. At first, Paxton wanted to have teams clear them out – but then before anyone got to it, changed his mind abruptly. In doing, the others also realized, they would be tipping their hand again.

"She'll have time to prepare," he said, "so let's not give her that. She knows we're coming, but not from where." Three teams, two of them mostly diversionary: he'd learned that trick from Mars, with whom he spoke sporadically at the Comm center, putting into effect some of the training tactics he'd all but forgotten about in the last year. There had hardly been reason to worry about an organized attack, on his part as attacker or as the defender. He couldn't afford to waste any of his Replicas with their normally deadly training, once Geoff reminded him that that was what they used to do for their keepers.

On Geoff's suggestion, they kept Bella and Natascha on different teams. GLADOS would know either of them by sight, at any rate, but it would also give them a chance to review the situation before sending either of them in to strike.

Kitty would be carrying the Cores, aided by Corey ("pardon the pun", he kept saying) – sticking them to her, her only complaint being that they sort of obscured her range of motion. She looked for all the world like a mess of jawbreakers that had melted together on top of a gingerbread girl. But she would only be sent in after Natascha, Cricket or Martin had their way with the power supply and main Cores. As for Bella, she would wait until they required pulling out, to really cut loose. They knew that she could very easily lift far more than her own weight; two by two was better than none at all coming out of there, if things went bad.

Alyx felt left out. She was half a year older than Sandy (so important, those half-years, to children who still measured their lives in single-digit numbers) and Sandy got to go with the teams, at least to the entrance where Martin's team went. But no one – particularly Alyx's father – wanted to risk her, and with his wishes being paramount, she had to obey. She busied herself with working on Dog, but still could be heard to mutter and grumble about it. She'd done enough for them already, helping fix the damaged replacement Cores. A Vortigaunt was placed with her specifically to make sure she didn't try running off to help, as Bella had done before her.

Then there was Rex. His penchant for pouting may have warranted him some mockery in the meantime, but he stood proudly, eye to eye with Paxton, and accepted that he would be out there burning holes in shit, in so many words. Since the ELLs were only peripherally interested – or capable, due to their terror – of helping directly, their skills and tools would only be of so much use. They tried to instruct one or two of the children on how to use a blowtorch or other such tools, and decided that it would be for the best if the assault teams used their own powers instead.

Between Rex's ability to create a focused, short and incredibly hot flame, they could burn through walls to create exits and entrances that GLADOS couldn't account for. To keep the kids from hurting themselves on the edges, as well as to assist in a kind of "numbing" process for the circuitry itself, Kayla was chosen for her cryokinetics. She'd be able to cool the edges, make plastics very brittle, and super-conduct objects if need be, to overload circuits.

This time, unlike before, Paxton's Replicas would come in handy. They would be able to simply mow down turrets in the halls, destroy GLADOS's camera installments, and pave the way for the smaller, quicker, and uniquely capable kids. Even Natascha said, "it's good to have an armed escort," and relished the fact that she'd be able to use her power unfettered.

The large group of children left behind, mostly the younger or lesser-powered ones, were being tended by the ELLs and the Vortigaunts. However, three Vorts were to go with the groups, one on each team. The added firepower as well as minor healing potential outweighed any personal issues the team members had with them.

The teams would split up and follow careful routes. Most of them were familiar enough with the halls they'd once been able to walk through, and only as a last resort would they retreat into the air ducts or the now-disabled Vents. There were still hundreds of turrets in some parts of those Vents, packed in tightly, and talkative as ever. Some of the students had tried getting them to shut up, but that only led to the discovery that the Vent glass was, in fact, breakable.

In the three days since the loss of the Vault, GLADOS had been far from silent, however. In the last year and a half, the program had tried everything she could think of to get the students to come out so she could kill them. From simple begging to pretending to be broken and in need of repairs. They almost fell for that one. Neill had. Their third loss, and the only one specifically due to GLADOS's direct interference.

But now she knew that they were on to something. So she renewed her efforts, reinforcing her old standbys and inventing a few new taunts.

"Just ignore her talking," Paxton warned the groups in their 'war room' before the big day, "we'll be keeping track of whatever she's saying," he indicated himself and Nigel, who was 'already dead' as far as GLADOS was concerned, and his skills wouldn't be of much use out there now. "So if she does start actually threatening you, we'll give you a warning."

Their telepaths once more were at the ready, daisy-chained through the halls where they were still safe (safer by far than they had been on those ridiculously shaky catwalks and hanging hallways), with long enough range to keep easily relaying information as needed. Simon had been added to their mix, but he had a companion in Chris to make sure that his body remained safe as his mind jaunted outside of it.

Damon, Donald, Alonzo, Leigh: defenders. Damon could render himself invisible even to GLADOS's eyes, Donald could simply soak up anything toxic they encountered to aid getting past it. (And there were pits of sludge still eating their way slowly through the pipes, where it all came from, no one could even say.) Alonzo had rested up from the prior assault, Leigh knew his own limits now.

Ruben, Graciella, Rex, Jared: attackers, directly able to manipulate the surroundings. Even GLADOS wouldn't know how to stop Jared or Rex from melting her components physically, Grace's telekinetics were barely under control, but if she had a good target, there was nothing stopping her from propelling a chair or desk at it. Ruben could take that same desk and accelerate it until it burned.

Geoff went with the main group; he, Rex and Alonzo forming a spearhead, behind which a line of kids could follow. Without saying a word, Paxton nearly got another concussion implying that Geoff wanted to be on the Core team to keep an eye on Isabella, but it was actually true that he was needed on the direct distraction team. He insisted it was because Geoff could watch for both other spear-points as Paxton dwelled just behind his eyes, though once more unspoken, it was because Geoff would be distracted too much by Bella on her team.

They could do this thing. They had to. It was their only real hope of clearing the way outside. They just had to focus. They had all grown in that year and a half. Some significantly gaining in ability, others blossoming a new use for an old power or two.

Martin went on his electric jaunts, cycling through areas he knew well enough to call circuits. He appeared gracefully at the top of GLADOS's chamber, on the dark exterior wall. He'd once thought that he could have simply pulled all the wiring off of it, disconnecting the Containment Unit from the rest of the facility. But it just did not work that way. So much redundancy, a sensible construction feature if the program using the place hadn't been so insane. Plus there were other connections in essentially inaccessible floor and ceiling grids. Wireless transmissions, the kind that Martin really couldn't do anything about, were how many of GLADOS's impulses and communication were done from within her chamber.

One team was coming through the single hallway that connected her chambers to the interior of the Enrichment Center. Getting there would be hard enough, Geoff was handling that. Another team would follow Martin, indirectly, to place the Cores from the top of the chamber. GLADOS's actual business end started far, far below, Geoff's team seemed like it was half a mile down from the top of the Containment Unit. The third team would arrive through an access tunnel, mirroring Geoff's team's direction only much deeper down.

If the Vault was well protected by space and its own defenses, GLADOS's Containment Unit was ten times worse, at least on paper. From the building's blueprints and their own observations in the meantime, they knew there were different angles they could have used. But there were no guarantees that any of the access areas and tunnels even existed, so they had to make sure most of those were even present – the only exception Paxton made to the rule that they'd wait it out. If the kids got caught in some underground tunnel, he claimed, it would haunt the place – and him – worse than Alma had.

But they did have to explore somehow… On the first day of waiting, as Martin was still working with the Cores, Jamie had come to Paxton with the most unique answer: Headcrabs.

Well, perhaps not headcrabs, but the houndeyes. Those dog-like creatures loved him. They were extremely dangerous, with a patch of somewhat faceted eyes dominating their ham-hock shape at one end, and a single paw-like foot on the other end. Like headcrabs, their 'mouth' was under their belly, watching them eat was an exercise in madness. They used a powerful sonic burst attack that was magnified when they used it in packs. Normally it was incredibly stupid to mess with them.

Jamie had walked by in the morning with a trail of headcrabs, though; all chirping and chittering like song birds, waiting to be fed little scraps from his breakfast. The sight of them was enough to send some of the kids into fits. But that morning, Paxton, (who had hardly moved from his spot on the couch where he'd been healed the day before, pretending to plot things out and be in deep thought, when he was actually just trying to force himself to sleep off the miserable feelings he'd brought upon himself earlier) suddenly perked up with interest.

"Jamie? Those things… are following you, right?" He asked, and of course Jamie nodded and grinned widely. "Can you tell them to go over there?"

A few minutes of watching Jamie herd the things as they jumped up onto the couch, stood in a circle doing the 'wave', and finally left the lunch room via an air duct leading to his room was all Paxton needed.

"And the houndeyes, they obey you too?"

"Much better than the headcrabs," Jamie said. He didn't really need to be told: "I can send them where you need them… they can tell me what they find."

So in that next vital day, a pack of houndeyes ran around the place – they hardly even sparked notice on GLADOS's part any more, she didn't bother wasting energy on killing them. She probably figured they would help her whittle down the population of the place. The houndeyes were remarkably well behaved, as they went from corridor to corridor. They could sneak into dark places, 'sound off' to get an echolocation imprint, and move freely once they knew where to go.

This allowed Paxton to reduce the potential disasters in that underground section considerably. He plotted out once more, this time more fully taking into account each of the team mates' strengths and weaknesses. It would be dark and surely filled with things only Donald would easily pass, but it would also be all but un-patrolled by GLADOS's presence. Only the Center's vertical portion would be particularly dangerous. But the groups couldn't all go that way, no one would risk a single strike like that. At least no one Paxton had ever studied – or been subliminally trained by.

Melissa would be with that group, as well – her regeneration paired with Donald's near-invulnerability could help them carry each other through any of those acid pits, and she'd be needed when GLADOS started getting uppity and start shooting rockets... Originally Paxton wasn't planning on assigning her anywhere; it was her glare and feisty assertion that she'd go get him some coffee while he was busy running the company and would he like a sandwich while she was at it, that made it perfectly clear that his 'girlfriend' wasn't going to be left out of this, if Geoff's was out there too. It did make sense, as well, when it came down to Paxton being able to immediately tap into his more comfortable eyes and minds.

It would take Melissa's team longer to reach the area below the Containment Unit, so they were sent away first. Cricket wanted to be on her brother's team, but Melissa suggested that her suit, ever-present and useful, could provide them all the light they'd need in the close, dark tunnels. Levi was their Vortigaunt, James played their telepathic link until they got to the end of the vertical portion of their route. Ruben and Grace rounding out the team could shake up the floor panels to breech the Containment chamber itself.

For their particular route, they encountered only minor resistance in the form of a nest of headcrabs – tossed into the air by Gracie's insistent telekinesis, and fried to a crisp by Levi's jolts of energy. Most of their trip was done in the narrow confines of access tunnels, some dripping with condensation, others still tilted a bit from the original Event. It would be almost impossible to get back up through this tunnel, but they weren't planning on having to. When their route turned horizontal, heading under the facility, Geoff's team was dispatched.

It didn't take them long to get the resistance that Melissa's trip had lacked. But then, they already anticipated that much. Rather than slink about in un-patrolled corridors or conduit nooks, this team was all about being watched. They left Simon and Chris near a quiet spot just above a long, broken, white-paneled room, after dispatching a number of wall-slung rocket launchers. Once, that room had housed turrets; two were still stuck in the Vent above them, providing a bit of chatter but little else. They'd clearly been among the last summoned up by GLADOS a few days before, stopped in their path by the ELLs and Vorts breaking the pump stations down. Thankfully their bullet resources had long been wasted and the shells sat in great heaps below the cracked Vent.

Ben, their Vortigaunt, kept one of the Replicas with them alive, that first surprise rocket launched at them had nearly taken its arm off. It didn't need two hands to shoot: it could be fixed later. They reached portions of the facility which joined directly to the inner cavern: some walls were simply broken open and the floor tumbled away into the blue depths. The modular rooms that were suspended in the middle of the cavernous central area, the ones which GLADOS had used to attack the kids on the wall before, would have been attached at some of these joint-rooms. Following the inner wall wasn't too hard at that point. The walls turned from drywall and into rusted, exposed metal, each new floor they descended into showing less and less use over the years. A few places, however, still showed them that Rattmann had been there: his insane scribblings decorated small chambers or broken-panel housings.

They were being watched carefully in these adjoining rooms. Every one of them had a camera in the corner, or somewhere near in the hallway. Rex and Kayla forced the group through a hole between two rooms, one a paneled unit, the next an observation chamber that overlooked the cavernous interior of the Facility, and that action caused GLADOS to go silent for a moment.

"C-ca-careful," GLADOS warned, "Ap-Ap-p-perture Science urges the use of s-s-sanctioned portals only!" Several shaking, noisy moments later, as Geoff, Natascha and Alonzo ducked into the next room, what appeared to be a metal sheet dropped like a guillotine between the rooms. Several light fixtures set into the upper portion of the first room stopped working, it was clear she'd put that there from outside. Geoff didn't waste any time, glaring at the panel and noting how thick it was: almost razor thin. He sneered at GLADOS's nearest camera, and then shouted to Rex on the other side.

"Can I punch my way through this?"

Rex laughed loudly and begged Geoff to proceed. He dented it a couple times, eventually deciding that between he and Alonzo they could simply blow it backwards. If Leigh had been on Geoff's side, this wouldn't have been an issue: but since he was on the 'safe' side, he couldn't risk shearing off the observation room which held the others. It wouldn't fall far, but the fall would surely kill them anyway. Alonzo forced his powers to a very narrow wedge which would guide the panel out, Geoff burst at the thing out with one final blow. A good foot more of wall around it came apart when he did.

"Ooo-ooooh," GLADOS crooned. "A show of ff-fff-fff-force!"

"Watch out," Leigh commented quietly as GLADOS cackled and the others stepped past the obstruction, "might be electric next time."

"I'll take care of that," Natascha cracked her knuckles, and Geoff merely returned Leigh's smirk.

They had reached the last chambers: they could make out from their new vantage point the great, blue expanse of the Coolant shaft, extending up in all directions; in the center past the long jutting glass-walled hallway, GLADOS's Containment Unit loomed. Almost directly below them, somewhere under the red-painted (or was it badly rusted) grid-work of floor panels and pipes, Melissa's team waited. Above…

Above there was nothing to see but a crisscrossing of half-broken, often slanted catwalks that bled up into the darkness. Somewhere there… Martin's team was on their way to the center of the big dark block resting there in the focal point of the facility.

This will work, it has to work, Geoff thought. He felt, suddenly and oddly, incredibly small, looking up at this monstrous chamber. GLADOS was within, and took up – his brain couldn't even conceive how much space it filled.

It will work, Paxton thought back, even though Geoff hadn't consciously broadcast. There was another statement, an undercurrent: our brains only weigh two pounds. Geoff gave a mysterious chuckle and smiled up at his brother, while the others looked on a bit confused.

Martin sat comfortably – even if he looked like he was in quite the weird position braced with his feet under his butt, in the upper corner of a pipe enclosure. His head pressed into the metal above, shoulders both touching walls. He was in his full Icarus suit; though his, like his sister's, had been modified not only to create one small enough for a child to wear and work right. His didn't have the two long slender shoulder vents that hers did, where hers had no direct weapons built into the hands and feet. With these suits, they would be able to climb almost anywhere – vertical, horizontal, sideways, upside down. Martin had learned from Cricket's mistakes: don't bother trying to climb under loose ceiling tiles, push them aside and climb over them instead. Even with the weight of the suits, their light bodies hardly dented a normal tile, but easily took them out of their trays if done wrong.

He missed having Cricket near him on a trip like this. She'd make a joke or spark someone's ear. He waited for his team to slowly make their way up through a dizzying series of pipe-works. Apparently there were ladders in some spots, but others where they had to squeeze through spaces that they were sure the Replicas down below would never be able to fit. Even Elam, their Vortigaunt, had a bit of trouble with his hooves catching in places. Isabella was the first to arrive, and below her floated Kitty. Their own little Diversity Vent delivery system, someone had joked.

Corey hurriedly paced after the pair of girls: if he got too far behind, the Cores would probably start to get loose from Kitty too soon. They went as quickly as they could across the narrow pipes, hearing the coolant within them as it cycled through GLADOS's huge brain. Martin had had to explain to some of the participants: the Cores controlled her personality, not her functions. As long as the Cores she had on her down in the main chamber below were stricken with Cave's virus, she would be like this. All the rest of her brain functions, held at varying locations in the huge cylindrical shaft under them, involved sensing and processing data such as her camera installations, pressure pads, and brain waves. She would be able to manipulate door locks, any room with the mobile wall arrangements, each room's temperature and lighting: the entire facility was at her fingertips –or more accurately, the facility was her fingertips. And eyes, and toes, lungs and guts, teeth and claws.

Paxton and Martin had stressed, perhaps unduly often, to Natascha that she not attempt to disable GLADOS's brain. The Cores? They were open game. Without the Cores, GLADOS was just a facility. At least… In theory.

But also in theory, if that brain started to fritz out, the entire facility would go out with a bang. A very, very big bang. Their success on this mission would make the difference between getting out of here alive, and getting out in the form of vapor.

Martin wasn't actually sure exactly when it was they had decided, as a group, that they would eventually need to leave. It was probably because of Mossman's constant bitching about their not being a teleporter connection to Black Mesa yet. Maybe she'd be better off…

Martin clamped down on that horrible thought: he liked her as much as the next kid. She was a nice person but man she was weird sometimes. She'd get all clingy to the Black Mesa people, anyone could see that she wanted to bolt the Enrichment Center and hang out with the other grown-ups.

Sometimes she was so immature, Martin thought. She was probably just off somewhere hitting on a Replica and wondering why he wasn't feeling her up.

Martin waved over the others, as they arrived. They were very near the ceiling – a thick beam directly above them, that the coolant pipes followed and near which another dozen or so were slung. According to the original blueprints and plans, GLADOS's vital functions and the facility's temperature had to be maintained together. If she overheated, the whole place would follow. The coolant fans moving the air around were mostly for the Humans running the place, all the important temperature control was done with liquids and radiating heat sinks. Those stretched out like thick strands of hair, tentacles, circuits on a board, away from the great deep pit, then into and out of GLADOS's Containment Unit.

The Unit was not quite directly over the Coolant Shaft's deepest portion, it had a bit of floor jutting out in order to place large support pillars below it. The Shaft was circular, unlit but still somehow glowing with that ever-present blue shade. The coolant-filled pipes all dropped down into the shaft, wave upon wave of liquid inside them sloshing and cooling down in the process: her lungs, her blood. Somewhere in the shaft was a pump, her heart.

"Do not touch anything but the outer walls," Martin warned the group as they prepared to enter the Containment Unit. "When we get in there, there should be a series of ladders and catwalks. Some of them might be broken but we're okay with those, right?"

Jared grinned and nodded. "If there aren't, there will be," he said.

Martin glanced at each one in turn, the only unreadable face was that of Elam, whose big red eyes shifted around looking with curiosity. "We need to get down far enough to see the floor."

"We should have just used the route Geoff took once they made it in," Mike said, sounding a bit bitter.

"I also need to check for damage along the way," Martin assured him, "and take out any other defenses that she might have. There's no guarantee that Geoff will be able to talk her out of it, Mike. Plus, you're stationed up here, for us, right?"

Mike Becket nodded, sure that Martin was aware that he'd rather be down with Geoff or Ruben, but he was one of their more reliable empaths. If something started to go wrong… he'd be here watching. What might be fixed by him relaying this information, he wasn't certain. Didn't matter. He'd gotten to beat the crap out of a headcrab or two on the way. Those things seemed to be breeding somehow…

Martin nodded to Mike, who relayed they were ready to start their drop. The red-head triggered an electronic latch as gently as he could, though he was sure under different circumstances GLADOS would have noticed it. Right now, she clearly had her circuits full with the rest of the teams. Bella floated in first, her hair tied in one large, bound up braid and tucked into a nest at the back of her neck. Once she was inside, she carefully helped Kitty in. Kitty was just about to start laughing: they had to remove the Cores in order for her to even get through the access hatch. Reassembled with Corey's help on the other side, the rest slipped through without incident and they began to edge around the inside of the massive structure.

Melissa, from far below, was doing the same: they'd found the right panels to break loose, and emerged on the floor below the massive Containment Unit. Nearby was a pillar that another trio of smaller coolant tubes wove through, and the group would be using that section to access the floor of the Unit above. Out in this strange landscape, the pervasive blue mist coming from the Coolant shaft nearby, Melissa dared to stand for a moment. She too felt entirely too small, but enjoyed the bizarre view anyway.

This was her hive, she thought, her honeycomb. Now if only she could get rid of the bears.

Above her, she could sense Geoff's team, in the connection hall. As her group approached the pipe pillar, she turned and saw him and his team, at the very end nearest the observation chamber. It didn't appear that GLADOS had any eyes upon them, so she gave a little wave and vanished into the twisting mess of pipes.

There is so much machinery under here, Melissa relayed, through James over by the far wall. All of the wiring and such seemed to spiral toward a point nearby, though clotted and clumped bits created knots in mid-air. Something made Melissa uneasy about that. The only thing that came to mind was hair, caught in a spinning rotor. Can this room … rotate?

It better not, James thought back. He briefly consulted with Paxton up above in his safe observation room. Pax says no, there aren't any gears or ways for it to twist around. And he says head for the far side away from where you climbed up. Geoff's team is going to show up on the near side of the place.

Surround her, Melissa assumed correctly, give her too many targets, confuse her, while Natascha does her zappy dance.

Under the floor there were so many wires and tubes to get around, Melissa gave another brief warning: this is going to take some doing. It's more crowded down here than the whole tunnel was, it's like a spider web filled with crap. It was bewildering how scary it suddenly looked, too: the place wasn't really moving, but it seemed to writhe with life, likely because their light source was flickering itself. Cricket warned that the wiring was live, she could only drain so much of it. Natascha would be able to use most of this energy; her, not so much. The swirl of wires that she'd seen branched out as they passed that particular beam, another and another beyond it could be seen. Each support beam seemed to be its own cosmos, galaxies of strands, spinning without motion but glimmering with the occasional stray spark.

Paxton once more entered Melissa's mind directly to get a better idea of what they had been presented. It's worse than Alyx's work room! He blurted out, and the rest on the mental channel got a chuckle out of it. Martin's group are doing all right, when they get to the half way point I'll check on you again. Don't do anything crazy. Melissa admitted that she didn't even notice when he was watching through her, any more. Just watching. Anything else was painfully – sometimes literally – obvious. She hoped he didn't do something to stop her from jumping in front of rockets, this time. There would be rockets: a big, heavily insulated and armored box nearby boldly warned of its contents. Several more of them littered the area, Cricket's flickering light brought out the warning signs bright yellow and red lettering.

Geoff's team were getting a little antsy now. However, there was nothing immediately threatening them. They'd left turrets and rocket launchers, laser grids and smashing walls behind them. He, like Mike or Natascha, would rather be doing something, more than just standing around.

I think GLADOS lost some defenses when the Vault went down, Simon said, startling them. His astral, ghostly form stood, gently wafting at the edges, invisible to GLADOS – and to normal eyes. None of their eyes were normal, but to Geoff he was transparent at best. Rex saw him with some solidity. Ben, if anyone had asked, would claim that Simon's true form had been released from the bonds of flesh, and brightly glimmered in the Vortessence.

"You're probably right," Geoff said, quietly. "The things she hit us with were all from outside the rooms. I think she's gone a bit blind too." Well she had, after Ben had stuck his electric-powered fingers in her eye.

Should I go ahead and check what you're walking into? Simon asked, and Geoff nodded. The gangly, tan skinned boy – or at least his mental projection – slipped past the group, through the Emancipation Grids – none of which had, thankfully, emancipated anything they needed. At least one Replica's grenade pouches had vanished with a weird floating-away of blackened bits as they vaporized, back a ways in the facility. There hadn't been any grenades in them, thankfully.

No one knew what the Grids did to explosives brought with someone, at least now that they were 'unauthorized'. Normally they had been used to prevent anyone from stealing items from inside labs or production rooms. GLADOS had never been able, or willing (wishful thinking on their part) to tune the Emancipation Grids to actually kill the children. Though the Vorts were still apt to zap them first and render them temporarily broken before walking through them, just in case.

Simon returned moments later, and relayed that there were four rocket emplacements, already up and waiting for any arrivals. No free-standing turrets, there were no Diversity Vents into the Unit. Surprisingly no movable panels, crushers, smashers or other moving parts along the bottom walls. There were remains of people, a few folks who were the unlucky ones to be first in line when she started spreading the neurotoxin, he guessed. They hadn't been swept away by any of the androids or panels like the rest of her domain. A small antechamber had places for desks and supplies, where he'd found the bodies. Where they could probably hole up if they needed to avoid the rockets.

It's … really… Simon started to say, and Geoff finished for him.

"Scary? Big? Big and scary?"

Yeah, that. Simon shrugged. This is some crazy shit.

Natascha was going to mock Geoff, but then realized she was, herself, scared out of her wits at the thought of all this. She was crazy. She wasn't stupid.

"Keep watch. We're waiting for—" Geoff cut himself off, a momentary ping from his brother put a grim smile on his face. "Let's go."

Martin and the others above had snuck down a long set of curved catwalks, then down alongside another huge coolant tube. Each of the tubes connected to a different vertical slice of the computer within. Martin knew from the blueprints that the walls themselves were over one hundred yards across, and the processing units that had been stacked like layers on a cake had to be close to eighty. This far up, it was quite warm. He hoped it got cooler down farther, it was no wonder so much energy had to be devoted to temperature control. Somewhere just shy of the ceiling, the room had also become octagonal, Martin wondered what, if anything, was in those corners cut off, since the exterior of the place was still square.

He hadn't seen the expected defenses, yet, either, which bothered him when he pinged back to Mike above. They reached a junction point, having to either climb over another ungainly coolant pipe, or – just wait for Bella to lift them over it. On the other side, however, Martin made a discovery.

"This isn't good," he whispered, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. He pointed at two items of note: one, the broken panels on the wall, and the other, a still-sparking box which had apparently been magnetized and stuck to the nearest layer of processor shell. A deadly gun emplacement, they noticed the ripped-free line of ammunition which snaked back into the wall.

That's what's in the corners, Martin thought, grimly. Ammunition. He clearly addressed Paxton, as he thought: no mistakes here. Make Natascha aware that the entire area above her is filled with explosives.

Mike relayed it, but didn't even need to. Paxton's angry cursing on the other mental end was directed at the hundreds of already-dead scientists who made this place. Paxton collected himself, gave that warning to everyone, and went back to monitoring whatever insane babble GLADOS was offering Geoff's team.

Wait, what? Melissa caught it, they're feeding ammunition… Through the walls under the place, to these turrets as well, probably. She looked around. They'd reached the far end of the crawl space, seeing thick lines of flat, heavily braced arteries which must have been for those installations. Yes, they led into the corners. I feel way, way less safe just now, Melissa admitted.

They'd crawled through waist-high acid, to get here. Well, she and Donald had. They endured so that the others could scamper over their uplifted hands… and had to wait until Melissa's legs healed up enough to continue. Even that looked way more appealing to her, than sitting there next to what equated to a mountain of missiles.