Want You Gone

[Chapter Fourteen: No Hand Holding]

Stepping cautiously into the room, which looked to be a huge lobby of sorts, my eyes grazed over the logo. The facility began to shake again, knocking bits off of the huge sign. I winced, staring up. I wondered what was causing all of the tremors, but I was also trying to pinpoint the location of the booming voice that I had been greeted with. It seemed to be coming from everywhere in the room.

In response to the man's question, there was another voice. A woman. "I am!" She said, enthusiastically.

"Now, you already met one another on the limo ride over, so let me introduce myself." The man laughed, eagerly. "I'm Cave Johnson. I own the place. That eager voice you heard is the lovely Caroline, my assistant." My eyes widened slightly as I remembered Echo's words. The answer is beneath us... Her name is Caroline...

"Rest assured, she has transferred your honorarium to the charitable organization of your choice. Isn't that right, Caroline?" The man, Cave Johnson, continued on as I stared up in deep thought. "Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson!" Caroline chirped. I tilted my head slightly as I walked up, eying the room down. I knew I needed to find my way out of here, but something about Caroline was so overly distracting to me.

Where were they now, Mr. Johnson and Caroline? Was it at all possible for me to find them? I wasn't worried so much about the snobby-sounding CEO of this cursed company, but I had an acute awareness that his assistant was significant. At least, if the odd Oracle turret I met along the way wasn't just spouting nonsense, like the robots here all seemed to love to do.

"She's the backbone of this facility. Pretty as a postcard, too. Sorry, fellas. She's married. To science." Cave Johnson said in his significant voice. I snickered slightly. This guy was kind of amusing, I wasn't going to lie. Even better, he was a human. A living, breathing human. Or, at least, he was. Something about the whole situation led me to believe that Cave Johnson and his lovely assistant were a thing of the past.

It took me a long moment, but I made it up onto the platform that housed the door out of the lobby room by use of momentum, and a lot of portal-placing, but I might as well use the gun while I had it, right? I entered the room that the exit door led into. My eyes grazed over the small red room, shimmering. It was such a cute little break area, with a velvet curtain and a red carpet, and a few spherical lights hanging down from the ceiling. The walls were a faded brown wood, though it was much better than the normal, bleak gray I constantly found myself staring at. If it weren't so dilapidated, I would say that the room looked mighty fancy.

"There's a thousand tests performed every day here in our enrichment spheres. I can't personally oversee every one of them, so these pre-recorded messages'll cover any questions you might have, and respond to any incidents that may occur in the course of your science adventure." I walked past the curtain into an even fancier little room, nearly overjoyed by what I had found. I gasped audibly, limping my way over to a set of cushioned chairs in the corner of the room.

Sitting down, I sank into the damp, musty cushion. Once I got past the fact that the sofas were nearly rotting away, I realized that they were actually quite nice. I hadn't felt a cushion in who knows how long. I shrunk back with a long sigh, reaching into the pocket of my jumpsuit. I found a couple potatoes, and pulled one out. I had so many more of them before, but unsurprisingly, I guess I had lost them. It would be so wrong of me to eat one of these in front of GLaDOS right now, I thought as I took a bite. It wasn't the most desirable snack, raw potatoes, but it was something more than nothing, and that was good for me.

The joy of my chair discovery was short lived. As I ate the vegetable in silence, all I could think about was her. Where was she now? Would I ever get to see her again? Would I at least get to apologize? There was so much I wanted to say to her, so much I wanted to ask. What if she knew about Caroline? Maybe she would know why she's so important. Why wouldn't she? I should have asked her sooner, I should have thought about it more.