Want You Gone

[Chapter Seventeen: Lemonade]

I made my way slowly, quietly into the next pump station: 'Pump Station Gamma.' I didn't expect anyone to pipe up and say anything, but it seemed that GLaDOS resorted to thinking out loud, since she didn't seem to be getting the answers in her mind. 

"Caroline..." She muttered. "Caroline, Caroline.... Why do I know this woman? Maybe I killed her? Or-" I tilted my head. "Did you figure something out, there...?" 

"Oh my god." She said simply. "What?" I asked. After she didn't respond, I shook the gun lightly to get her attention. "GLaDOS, what? What is it? Did you find out where Caroline is?" 

"Look, you're... doing a great job. Can you handle things for yourself for a while? I need to think." I blinked rapidly. "I have been handling things on my own, GLaDOS, tell me what's going on!" I demanded, but she had already seemed to power off. Her light did not turn completely off, however, it only dimmed. 

I continued down a short hall in silence. I was greeted with three pump switches, one blue for the repulsion gel, one orange for the propulsion gel, and one of them, the new switch, was white. I switched all of them on and jumped as a loud noise flooded the room. White gel began to spill down onto the floor through a broken pipe, and the hallway that I had traveled was now blocked off by what looked like pumps of a sort. If I walked underneath them, I would have been crushed, so I quantum-tunneled my way to the other side.

Looking out into the room when I stepped out, I noticed that there had been a spill in the repulsion gel as well. If I could get high enough and jump down onto it, I could trampoline my way up to the platform above. How I would get up that high was beyond me. I sat down for a moment and set my gun down next to me. For the next few minutes, it was PotatOS and I, sitting side by side, both of us thinking. She was most likely thinking of something very different, but I had a sneaking suspicion that she was thinking about Caroline. Knowing this, my mindset shifted slowly from 'how should I get to that platform?' to 'She probably knows where Caroline is, and she isn't telling me... She probably just wants me to get her out of here as quick as I can and put her back in charge.'

"Why are you just sitting around? Get a move on." She spoke up, knocking me out of my thoughts, as she loved to do. "I'm not sure what to do from here..." Was my response to her. "Oh, I see, so now your stubborn will is being tested. Oh well, let us explode... that's... fine..." Her voice slowed as she spoke, before she went silent again. I wasn't sure what sort of revelation she was having, but I wished some answers would come to me soon.

I picked up my gun and started fiddling with the triggers, attempting to shoot my portals every which way. It was useless, but it passed a little bit of time as I thought. Unexpectedly, I seemed to shoot a portal surface in my blind fire, because a blue portal opened up, right on the ceiling above a broken platform; one from which I could jump down onto the pool of repulsion gel. Coincidentally, where the portal opened up just so happened to be where the white gel had splattered onto the ceiling from the pipe. 

"Ohhh! That makes so much sense!" I thought out loud, a bit embarrassed that I hadn't figured out that you could place portals on the gel sooner. They must have used this white gel to make the white, portal-able tiles that were used in the test chambers above. It was reasonably less of a mess than spraying down the walls with gel. I jumped down through my orange tunnel onto the platform, then jumped down onto the blue puddle, flying back up and landing gracefully onto my target. 

Walking into the next room, I took note of the propulsion gel that sprayed down the walk-way. I took a shot at it and ran, speeding my way under the pumps. The metal plate just barely missed me as it came crashing down onto the floor behind me. I managed to slip through, unscathed, and glanced around. In the room that I sped into, there was a door. I let out a sigh and pushed it open. It led back into the large, dusty room that I was in before walking into the pump station.