trans_9 | A Most Sinister SCIENCE [Closed]

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A Most Sinister SCIENCE [Closed]

The downside of gathering long term supplies for the crew, was that Lex did have to make sure they were all brought on board and stowed away properly. It cut into his vacation time, but it was a small price to pay to get some business done, and make a few connections that he'll be able to call on later. Besides, with 99% of the crew off the ship, for once, it allowed him freedom to do a few things, like have a word with a certain AI that wasn't Stacy.

Sitting at one of the terminals in Neuropathy, Lex navigated his way through part of the AI multiplex, until he came across the one he wanted to speak to.

"Hello, GLaDOS. I need to have a word with you."

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"Excellent." This would be fun.

"The sensoriums would be a good location, it'll be easy to create a variety of stressful conditions there." He could also safely observe from Neuropathy and record everything.

||Subject is not present in ^requested location|| GLaDOS reports.

She's resourceful, though.

GLaDOS is a broken, but sly construct. It takes her only moments to dig through Stacy's accessible files for one in particular.

The voice of the Warden personality rings out in its typical, pre-recorded fashion.

||Steve Burnside. Please report to the Sensoriums.||

Steve was only on ship at the moment because he was scheduled to receive his treatment in the medical bay once a week. Exactly on schedule. No matter what. Otherwise there'd be no way you could get him back on this stupid thing when there was a real planet out there to exist on.

Still, he'd been late to report to medical and now the stern voice yelling his name across the ship was doing nothing to reassure him it wasn't a big deal. One hand fiddling with the thin, membrane-like bandage over his arm, he opened the sensorium door and stepped into the darkened chamber.

"Yeah?" he called to... whoever had summoned him. "It's, uh... it's Steve. Who is it?"

The room has been set to replicate one of the sterile, white walled test chambers GLaDOS is so very fond of.

She fails to answer the question, but her voice does the job for her. It's pretty distinctive.

||Hello crewman ^{Steve Burnsi-ide.} Welcome to your non-routine stress capacity _test. Please proceed to the ^opposite end of the chamber to begin your non-routine stress capacity _test.||

It's a simple room, with a doorway to one end. There is an elevator. There's no indication of where it might lead.

He definitely recognizes that voice. It was the same voice that egged him on a few months back with a piece of mistletoe and an invisible wall. Steve immediately bristles with annoyance-- and something rings as not right in what she just said.

"What? What the hell is this?" he asks, turning around and reaching for the door-- which is now gone. "I can't do a stress test!"

Hell no, he has no intention of going to that elevator.

"In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm definitely not allowed to do a stress test," he announces, backing against the wall.

GLaDOS replies, pleasant as pie. ~~Or perhaps cake.~~

||Permission is already granted. Please proceed to the elevator to ^begin the test.||

Come on Steve, don't make the nice AI beg!

"Who granted permission?" Steve demands, still sticking to the wall like he was glued there. "Dr. McNinja? I can't do this kind of stuff, okay? Open the door!"

||Please proceed to the elevator!|| GLaDOS instructs again. She's pretty insistent, considering that the floor has just turned into a conveyor belt heading toward it. GLaDOS has been enjoying the freedom offered by non-physical test chambers. They let her change things up.

||If you complete your test there _will be a party with all of your friends|| she coaxes as the floor increases in speed. ||There _will be a party with cake.||

Steve buys this about as much as he buys the average assurance from someone who isn't one of his close friends-- not at all. And he manages to keep pace with the conveyor belt for a few moments until it starts to speed up, when he gets nervous and trips and starts skidding towards the elevator. The doors close before he can scramble out of them.

"Who the hell granted permission for this?" he yells again. Sure doesn't take much to stress him out, does it?

||Permission is granted! This is a non-routine stress capacity _test.|| Thank you, GLaDOS. That clears up a lot.

The elevator slows and comes to a gentle halt, hissing softly as it opens.

It's another, relatively long hallway. With no sign of anything dangerous at all in it.

||Please proce-ed to the elevator at the ^other side of the chamber to continue your test.||

Should be a walk in the park!

"How long is this?" he asks. "I can't do this right now, I have to get back down."

He hesitates for a long moment before he stands up and very carefully takes a few steps into the next room.

CLANG CRANK CLANG CLANG CRANK CLANG

Uhoh. That? That machinery-moving-around-to-do-something sound? Probably not the best sound to be hearing right now. Something unfriendly is coiling to spring.

||You have to complete your test!||

Okay. Okay. Steve freezes in place. Then he sucks in a deep breath and lets it out very slowly.

"I'm gonna make it," he says under his breath.

What was the worst that could happen?

hwwwnnn-FZZK!

A bolt of energy shoots out of the wall to Steve's right and a little behind him, aiming just where he was standing when he first exited the elevator.

hwwwnnn-FZZK!

A second fires. Level with where his head was when he took the first step.

A red dot has appeared on his right side, at about rib level.

hwwwnnn-

"Holy-"

It occurs to Steve that he had never been hurt in the sensorium before, so he wasn't sure if it could actually do any damage. He's not willing to test that theory right now.

He throws himself forward as fast as he can and does a graceless half-roll on the ground, barely missing the bolt as it zaps across the room.

"-SHIT!"

Another dot appears on his left side and he scrambles to his feet, inches ahead of a whole line of lasers as he runs to the elevator, tripping just inside the door and hitting the opposite wall.

"What the hell kind of test is this?"

The elevator closes, the FZZK!'s of a mess of lasers still audible through the nice, secure doors.

||Well do-one!||

Steve gets a few seconds of peace as the elevator moves. It's hard to say whether it's rising or descending, though.

||Your _{stress capacity test} will continue in thre-ee, two-o, o-one-||

The doors open up again. Another room, this time sloped with tiling stairs. The elevator isn't visible, due to the slope. It's probably past the top though, somewhere.

Like the first room, there is no immediate sign of danger.

Okay. A computer's got him stuck in the sensoriums and is making him run guinea pig tests that could possibly kill him. Virtually. Maybe. For the moment, Steve manages to push away the voice screaming at him about how bad this is, replacing it with a combination of righteous anger and adolescent machismo.

Gritting his teeth, he rushes out of the elevator door and tackles the stairs, running up as fast as he can.

It's a good thing, too, because the stairs don't want to cooperate. He's about a third of the way up when they start to collapse under him, tilting to be more sliding board than staircase, though if they manage to flatten fully the gaps between the stairs are deep and wide enough to grab onto and climb.

That's not the worst of it. There's also the sound of rushing water behind him.

Not just any water, though. Test chamber water is gushing into the room and the water level's already rising after him, nasty water with some unidentifiable scum drifting on the surface.

He trips on the stairs and narrowly avoids smacking his face against the ones above him. Steve clings hard to the first gap he can grab, just in time to feel his shoe take a dip in the water.

"God dammit!" He scrambles up the makeshift ladder as best he can, reminded quite sharply of high school gym class. At least he was decent at it.

The cuffs of his jeans get soaked in the water as he gets over the top, where the other side is turning from a smooth slide down into stairs with the elevator at the bottom.

"Like I need to be exposed to any more nasty chemicals," he mutters as he speeds down the stairs. His wet shoes slip on the bottom step and he crashes into the elevator with a heavy THUD.

Okay. This was getting old already.

The elevator doors close behind Steve, and GLaDOS's voice rings out again.

||We hope you enjoyed the hill climb exercise.||

||Your test will resume in thre-ee, two-o, o-one-||

Fsshh go the doors. New room. The hall Steve can see is very short with a sudden, ninety-degree left turn into the unknown.

Steve's heart is pounding at this point, a fine sheen of sweat starting to bead on his skin. He takes a second to acknowledge it-- but he's fine. No sign of Veronica. Totally fine. He's gonna make it and that's all there is to it.

"Okay, you digital bitch," Steve snaps, shoving himself off the wall and out into the hallway. "You're gonna let me out of here right now, before I find you and stuff a magnet right in your stupid goddamn motherboard--"

He rounds the corner.

FWISHTHUD!

A blade sweeps up in an arc from the floor, crossing Steve's path.

There's another beyond it, and another, some coming out of the walls and even the ceiling in apparently random places. There is rhyme and reason to their timing, they whizz outward then tuck back for a second or two before doing it again, but they're not synchronized. The hall jinks off to the right again, to another blade passage before the elevator.

There's also a humming noise.

A red laser line starts back by the elevator but unlike the lasers from the first room, this one is constant. And crawling inexorably forward.

He jumped back just in time to miss that first blade. Okay! Well, apparently, she doesn't like to be threatened.

"Oh Jesus Christ..."

Steve's former irritation was turning quickly to panic as he tried to track the movements of the blades, with the laser crawling closer behind him. "This isn't fair!" he yells, and with a short breath and the grit of his teeth he makes his way into the dangerous blades.

And he does quite well-- watching the movements of the blades in their slots and listening for the sharp slicing sounds they made when they emerged. For a minute, anyway. Just as he reaches the end of the first set of blades, he feels a stabbing pain in the back of his shoulder and screams in shock.

He stumbles into the safe spot, falling on his knees and reaching back to clutch the wound-- oh god, it was bleeding, gushing... oh god, it was real-- or at least it felt real, but for all he knew it was just an illusion of the sensoriums. His skin starts to burn as the blood ignites, dripping down the back of his arm and down his fingers, steadily crackling with freakish flames, dripping to the sterile floor and sizzling away.

No, no, no. Gonna make it.

And the laser is getting closer, and there's another corridor full of blades that can slice him up like fettuccine.

"Stop it! Stop it!" he yells towards the ceiling. "This isn't possible!"

||Everything is ^possible if you just _put your mind to it. And your heart. And your lungs. And your ^spleen. Stop playing around _and complete your test.||

Steve gets a brief reprieve, very brief. The laser pauses in its progress as GLaDOS talks, but that doesn't last.

"You goddamn bitch..."

He picks himself up off the ground and tries to ignore the dull sensation of his blood burning away, waits for a moment to time the blades in the hall--

Then hurtles down it as fast as he can. He's dodging surprisingly fast for having a gushing wound on his shoulder, and he manages to get clear of the last blade just as it slices, barely missing taking his foot off.

He gasps for air in the elevator, forcing deep breaths and pretending he doesn't feel his skin starting to crawl around the wound. "I'm done!" he yells. "I've gotta go to medical. Let me out of here already!"

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