Chapter Text
Traveling with Janus is surprisingly low-key, at least to start. He mostly seems to sleep, or whatever it is he does when his light is off, while you try to focus on solving the puzzle Remus has set in front of you.
Said puzzle is actually pretty tame for the most part, which is pleasantly surprising considering who exactly is making the current test chambers, but also fills you with consternation about what Remus might be cooking up in the meantime. Because there’s no way he’s just sticking to—what’s that blue spirally thing you just used to float yourself upwards called? An Excursion Funnel? Yeah, you think that’s what Remus called it. There’s no way he’s stopping at something as tame as Excursion Funnels, or at least ones that don’t end in spike traps or something.
Then you get to the next chamber, and yup, that’s about what you expected.
“What’s the matter?” Janus says, noticing your hesitation. “The way forward is perfectly simple.”
You honestly can’t tell if Janus really does think the puzzle is easy or if he’s doing that sarcastic double-speak he seems to enjoy. You can see the clearly intended solution of the puzzle easily enough—you need to jump into that horizontal Excursion Funnel, then redirect it using portals at the right times in order to switch the direction it carries you and get yourself over to the cube dispenser. What makes it not-so-simple, however, is the fact that these careful maneuvers would have to take place while hanging in midair over a freaking bottomless pit .
“I’m not crazy about the potential for falling to my death,” you say. “Unless I’d be able to land on my Long Fall Boots, I guess?”
“He probably filled the pit with spikes,” Janus says conversationally.
“Great,” you mutter, nervously fiddling with the portal gun.
A large, black rectangle on the wall resolves into an image of Remus, and belatedly you realize it must be some sort of display screen.
“Hey dorks!” he says, peering down at you. “What’s the hold up?”
“Just… figuring it out?” you say, unsure how to respond to your current captor actually having a conversation with you.
“Well get going! I need my orgasm, it’s time to Get. It. On!
He does a little shimmy during the last bit, his long, flexible body wiggling back and forth, before the screen once again goes black.
“His-” you choke, and Janus sighs.
“That body— my body—has a built-in euphoric response to testing. It can be… difficult to acclimate to, particularly if you’re not used to it. I was perfectly fine, of course, but Remus has all the self-control of a lemming on LSD. We may be in a bit of trouble here.”
You furrow your brow. “Why would Remus feeling good be dangerous to me? Don’t we want him to have a reason to keep us around?”
“You’re right, a human such as yourself is absolutely capable of fulfilling any and all demands necessary to accommodate an artificial intelligence who is literally addicted to the process of testing. You definitely don’t need to eat, or sleep, or take the occasional rest.”
“And once he gets bored with me…”
“He gets rid of you,” Janus confirms, “and likely me along with you. So let’s not do that, shall we?”
“We’ll call ‘not boring the out of control AI who wants to kill us’ Plan A,” you agree.
And that means actually doing the tests, instead of just standing at the edge feeling scared. Staring down at the Excursion Funnel spiraling horizontally below you, you take a deep breath, then jump.
A few heart-stopping moments later, you’ve successfully made your way over to the cube dispenser. Using portals you shift the Excursion Funnel so that it’s pointed upwards under the dispenser, then press the button. The dispenser drops a cube down into the abyss, and you wait patiently as the cube gently floats up to your level, buoyed by the Funnel’s gently spiralling lines of force.
Then the cube actually reaches your eye level. You bite back a curse at the sight, stumbling backwards and falling on your butt.
Cackling sounds over the speakers as Remus once again appears on the tall screen. “Like my newest inventions, Tommy-boy? I made ’em just for you!”
“ Why?” you groan, staring as the cube continues to rise, the two turrets that have somehow been fused into one of the cube’s sides chittering fearfully.
Remus laughs even harder. “It’s an improvement! I call it the Frankenturret: a true work of art.”
You shift the funnel away just long enough to let the—the Frankenturret , ugh, fall back down a ways before switching it back in order to lift the cube back up to your level. You gingerly reach out with the Portal Gun and grab the cube, before turning and practically running over to set it on the correct button.
You’re just congratulating yourself on another test solved when the turrets fused into the cube pop out legs and proceed to drag the cube forward and off the button, and okay what the fuck.
You shudder, then reach out and grab the Frankenturret again, watching it pull its legs back in as you do. You place it back on the button, this time upside down. You wait a moment, poised to grab it again, but the turret-cube seems to be staying in place.
You groan, practically falling back to sit on the floor. “That was a nightmare.”
“Oh, we’re just getting started,” Remus says gleefully, popping back onto the screen. “Chop, chop, Tommy-pastrami, on to the next one!”
Your body feels like one massive bruise, and for a moment you’re tempted to sit a while longer or even lie down, Remus or no Remus.
Then you remember Janus’ warning: And once he gets bored… he gets rid of you.
Bracing against the wall, you force yourself to stand on shaking legs, and make your way into the elevator.
When you enter the next test chamber, you find yourself stopping and staring. Instead of the enclosed test chambers you’re used to, this chamber appears to be missing the better part of one wall, giving you a view out into the massive cavern this chamber is apparently hanging in. As you watch, another large test chamber glides slowly towards you on a massive version of the Cores’ movement rails, grinding loudly against the cavern wall as it does so. You realize after a moment that the other room is on a collision course with yours, and you are just reaching for the wall to try and steady yourself when the other room connects with yours with a crash that sends you stumbling to keep your balance. The sides of the walls crunch and bend with the force, making a horrible grating noise of metal on metal.
Finally, the noise and vibrations subside, leaving you in a room that’s twice as big as it previously was, and also considerably more beaten up.
“Remus!” Janus yells, his yellow light flickering back to life. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Making a test chamber,” Remus says innocently. “I think it looks better now, don’t you?”
“The modular test chambers aren’t designed to be handled like that! You just broke equipment we have no way to replace!”
“Oh come on, Jan,” Remus says. “Who cares about some crummy old equipment when there’s testing to do? These chambers don’t just make themselves, you know!”
“This isn’t good,” Janus murmurs to you as you move forward to investigate the deep pit that the two halves of the chamber have formed. “He’s becoming more and more distracted from the well-being of this facility. There are functions that need to be maintained to keep the facility from undergoing complete destruction, and the longer he keeps this up the more likely he is to forget them entirely.”
It must be serious, if Janus isn’t even being sarcastic about the situation anymore. Mindful to not take too much time and risk boring Remus, you quickly redirect the chamber’s Excursion Funnel using a couple of portals, then use it to carry yourself across the newly created floor gap.
“How much time do we have?” you mutter as you press the dispenser button and get (oh joy) another Frankenturret.
“It depends on how far gone he is,” Janus says. “Days, if we’re lucky.”
You let out a breath. “Then it’s even more important to find a way to get out of here.”
Janus gasps melodramatically. “Of course, escaping! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Yeah, yeah,” you say, rolling your eyes. “Just see what you can do, okay?”
The conversation comes to a lull as you finish up the level, using the Excursion Funnels to direct the cube back across the chasm, and in one heart-stopping moment, using a special panel to launch yourself into a Funnel’s path halfway across. You end the puzzle by floating the cube up and then sideways, pushing it into a button on the wall.
“Ah,” Remus moans as the cube presses the button inwards. “That’s… huh. That was kind of disappointing, actually.”
“Oh dear, it’s happening sooner than I expected,” Janus says as your blood turns to ice. After a moment he adds, “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
You don’t call him on the lie.
“I’ve got some old friends for you to see!” Remus says gleefully as you enter the next test chamber. The first “old friend” becomes clear as you see white Conversion Gel dripping from a pipe in the ceiling, into a chasm. Because there’s no clear surface the gel is falling onto, there’s no way to use your old strategy of shooting a portal onto the puddle of gel and letting the new drips fall through one portal and get shot out of the other. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any way of catching or redirecting the falling gel, not until you notice the familiar moving spiral of an Excursion Funnel.
You’re just using the Funnel to move the gel to where you want it when you hear a voice that you’re pretty sure at this point is going to echo in your nightmares:
There you are.
Instinctively you drop and roll, putting a wall between yourself and the several turrets that begin shooting at you. You’re just preparing to sneak a look at them, and hopefully figure out how to take them down, when you hear the familiar “AaAaaAa” and frantic shooting that accompanies turrets being knocked over. How in the world-
“Of course when I finally find you, you’re getting shot at.”
You probably jump about a foot into the air, adrenaline already on high from the dangerous situation. Then you turn and smile at the source of the surprise.
“Virgil! You’re here!”
He gives a two-fingered salute. “Sup, Thomas.”
You look him over, looking for dents or missing pieces and finding none. “Are you okay? What’s been going on out there?”
“I’m fine,” Virgil says, rolling his eye. “Being a worrywart is my job, stop stealing my thing.”
“Sorry,” you say, grinning, “I’m just really happy to see a friendly face.”
“Sorry it took me so long to find you,” Virgil says.
You shake your head. “No, I get it. Remus has been moving things around a lot, it must be really weird from the outside.”
“Remus,” Virgil hisses. “What has that bastard been doing to you?”
“Mostly just testing, at this point,” you say. “But Janus thinks we might be in more danger soon.”
“Janus?” Virgil shrills, looking around wildly. “Where is he?”
“Right here,” you say, nodding down at where he’s speared onto your Portal Gun, currently inert.
“The- the potato,” Virgil says dubiously.
“It’s a long story.”
Virgil closes his eye and shakes his center plates back and forth so hard you hear rattling. “Never mind, it’s not important. What the hell are you doing, carrying Janus of all people around with you?”
“He said he’d help,” you say defensively.
“And you believed him?”
You think now probably wouldn’t be the best time to bring up the deal you and Janus made. “He’s in trouble as much as I am, Virge. And he can’t really do much as a potato—if he even thinks too hard he’ll blow a circuit.”
Virgil looks at the potato with narrowed eye. “You still can’t trust him.”
“I trust him to look out for himself. For right now, that works for both of us.”
“I’ll be careful, Virge,” you add when he continues to glare.
Virgil sighs and finally breaks your gaze. “All right. What do you need right now?”
Your heart gives a little squeeze of pride at the question; Virgil has grown so much from the snide, antisocial Core you first met.
“I’m okay for right now. Go find the others—I’m going to find a way to escape, and when I do we’ll need to be ready to face whatever comes next.”
“Okay,” Virgil says, “but you’d better not die. If you do I’ll get Remus to invest in figuring out how to reanimate the dead, just so I can kill you again. He’d do it, too.”
You chuckle at that. “All right. Same to you, Virgil. Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Virgil mutters, but you know him well enough to hear the smile in his voice. “See you later, Thomas.”
For a moment you get a strong feeling of deja vu. You had a similar conversation with Virgil right before Janus tried to kill you, you realize. Hopefully, that’s not a bad sign.
You shove the thought back down and do your best to smile at your friend.
“See you later, Virge.”
The rest of the test chamber goes by without much issue, as do the next few after that. Remus combines turrets, gels (which he gleefully compares to various... other types of fluids), deadly lasers and Excavation Funnels over bottomless pits with the frenetic glee of a kid at a Christmas party, while you just buckle down and do your best to survive.
It’s when you’ve just started the fourth of these chambers that Janus’ light flickers back to life.
“I think I have a plan,” he says quietly. “I’ll do it when Remus reappears. I’ll just have to be careful—hopefully the amount of power I’m using here is low enough that this won’t get me, too.”
That’s concerning, but Janus’ light goes dark before you can ask any follow-up questions, and you’re too preoccupied with getting through this chamber to dedicate too much brain power to it.
The test involves getting onto a long platform, then redirecting a laser to power it so that it moves to where you need to go. You use the portals to make the laser hit the right sensor and are feeling the pride of a task well done when a grid of deadly lasers suddenly flashes to life, right in the path of your now-moving platform.
You scream, images of hitting the laser field and coming out in pieces entering your head, and frantically shoot a portal to a different location, disconnecting the laser powering your platform and making it stop just as the lasers reach the platform’s center. The laser grid itself disappears when the platform stops, and running on the adrenaline of your near miss you move past the point where the lasers were, then restart the movement and hop off at the appropriate spot.
As soon as your boots hit solid ground you fall to your knees, breathing hard, and focus on getting your heart to stop beating out of your chest.
That was a close one—a second later and you would have been filleted. If you had any doubt Remus is trying to kill you, that laser grid got rid of them handedly.
You’re just finishing up the test, still feeling a bit shaky, when Remus reappears on the display screen.
“Hey, you did it! And all in one piece, too. Disappointing, but there’s always next chamber.”
Janus’ light flickers back on. “Alright, here goes,” he mutters to you.
“This! Sentence! Is! False!” Janus yells, adding under his breath, “don’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutit-”
“Oh-ho-ho!” Remus says, and his body shudders and wiggles before coming to a rest again. “That felt great! Like sticking a fork in an outlet and licking it! Give me another one!”
Janus sputters. “That was a logical paradox! It was supposed to temporarily short your circuits!”
“Aw, Jan, ” Remus says, “you of all people should know I’m not a creature of logic. Hey, how about this one: A barber shaves only and all people who don’t shave themselves. Does-”
“Nope, nope, not listening!” Janus shouts, his light turning back off.
Remus cackles. “Aw, that was fun. Anyways, make sure to complete this test quickly, now. I’ve got a little surprise for you in a few chambers- one I’m sure you’ll be just dying to see.”
The screen goes blank, and you look down to see the potato’s light flicker back on.
“Was he… trying to be subtle?” you say.
Janus snorts. “Remus doesn’t do subtle. We’ve got to get out of here before he makes good on it.”
On that, at least, you’re both in agreement.
“Three more chambers until your big surprise,” Remus sing-songs as you enter the next chamber. The chamber has a large ditch in the middle, with a cube bouncing up and down inside it. A launcher panel is positioned in the middle of your current platform, clearly intended for use in reaching the other side.
“We’re running out of time,” Janus says lowly as you approach the launcher panel and try to eyeball the timing you’ll need to catch the cube. “I think I can break us out of here in the next chamber. Just play along."
You step onto the launcher panel, then cry out as instead of launching you forwards like expected it sends you careening sideways, the test chamber’s wall folding open to let you through. An excursion funnel catches you mid-flight and begins moving you forwards.
“Surprise!” Remus says. “It’s happening now.”
You look down to see yourself hanging over empty air, the ground too far away to see. Wherever it is you’re going, you don’t seem to have much choice in the matter.
So just like always, then.
“I’ve got to hand it to him,” Janus says. “For someone who usually says every little thing that enters his head, that was quite a clever deception.”
“Aw, you flatter me, snakey-pie.”
The excursion funnel pushes you into another launcher, which sends you hurtling sideways with a yelp from both you and Janus. Hurtling towards a small platform, surrounded by giant metal plates. All of which are covered in spikes and poised to slam forwards.
Yeah, this is gonna suck.