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-The wakeup call-

“Good morning. You have been in suspension for 12 days; you have 5 recorded messages from the AJARI COMMAND CENTRE.” Amanda sat up on her bed rubbed her eyes and looked outside her window. Not much had changed since the last time she woke up. She could still see the GLaDOS core room, some test chambers were moving around and she could see gels flowing through glass tubes. She then pushed a button on answering machine that sat on her desk. “Playing most recent message” she could hear the familiar voice of her companion speak to her: “Amanda, wake up! It’s Will... I have been trying to call you for over an hour, she has a job for us and I need you now! Please be there this time or you will face the consequences.”

Amanda quickly stood up and walked to her locker, grabbed her green jumpsuit and put it on before walking out of the simple apartment. She walked along the corridor to the door at the end. Behind it was a classic Aperture elevator with padded walls and a screen inside that constantly displayed the company’s logo. She stepped inside and the doors automatically closed as if they knew she was inside. The elevator began moving down and Amanda silently waited until it stopped and the doors opened.

Before her was a small hallway she had walked through so many times before, and headed to the door with the label AJARI (Aperture Janitorial and Reparations Initiative) on it and walked inside. She could see Will pacing back and forth, his mechanical feet making clicking noises on the cold floor.

“Where were you?” Will said to her. Amanda frowned a bit and she could hear Will’s digital French accented voice sigh. “Well it doesn’t matter. Glados already gave me the instructions on our job today. I did a good word for you and she forgives you for being late again. Next time be on time, okay?” He looked at her with his one big green optic. “Grab your bag and tools; we are going far down into the facility.” Amanda walked over to her locker and grabbed her backpack and held the Aperture Science Portal and Repair Device (ASPARD) in front of her before holding it in her right hand. She looked over at Will who just grabbed his own Aspard device and held it in his left hand; she gave a light chuckle as she saw Will struggle a bit with closing its tool compartment. Amanda opened her own tool compartment on her Aspard device and put some spare tools into it. She also connected the blowtorch attachment to the bottom before clipping the device to her belt.

“Ready?” said Will. Amanda nodded and smiled. They walked out to another elevator outside of the room. They both stepped inside and Will typed a code into the keypad. The doors closed and the elevator went down.

“Ok, I will tell you what our mission is today,” Will said. “Glados was looking through all the older files from before her time again and she found something. Apparently in the lower layers of the now known as ‘junkyards’ is an old deactivated AI that has some valuable information about…something. She didn’t tell me what though. But it must be important because she was urgent about it.”

After a while the elevator began to shake. “Did you feel that?” Will asked. “Okay, Amanda, we might need to hold on for a bit.” The elevator began to shudder and suddenly stopped halfway through past an open door.

“Darn,” Will exclaimed. “I guess we have to find our own way out now”. Amanda crouched down at the doors of the elevator and pulled her Aspard device off her belt. She turned it on and a blue energy flame came from the operational end of the device. She began cutting the glass of the doors open. After all the glass had melted and cooled, Amanda and Will crawled out of the elevator which shortly after fell downwards into the shaft. A faint explosion could be heard some floors down from their current position.

“That… was close,” Will said, shocked as he stood back up. “We have to find another way through this place.”

They walked towards a circular door with text above it that read: “Reactor core offices.” The door slowly opened up halfway. Neither Amanda nor Will could fit through it, so Amanda shot a portal through it and one on a wall inside the room they were in. They walked through and arrived into a hallway that seemed to fall apart as one looked at it. Amanda felt a bit worried and looked over at Will; he simply nodded and told her to just keep going.

“According to my calculations, the place we need to go is the old reactor facility: the one that was shut down when Glados was being built. But now that I see the state of these offices, it might be harder to get to it than I thought. Not to forget all the other broken test chambers and pieces of the building that were thrown down here because they were broken beyond repair." Will sighed mechanically. "To be honest, I don't even want to know...". Do you understand?”

In reply, Amanda simply shrugged and walked further down the hallway towards another round metal door, which opened as she came close to it. She looked back at Will, then pointed her Aspard towards the door, signalizing Will they should move on. “I’m coming already, don’t rush me,” Will said as he came running towards her. “Ladies first?” Amanda gave will a punch to the shoulder. “Ow!... okay, I deserved that one,” Will said, laughing at his own joke. Amanda also gave a small chuckle as they both walked through the door.