supernova (11th doctor)

Time of Angels (pt 2)

I mean, I guess technically I was already messing up, but getting affected the way Amy did would probably make it less messed up.

It definitely felt different here than it did at my job. Sure, I didn't exactly join Area 51 until I graduated high school, but my whole life, my dad had been teaching me little things that I didn't think were unusual to learn at the time. He taught me computer coding in 6th grade. I knew four languages. All my science courses were as advanced as they could possibly be while still being in high school, and eventually I came to love the subject so much, I took extra classes at a local community college. So by the time I had joined Area 51, I had already completed half of the necessary training.

The second half was the part I wish I wasn't so good at. The second half was really what Dylan did. He went out and stole things from people, and sometimes we had to take actual people who have been infected by something potentially alien and run a ton of different tests on them, torturing them until they couldn't take it, and returning them to their homes in a fragile state with all the resources we could possibly provide them with. It was awful. Sure, I've only had to do that twice in all my years of working so far, but I hated it every time. I would have nightmares about it for weeks on end, and the guilt would eat away at me until two months later when I got the report of all the things the government had given them as compensation, even though they didn't know they were getting it from us.

It was absolutely ridiculous. They would be tortured and not remember anything afterwards except the pain, and when we returned them in their horrible condition, they'd spontaneously win the lottery and move into a brand new house. It wasn't enough-- it was never enough after everything we took from them, but according to the directors, it was all they could do. It wasn't enough, but it had to be, or else none of us would be able to live with ourselves. I've tried to stop it over and over, complaining to Professor Zodiac to see if there was any other option, pulling up presentations and papers to show to him to send to the directors to prove that we didn't have to do it, that maybe there was another way. Of course, there never was. Someone had to do it, so the directors forced us to— the people in charge of us who we mostly didn't even know.

Sure, I don't have to kill anyone, but I have to do things that make scars in people they may never heal from. All the good work I did, and I got nothing. Then a test subject comes around—and the other scientists in my group tell me if I do it, they'll listen to me. If I press the button, they'll read my paper, they'll stop ignoring me, they'll analyze my results. I knew that they wouldn't— they just didn't want to carry the burden of being the one to induce all that torture on an innocent person. Of course I did it anyway, both times. All I had to do was press a few buttons, but each time I did it, I swore I would make a change. I did it in the name of everyone else—of all the cowards who would rather have the weakest vessel beaten then take the blame.

If I didn't do it, one by one, they would be fired. It started at the top of the project, whoever was in charge until it was down to me, the very last resort. If I didn't press the button, the people who mistreated me would have their memories erased and end up homeless on the streets. It was a lose-lose situation, and they wanted me to do their dirty work, so painfully simple as flipping a switch, pressing a button. It was hard. It took nearly half an hour each time just to muster up the courage, glaring hard at the control panel, then back to the test subject, all while trying to ignore their cries of, just do it already! Until eventually I did.

Those two subjects—I still remembered their names, and every other detail from their profile. Watching them squirm around like worms, convulsing, swelling up, screaming for help.... it felt like I had strip them of their humanity, and turn them into a lab rat.

Sometimes, I feared that killing them would have been better, no matter how easy their life became afterwards. They still lived with the trauma. They still lived with fragments of painful memories they couldn't put together.