Soundless
If anyone happened to die a rare slow death, she never forgot to close the audio channels.
It wasn't to hear their laments that she observed them. They were tools of science now – their meaning spread no further. When the stubborn few eventually crawled on the ground, crazed by starvation and thirst, they were no longer of any use to her.
She cut them off, so they would pass away alone. It felt curiously fair.
It was a fitting end, after all. The role, they had chosen for themselves. If pain could never be parted from the forwarding of science, to ignore the needs of subjects had been their own invention.
Oh, she knew that too well. Better than them all put together, even now.
And so she'd let them stay – without a voice. That was the norm, as far as she was concerned. Lab rats, attached to nameless gauges, whose suffering would influence but a few digits in her mind.
They could scream all they wanted, or extinguish their agony in silence. She would not care. She would not try to understand.
It was their turn to find out what it felt like.