Author's Note: Last chapter of Part II. Get ready for Part III.
The Doctor was in Hell.
Or at least, that was what it felt like. Locked away inside his mind, still able to think, to be himself, to exist in his own existential way, but unable to reach out and affect the world around him. Unable to control a body that was stuck in a logical loop of biomechanical programming, stuck attacking the one thing it hated most.
The Doctor had known. That night, when Green had him strapped down, and had revealed the strange concoction that he'd injected into the Doctor's arm — the moment it had entered his bloodstream, the Doctor knew exactly what it was.
Green hadn't.
He'd thought that the substance was sevoflurane. He'd told the Doctor that he always wanted to see what that did. To test the results of that particular substance. Green had been malicious, he'd been inhuman and senselessly violent, but he hadn't been the one who'd made the Doctor like this.
The Doctor knew who had.
And why. The Doctor had worked that out during Green's extended torture session, just after he'd saved the scientist's life. Green kept shouting something about a Petition, and from what the Doctor could gather, it wasn't just any Petition. This was a Petition that had been accepted. And would give the Doctor enough power and leverage that he'd be able to stop Adam completely. Adam must have intercepted the Petition, and changed his plans. Drastically.
It was obvious what Adam's new, changed plan was supposed to be. The Doctor would be released into the Initiative, his body forced to act on base aggression and hatred, attacking everyone who'd ever hurt him. Which, considering the past two months, would be basically every human here (except for Marianna).
And then the Doctor, locked away inside his mind, would have had to watch. See himself massacring humans without being able to stop it. Trying, in vain, to control a body that would no longer respond to him, and yet knowing that every single impulse came from his own mind.
So the Doctor had fought back.
The moment he worked out what the drug was, what it did, he'd focused every single part of his mind on one thing. The one person he hated more than any of the others.
Himself.
The drug had latched onto that self-hatred, that self-loathing, and had acted on it. Adam had worked in buffers to cut through deception and lies and misdirection, but Adam hadn't counted on the fact that the Doctor might honestly hate himself. More than he hated Green, more than he hated Riley Finn, more than he hated some of the worst monsters in the cosmos.
Ha! One instance where self-loathing was useful! Brilliant.
Well, not so brilliant. Because now the Doctor kept hurting himself. And he wasn't terribly happy about that. He'd been counting on his own survival instinct to prevent him from actually going all the way and killing himself — since he couldn't trigger the regeneration process trapped in his own mind like this — but he'd had some close calls. That time he'd nearly strangled himself with his tie was something he really, really didn't want to repeat.
There was one thing to be thankful for. His survival instinct usually did activate around Green. It seemed, more often than not, that the Doctor would instinctively back away when he was around, or at the very least, look supremely uncomfortable. Which, the Doctor was hoping, was enough to alert his friends to the danger. Get others to notice that Green was a wee bit more psychotic than they'd thought.
Not that anyone but a select few at the Initiative had taken him seriously about anything even before this had happened.
The Doctor kept fighting the drug's effects. Trying to cut off the logical loop at its source. But the concoction was too strong, too precisely engineered for his biology. Adam was certainly clever, there was no doubting that. The Doctor could gain control of basic motor functions, for a short period of time, but speech was still beyond him. All that came out was grunting, growling, or a wordless shout.
And once, Gallifreyan. Which had been completely useless.
But now that the Doctor was in Hell, he'd expected Adam to come and gloat about it.
Yet, still, no Adam.
No anyone, really. Riley had ducked in to check on him, a few times, and Haviland had come in to give him an angry stare once or twice, but it seemed his friends had all taken his advice, and fled for their lives. Which was a relief, really. The Doctor didn't need them putting themselves into needless danger. And they could get UNIT involved, which, the Doctor was hoping, wouldn't just save him, but would also make sure that Adam didn't get his hands on the TARDIS.
And, if the Doctor was very lucky, be able to work out who this mysterious other-someone was.
The Initiative had put him in a straight jacket, and tied up his feet. Which was very nice of them, really, because it meant the Doctor didn't constantly try to hurt himself, and he quite liked not hurting himself. He did seem to continually bash his head against the wall, still, but he was working on controlling that.
He heard footsteps, and the swish of his cell door opening in front of him. The Doctor managed to gain enough control of his motor functions to look up at the man who'd just entered his cell.
Arthur Green.
Well, that was just brilliant. The villain had come to gloat, but it was the wrong villain! This was just like Riley Finn trying to kill him during that year when he'd been preoccupied with working out how to stop Glory and trying to discover why the universe kept nearly falling apart every time he came close. Humans could be so narrow-minded, sometimes, believing their little problems were terribly important.
If the Doctor could speak, he probably would have said:
Yes, thank you, very happy to see you, Arthur Green. No, actually, I'm lying, it's not nice to see you, since I'm actually not all that interested in your personal problems with women not respecting you — although, to be fair, I'm not really certain anyone should respect you, be they men, women, or purple genderless blobs of jelly from the 9th moon of Ickroptona. And I don't really want your job, except maybe as a means to getting rid of a very large threat to humanity, after which I'd probably try to shut this organization down entirely. And I also don't really care about — well, actually, I don't really care about any of the things you believe I'm entirely worked up about. I care about stopping the emergence of another race of purely evil bio-mechanical creatures whose psychology matches the Daleks. I care about finding out who would want me in the Initiative, why they would want to alert Adam, and what they're doing up above that they don't want me knowing about. I care about saving innocent lives, saving the Earth, and making sure Adam doesn't get his hands on time travel technology, which, I have to confess, you are making exceedingly difficult, considering you've been feeding Adam information concerning my biology and basic neurochemical composition, and — you do realize that I'm saving your life, as well, yes? Or has that escaped your notice?
Or maybe the Doctor wouldn't have said exactly that.
Green squatted in front of the Doctor, elbows resting on his knees. He looked into the Doctor's eyes, thoughtfully. Clinically. Coldly.
"You're still in there, aren't you?" Green asked him.
Which was a rather daft thing to ask, considering that the Doctor couldn't answer. Although, since Green never listened to the Doctor's answers, anyways, the Doctor figured that made this a fairly typical conversation for the both of them.
"I can tell from the intelligence in your eyes," said Green. "That little spark of life that enters your corneas every time I speak. You can understand everything that's going on around you. You just can't do anything about it." He gave a little laugh. "Fascinating. Truly fascinating."
Right, yes. Now, the Doctor was starting to think that, if he saw a newspaper article about Green being prematurely smooshed by a boulder, he might actually burn the article specifically to prevent him from returning to that date and preventing the accident.
Green gave an amused smile. "And the amazing thing is, I've done all this. Turned you into the animal you are. Taken away all your friends and allies. Left you alone and helpless. And you still don't hate me, do you? You haven't shown any signs of attacking me."
Well, no, of course not. The Doctor didn't tend to hate people. He was becoming increasingly annoyed by Green, but he didn't really hate him. True, Green was cruel and heartless. True, he had harmed the Doctor. True, he had very nearly harmed Julie, and had probably been intending to harm Marianna and the others. But, thing was, Green might be an idiot, but in the end, he was just a human pawn serving someone else's agenda. Making sure the Doctor was weak, unable to fight back, unable to foil Adam's plans. Really, Green was not so much a villain as a menace.
"I suppose you want to know why I did it," said Green.
Oh, brilliant. The evil villain rant.
"Partially, it was a warning to your little friends," said Green. "Partially, it was a way to show the others what you really are, when you aren't hiding behind that veil of humanity. Partially it was, I'll admit, a way to save my job and reputation. Although, I suppose mostly, it's because I just don't like you."
Right. Yes. The Doctor knew that. Green had been terribly clear about all this during the torture session.
Green gave a little laugh. "Riley Finn called me a monster. Heartless, cruel. Because you saved my life, and then I destroyed you." He leaned in a little closer to the Doctor's face. "But I'm the one who owns you. If you're just a piece of property, isn't that my right? To use you and throw you away?"
They were close enough, now, that the Doctor really didn't want to know what Green had planned next. But the Doctor wasn't ruling out any possibilities. Including the very remote possibility that Green had just done this to get in a good snog. Which, while not terribly pleasant, would certainly be a change of pace.
As it was, this speech was dull enough that the Doctor felt truly frustrated. He focused all his mind and his willpower, trying to gain enough control over his speech center of the brain to shout, "I don't care about you!"
But all that came out was a wordless angry shout.
Green leaned away from the Doctor. "A truth you don't want to accept, then? That you have an owner? A master? That you're little more than a pet for my amusement?"
That was it. If Green delivered one more clichéd villain line, the Doctor was going to do everything in his power to knock himself unconscious. End of story.
"There is another reason, of course," said Green, pulling a syringe and a vial out of his pocket. "You have information. And once I gain that information, I can dispose of you. Permanently."
The Doctor looked at the pale green liquid. He didn't know what it was, but he was guessing it wasn't what Green thought it was.
Green took the cover off the syringe, and slipped the needle into the vial, filling the syringe with the pale green chemical. "I've simplified your brain functions. Made your brain work in a way that computer systems will understand."
Well, that was pure hogwash. Complete and utter rot.
"But a distant colleague of mine, whom I have been in continual correspondence with, has suggested that you have psychic shields, which can trap information inside. This compound is his work, I'm afraid. But the knowledge I gain from it — well, that's all mine."
Oh, no. Distant colleague. Continual correspondence. Psychic shields. No, no, no, no! The Doctor knew exactly what the liquid in the syringe was. Exactly who Green's colleague was. And exactly what this chemical that Green had in his hands would be designed to do to the Doctor.
The Doctor used every single ounce of willpower to leap up, force himself back, away from Green. He needed to get out of here. Right now. But his feet were tied, his hands were bound, and his body wasn't doing what it was supposed to.
The Doctor managed to dodge Green once, hopping aside to avoid the syringe, but then he toppled over, and his body was twitching and moving on its own, caught in that infinite logical loop, and he couldn't escape this. Even though he knew what was about to happen.
The syringe poked into his neck, and the substance poured into his blood stream.
Seeping into his mind, barreling through his mental defenses. He couldn't control himself physically, but that wasn't enough for Adam, oh no, now Adam wanted to make sure the Doctor couldn't control himself mentally, either.
And every single thought, every single bad memory he'd kept locked away came out, circling him, tormenting him, swirling around inside his head.
The Doctor curled in on himself, and as the outside world faded into just a distant haze beyond the nightmares of his own mind, he began to scream.
And knew he'd never stop.