As I mentioned in the notes on the previous chapter, this story has two climaxes. Now, watch us climb to the second one!

Curtis has made his decision - he's going to let the Doctor test him. A lot. What will be the cost? And what crazy sh*t can the Doctor dream up to do to this guy? And how much longer will he let people critique his methods? (Well, I think we all know the answer to that.)

Enjoy!

NINETEEN

Two full days.

Four finger pricks. Twenty-one total hours being monitored on a standard, Earth-based brain-wave monitor, mostly by an Earth-based doctor. Thirteen-and-a-half total hours under a non-Earth-based brain probe, of the sort the non-Earth-based Doctor had used upon their first meeting. Two MRIs. One full set of fingerprints. Two cheek swabs. One red hoodie donated to the cause, as well as a video game controller. Two sessions of measuring how Curtis Malmay breathes. Countless checks of his vital signs – blood pressure, pulse, temperature, oxygen levels…

Unfortunately, hundreds of tears.

Three drawings done, just to monitor the electrical activity in his brain while manifesting reality – one rendering of a bowl of lentil soup, one full-colour portrait of Martha wearing a purple tee-shirt, and one flower pot outside Mrs. Marais' front door. The soup had appeared on the console, Martha's white tee-shirt turned purple, and presumably, a little geranium surprised Mrs. Marais when she stepped out to pick up the post (though, no-one checked). Yet this particular experiment yielded surprisingly little new information.

Any psychopharmaceuticals that had been prescribed to Curtis were handed over to Martha, and she researched them, analysed the chemistry, and she and the Doctor cross-referenced any findings, to see if they could be useful to the process. The Doctor took advantage of any time that he could, while Martha monitored Curtis (or had the audacity to sleep), to study the magnetic field that was the catalyst for all of this, the thing that might solve their very weird problem. He fed Curtis' numbers and vitals and whatsits into the sentient data banks currently shared by the TARDIS' consciousness and the Axiothe energy. Very little happened, except, he reckoned, the sentiences chewed on the information, to glean what they could, and wait for instructions.

"I wonder what would happen if Curtis interacted with the Axiothe field, of his own accord," the Doctor mused, leaning back in a kitchen chair for a break with Martha and Tim. Curtis took his break in their flat, in the form of a nap. "If we opened up the console room to it, and allowed it to waft, would it lock onto Curtis? And if it did, could they commune somehow? I can't help but think that would make things go more smoothly when the time comes to detonate."

"Detonate," Tim whispered. "I hate that we're using that word. It's so violent."

"Sorry," the Doctor muttered.

"It's like you're planning to blow up his brain."

"I'm doing my best, Tim," the Doctor said to him, uncharacteristically meekly.

"What if you did open up the tap on the Axiothe energy, and it locked onto him, and damaged him?" Martha asked. "A magnetic field that is a force in the cosmos…"

"Yeah," the Doctor commented from seemingly quite far away. "But that's been the problem all along."

"Could you do it slowly?" Tim asked. "Like turning on a faucet with just a trickle at first, to test the temperature?"

"I don't know," the Doctor replied. "If it's giving us the choice of what to do with Curtis, whereas the Field took care of Daniel Edge on its own, then I reckon it would seep in slowly anyway. It would explore him gently…"

"Then why are we doing any of these tests?" Tim asked.

"Because the dose it's going to take to sever his connection with the Ifasma Galaxy actually does carry a risk. But it might lessen the impact if we can… you know, allow the trickle. It's like injecting a bit of a virus in order to build immunity."

Tim looked at Martha. "Does that make any sense?"

The Doctor tried not to make any comments about the fact that both Tim and Curtis turn to Martha to verify the Doctor's musings, as though he would lie to them, or make outlandish claims. They were scared, he knew, and Martha was a good anchor to reality. It was part and parcel of what they had been doing all along... trusting the Doctor when it suited them, looking to Martha for reassurance.

"The virus thing makes sense," she said to Tim. "But magnetic trickle brain exploration thing… way outside my ken."

"Another thing occurred to me, just before Curtis left," the Doctor said, again from far away. "He got so upset that it made me wonder… should we have just let him melt down?"

He was referring to the near-hysterics Curtis went into when the Doctor locked both of his hands into a device meant to measure skin density, study cells, and analyse the strength and makeup of his fingernail fibres. After two full days of tests, this was what finally caused him to refuse to go further, begin to repeat himself, to pace, and try to find a way out.

Thus, he was napping in his own bed.

"Excuse me? Let him melt down?" Tim asked, incredulous. "I spend my life preventing him from…"

"I know," the Doctor said. "But it might be said that when he has a meltdown, that is his autism showing itself at its worst. Or best, dependent upon how one chooses to see it. Any symptoms he has –exaggerated pedantry, fierce intelligence, artistic talent, sensitivity, insistence upon routine, adherence to logic, et cetera, et cetera… these are what make him him. They make him Curtis. These are the qualities we are eager to have him keep, yeah? We're doing all these tests to refine the process, because we are afraid that all those quirks will leave him."

"Right…" Tim said, tentatively.

"Well, when all of those things get jostled, as it were… when he starts to realise that those mechanisms will not serve him well in a particular situation, that's when he has a meltdown, am I right?"

"Yeah," Tim replied, sort of surprised to hear such a furious, nebulous phenomenon put into words. It had never occurred to him to try.

"Then doesn't it make sense that the Axiothe Field should witness this? Or at the very least, that we should study it?"

"It does to me," Martha said. "Though I'm not savvy enough about the cosmic bit to be able to tell you why. But based on what I've seen…"

"Or, here's another hypothesis," the Doctor offered, not really hearing her. "What if we did our detonation – sorry Tim, it's only for lack of a better word – during a meltdown?"

"What?" Tim asked. "Are you kidding?"

The Doctor shrugged. "No," he said. He thought about it for a few moments. "We're afraid that the Axiothe Field's energy in high doses will zap his quirks into submission. But what if we stimulate the quirks to the point of overload? Make them strong and ferocious, mix them up, confuse the Axiothe just enough that it doesn't quite know what to do with him?"

Tim was silent for a few moments, then asked, "Would that pose any larger risk than doing it while he's calm?"

"Shouldn't," the Doctor answered. "One way or another, it's a risk… the meltdown idea might just improve our odds, is all. It's also just a hypothesis. There might not be any way to test it – that's the problem."

"What do you think?" Tim asked Martha.

She shrugged, looking at the Doctor. She said to Tim, "Again, I'm not savvy about cosmic energy – that's the Doctor's area. But it does make a kind of weird sense to me, and I'm always inclined to trust the Doctor. That's all I can tell you."

Tim shook his head slowly. "It seems manipulative to me."

"It is," the Doctor agreed. "We would have to push him into a meltdown. Forcing a man into artificial hysterics… yeah, it's manipulative."

"Plus, we can't ask Curtis what he thinks about it, because it might negate the result. And that brings up ethical questions," Martha reminded him.

"So you need me to be okay with it," Tim said, sitting back, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I don't know what the hell we need," the Doctor told him, honestly.

After two days, all parties involved felt that a bit of rest was in order. It was late afternoon on a cloudy English Sunday…

But rest was not to be.

Actually, Curtis took some rest when he went down for his kip. Tim, Martha, and the Doctor did not have repose in the cards.

After Tim had returned to the flat, so that he could be there when Curtis woke, the Doctor asked her, "Fancy a lie-down?"

Martha had not yet learned his tells. She had no idea whether this was an innocent proposition (because they were both exhausted again), or an innuendo (because they were both in love and excitable).

Either way, she was game.

So they headed down the hall, and shut the door to "their" bedroom.

The funny thing about having a space that is bigger on the inside than the outside, is that even infinite with interior space, all parts of that space (in a sense) touch the exterior. Therefore, when an agitated man begins banging on the door, even when one is in a bedroom a hundred yards of labyrinth away from said door, one can hear it loud and clear.

"Martha! Doctor!" Curtis' voice came careening through the hallways, practically vibrating the TARDIS.

They ran back down the corridors as the banging and yelling became more and more insistent. The Doctor got there first, and threw the door open. "Curtis! What's with the racket?"

"You manipulative arse," Curtis said, his voice thin, his breath quick.

"Yeah," the Doctor sighed.

"I told him," Tim said, from behind his brother.

"I can see that."

"I couldn't not," Tim insisted, with worry in his eyes.

"I understand," the Doctor said.

"I couldn't risk you trying to push him…"

"Tim, I get it," the Doctor insisted. "It was just an idea anyway."

Curtis all but shoved the Doctor out of the way whilst striding into the TARDIS console room. "You want me upset? Well, you've got it. Let's do this thing now. Where do I stand to get zapped?"

He walked up the ramp and stopped when he got to the console, with his back to the others. He put one hand on his hip, as he tended to do when people were being tedious, and waited.

"Okay," the Doctor said, closing the door and bracing himself. "Okay. You know we're not one-hundred-per-cent."

"When will that be, Doctor?" Tim asked.

"Touché," the Doctor muttered. "Curtis, I just don't know…"

Curtis turned round and faced the Time Lord, a man whom he only intermittently liked, rarely trusted, and didn't fully believe (even now) was real. "I'm not an experiment, Doctor!"

"I know!"

"I'm not someone you can just stick needles into, or put in an oven!"

"An oven?"

"That's what he said the MRI felt like," Tim clarified.

"And my feelings are real!" Curtis insisted. "They're not for you to just play with!"

"I know! That's why we're doing this, isn't it? Because your feelings are real? Because you want to keep them intact?" the Doctor asked, his heart sinking.

"But Tim said you wanted to make me upset so I'd… I'd…"

"It was just a thought, Curtis," the Doctor said, pleading with both hands out to his sides. "It was something that popped into my head, that I voiced. That's it! I had no plans to…"

"Well, you got your wish. I'm upset. Are you going to do it or not?"

The Doctor looked at the other two humans in the room. Tim looked like he wanted to cry, and Martha looked pained as well, though it was a pain that reflected the Doctor's pain.

"Agitation, pedantry, sensitivity… it's all heightened right now," the Doctor said to them. "It could make him stronger and get him through."

"I'm with Curtis," Tim said. "Let's just be done with this rubbish, for better or for worse. It's killing us both."

The Doctor said nothing. He walked the rest of the way up the ramp, and sat Curtis down in the navigator's seat, by gently taking his arm. The man watched him suspiciously as he moved round the console, and readied the Axiothe energy, the mind probe, and the rigged-up generator that would cause the "detonation," as he called it.

The controls made heating-up noises, vented warm air, and the lights inside churned.

Martha's stomach did flips.

The Doctor did one last dance round the console, rather more slowly than usual, double checking settings, resetting calibrations… stalling. And scowling. Deeply.

It was rare that he reached a point this late in a conundrum, and couldn't think of any alternatives.

But here he was. And the Malmays were asking to be rid of the whole damn ballgame.

"So, I guess this is it," the Doctor said, placing a crown-like metal probe on Curtis' head. "Curtis, I need you to tell me one more time that you want me to pull the trigger."

"Pull the trigger. Again with the violence," Tim sighed, coming up to the platform to join them.

The Doctor spun round and daggers in his eyes were now aimed at Tim.

"Then you come up with a euphemism for it, Tim, because I can't. I won't! I don't want to think of a gentle way to describe what's about to happen!" He took three heavy steps closer to Curtis' exhausted younger brother, and continued. "It's a shedload of magnetic energy from the cosmos that I'm about to unleash upon your brother, and it may or may not damage him for life. At the very least, it's a question of whether or not he'll be the brother you know, in the end. What would you like me to call it? Curtis has already said he's not my bloody experiment. It's not a project. I'm not gifting him with energy from the universe, I'm not bestowing, I'm not channeling exactly, nor am I zapping, all right? I'm detonating. I'm pulling a trigger. I'm firing a fucking cannon. I don't want to, but it's what needs to be done. I've spent the last forty-eight hours doing everything in my power to keep him safe, and you're still whining about the semantics!"

"I'm sorry," Tim said, rather quietly.

"I could do it gently," the Doctor continued. "I could let the energy waft. We can sit about and wait for it to do to him what it did to Daniel Edge. But none of that will do any damn good, and you know it! I could act like this is going to be fun. I could lie to you and say it's risk-free. Or, I could walk away right now and you can come up with a way to sever your brother's connection from the Ifasma Galaxy, your choice."

"Sorry," Tim repeated.

"I get that you're worried. I get that you think I don't appreciate the dilemma, how amazing Curtis is, the way he is. I get that you think Martha is your buffer against me and my inhuman ways. But I'm tired of feeling guilty for not tiptoeing around it. I'm tired of being second-guessed, talked about like I'm not in the room, called a manipulative arse, or insensitive, or unreal, or a Deus ex machina problem-solver. Because kids, this has to do with a man's brain, electromagnetic energy, and the bending of reality. Do you think I can solve this with software? With a lovely-tasting potion? With magic beans? No! It's a big, fat, messy mess mess mess! And it's going to get hairy and it's going to be dangerous, and even after all this time working on it, I have no way of knowing how dangerous until we do it! And, Tim, as it stands, unless anyone has better ideas, it's a problem only I can solve. I might literally be the only man in the universe who can help you! So are you going to shut up about my language and let me work?"

"Yes. Again, I'm sorry. I understand your anger."

"Do you? Do you really?"

"Well, I used to complain when my mum overcooked the pot roast, but it's not like I could make one myself, so I should have just kept my mouth shut, and been glad there was food on the table."

"Well, it's a weak analogy, but it'll have to do," the Doctor said. "Curtis, tell me you're ready. Or that you're not – that's all right, too."

"I'm ready," Curtis said, eyes wide, reeling from the Doctor's rant.

The Doctor reverted to silence, then, reached out for the controls.

"Wait!"

The Doctor's stomach did a somersault, and his shoulders drooped. He cursed under his breath, and looked up.

Though, to his surprise, he realised that this time, the protest came from Martha.

Okay, friends... I could use a review or three. ;-) What are your thoughts on the Doctor's rant? What he wanted to do to Curtis?

Two more chapters coming after this, and then we'll say goodbye to the Malmays! Thanks so much for reading!