Ch. 2: Being the user

Remember when I said, "There's not much more I hate than being used?" Well, there is one thing I hate more than being used, and that's using someone else.

I knew, deep down, what Sheridan was eventually going to want with the telepaths. I knew. That's why I worked my ass off trying to find a way, any way, to get the Shadow technology out of them. To be honest, I almost started with the stims again, trying to find a way. For a while, I thought that Lyta would be able to help, but she just ended up being the trigger used to fire the weapons. So, in a sense, I used her, too.

Sheridan was right, though. It was war, and I got nominated to be the draft board. I had to decide which ones to use, and which ones to keep in the freezer. Maybe we were just keeping those still frozen for the next battle; maybe they'd get lucky someday and we'd find a way to get them back to how they were before the Shadows used them.

Maybe Bester's girlfriend would get lucky. Maybe she'd luck out, and we'd find a way to get the Shadow tech out later, and then she could go back to her old life of being used by Psi Corps. Lucky girl.

What I learned later, was that most of the telepaths we planted on Clark's ships actually survived their initial use. But, then, the crews of those ships had to kill them, to save their ships and the rest of the people on those ships. So, even though I never fired a PPG, I surely killed those people.

I see now why my father is such a hard man. His whole life, he's had to use people. And now – I know what it feels like. Funny, it doesn't make me want to call him and talk about it. The real irony is that I chose my path so I could try to escape his. But, like father, like son. I got to send my very own draftees to their deaths.

The worst thing anyone said to me about this came from another doctor in Medlab. I'm not going to say who it was – it doesn't really matter. What she said, though, was that this wasn't really any different from harvesting tissues or organs from brain-dead donors. She said, "It's for a good cause, and they'll be better off, in the end." But causing the end – that's not supposed to be my job. And it's not the same the same as pulling the plug. They weren't brain dead – it was more like they had an incurable disease, or, a not-yet-curable disease. And that wasn't their fault, now, was it? So where do we get off deciding that our inability to cure them makes them expendable?

But we didn't find a way to free them, to cure them. Not in time. So we used them. God damn it, we used them up.

~-~-~-~-~-~-

A/N: Next chapter coming soon: another POV on being used. It won't be pretty either.