Doctor Who
By Tyloric

Oh shit, an update. I think the world might be ending. Unbeat'd, as I'm too impatient as of late. Enjoy.

Chapter 8

Billy died exactly one minute after midnight, and stayed dead for nearly ten minutes after that, and that was only because Badeau had intervened. That was his power, you see. He was capable of forcing the body to perform outside it usual limits; to give a person their two hundred percent potential, Billy's tired heart the strength to continue beating a while longer.

But this also meant that Billy's body was shutting down at a rate that seriously out paced the doctors. Badeau's powers had limits, and those limits were his stamina. The way it worked was he, essentially, gave people a part of his… soul? Life force? What it's called, doesn't rightly matter, only the results. Because of this, he could only keep Billy alive as long as long as he could hold out.

There was only one chance the poor clone could survive: the original. The real Billy: Dr. Horrible. With the original present, Badeau could essentially do a 'soul transplant'. Give the clone energy from the original. This was only a theory, however, as Alexander Badeau had never been put in a situation such as this before as merely attempting to wrap his head around the whole concept made him weary.

And he was weary. As he sat in a chair near the window in Billy's room, he let all the thoughts mull in his head, no longer in his work coat. Billy no longer fell to him a doctor, but as a hero, something he had not been in a long while.

An unpleasant thought graced his thoughts, one he found particularly disturbing: Billy may be the first patient he hadn't been able to save.

***

Its logic had been perfect, its strategies flawless. The SDC had been programmed to anticipate any and every scenario, had tactics that could not be beat. And yet, it had. When the main tactics software even suggested the idea that it had been defeated, the core shut it down for repairs. When all back up systems continued to suggest it, it found itself in the first impossible scenario it had ever encountered: I am unbeatable, yet I have been beaten… I am unbeatable, yet I have been beaten… I am unbeatable, yet I have been beaten…

This continued for several minutes before Professor Normal shut the entire system down, a smirk on his face that could only be described as evil.

***

"Please..." she moaned, but Terran gave her no acknowledgement, no sign that he knew she was there. Two glowing balls of energy danced around, hovering above his gloved palm. This new ability of his had taken him by surprise; he first used it on instinct. Terran had been confused at first, why his body suddenly seemed to stop hurting, why he suddenly seemed so strong.

And then, like something clicked, he knew. He could feel the rooms, knew everything about them before the elevator doors opened. He could feel the machines, their intentions, what they were going to attempt to do to him.

And then he found out he tap in to the very energy sources that powered them. He could overload any one machine as he pleased, or he could drain them dry, storing that energy inside himself, until they were forced to perform emergency shut downs. He could release that energy in power bursts of kinetic energy, blast through walls. Anything he could think, it seemed, he could do.

"Please..." she begged him again. She was the final part of the test. Can I kill someone?

He made his decision very quickly; he drained her dry.

***

"So... I'm a fake?" Billy asked. His waking up had surprised everyone, but apparently the energy he had gotten from Badeau had been just enough of a jolt to boost him from unconiousness, for the moment. But that left explaining what was happening to him.

"That's one way of putting it..." Badeau said, uncertain.

Captain Hammer watched from the other side of the room in an eerie silence that didn't at all suit him. He wasn't certain of what he should say. What could he say? Nothing came to mind.

Billy fell silent too, also at a loss for words. He was fake? He wasn't even a real person?

The silence itself didn't last all that long. "Those... fuckers." Hammers eyebrows shot up, and even Badeau seemed to reel back for a moment. "Who the hell do they think they are? They make me and then treat me like a damn lab rat? I'm alive, I think, I feel. Who the hell are they to toss me out like some piece of garbage?!"

The sincerity and sudden rush of anger through Hammer off balance, so much that he barked a laugh, and immediately clapped a hand over his mouth.

Both sets of eyes fell on him. "My suffering is funny to you?"

"Now, Billy..."

"Doc, can you give us a moment?" Hammer asked suddenly, surprising himself.

Badeau gave him a surprised expression, but nodded and wordlessly left the room. Hammer closed the door behind him, turning back to face Billy.

"Let me have it." He said simply.

Billy frowned, confused. "What?"

"You're angry, so be angry, okay?"

Billy's expression remained uncertain.

Hammer sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Just... vent, ya know? You're angry, so... yeah." Billy turned away form him, looking out the open window into the early morning darkness, the sun not quite ready to rise.

"I don't even have a name." He said quietly. "I mean, not really. All this time everyone thought I was someone else, someone different. But... I'm just a fake." Hammer found himself knowing what it was like to be so.

After a moment, Hammer answered. "So... lets give you a name."

Billy looked at him, surprised. "A name?"

"Yeah, a name. That way you can't call yourself a fake anymore, cause then you'll be… you?" He hesitated at the end of the sentence, suddenly unsure of himself, and when Billy just continued to stare at him, he continued. "So... what do you wanna be called?"

Billy blinked once before turning to look back outside. An name came to him quickly, and he immediately decided that it just felt... right.

"Dusk." He said without looking at Hammer.

Hammer found himself smiling despite himself. "Dusk." He repeated, like this way it came out of his lips.

Captain Hammer made a decision that night as well; he was going to find a way to save Billy, a way to save Dusk.

~tbc.