"The Benevolent Doctor"
26. The Arrow Stops Here
Sometime in New New York
Whatever they had done to him before dropping him there in the middle of the room where Benedict kept his test subjects, the Doctor remembered very little of it, only that he'd briefly lost consciousness and now here he was. He might also have been doing his best not to show to which level he had already recovered. If he still looked weak, then he would have some level of advantage, lasting so long as Benedict didn't catch on, and there was no telling on that.
But as he laid there, on his back, his eyes took in the room as a whole and in parts. He saw prisoners, more than anything he saw their symptoms. He had not set eyes on them before, but he knew Trean's wife and daughter when he saw them. And then there were the three he'd done his best to stall for, Brannigan, Santana, and… oh, Martha, she was alright, yes… And the two girls… The cat who was no longer a cat, and the human who was something more now… Yes, there it is. Alfred had responded so badly to the treatment that he'd nearly died for it, but them… He'd have to examine them to know for sure, but just looking at them it felt like there could not have been a more successful outcome to this test. And that was the last thing they should want to see happen.
"Now then…" Benedict was walking around the Doctor on the ground, an expression of such victory on his face. He was looking at his prisoners both new and old, then to the Doctor on the ground and back again. "I think we'll go with…" he looked, and looked, and… "Her," he pointed, the Doctor saw, straight to Martha.
"No…" the Doctor mumbled, scrambling to try and rise, but Benedict pushed him back down with his foot.
"Yes," he confirmed.
"You can't go through with it, not with her, not with m…" the Doctor tried to warn him, which only got him another shove.
"I'm quite capable of making my own decisions, Doctor. You may think you're the smartest one around, but I know more than you think I do, certainly more than you do on the matter."
"She'll never survive it, you'll kill her!"
"Something necessary in my field. We learn quite as much, if not more, from our failures as we do our successes. Now, I will need to get a sample, prepare the injections. Your sample, Doctor, was a surprise, I must say. It will be fascinating to learn how the girl will respond."
"Listen to him, he knows what he's saying!" Martha shouted from her cell.
"I assure you, dear girl, no amount of resisting will do you or him any good," Benedict turned to her with smirk they would have gladly ripped from his face.
"Wait, wait, please," the Doctor held his arm up. "I have an offer!" he called out, with just the amount of desperation which would get the other man's attention.
"Doctor, what are you doing?" Martha was not so optimistic on this.
"Let him speak," Benedict declared, and the Doctor knew he was on the right track when he wasn't prevented from sitting up.
"You could do your experiment on the pair of us, me, and Martha, yes," he started, and seeing the look on Martha's face, he threw her one sidelong glance. "But there's an opportunity here you have yet to consider."
"Go on?"
"You've seen what it can do, with the girls," he gestured back to their cells. "And you know what I can do, I can see it in your eyes, you're intrigued." Benedict tried not to tip his hand, which proved near well impossible. He said nothing, leaving it up to the Doctor to continue. "So then why not change things about. Take her place, be your own subject." Now the other man laughed.
"Do you think me so foolish, Doctor?"
"No, I think you brilliant, daring and fearless. The kind of man just crazy enough to try, to be at the cutting edge of scientific advancement… They'll remember your name for centuries to come, and you'll be there to tell them all about it."
"How do you figure that?" He was intrigued, but not so easy to convince at this turn.
"Look at me. I'm more than 900 years old. Sounds crazy, yes, but you've examined my sample, haven't you? You've seen things you can't comprehend, things that shouldn't be possible. Time Lords, heard of them? When death is near, oh, it's fleeting. One moment I am perishing, the other I am born again, a new man, woman, if I'd like. Young, old, who knows? And sadly not ginger…" he trailed off for a moment.
For a few seconds, no one moved or said a word. A couple of Benedict's goons came into the room, standing in wait. Finally, the doctor reached into his pocket, showing a gleaming new syringe, filled with what Brittany and Agnes might have thought to be the same thing they had received.
"Alright, but first… something for you," he stepped up. "Hold him," he told the guards, who went and got the Doctor by the arms. "You, pull his sleeve back, hold the arm," he told the one at the Doctor's left arm, who obeyed. As much as he was following the progress of the needle as it neared him, he could still feel Martha watching from her cell, every instinct she had telling her to protest, to make him stop. That she said nothing told the Doctor she had either realized what he was trying to do, or she knew he wasn't doing this for nothing, whatever the reason.
The moment the plunger was pushed, the Doctor felt a new world of pain coursing through him, and the guards didn't have to hold him, he was too busy flailing on the ground.
"See to it that the formula is added to my own sampling, you know where it…"
Before he could go on, he very suddenly pitched forward and crumpled to the floor, revealing he had been conked over the head by one of the guards.
"Took… took you long enough!" the Doctor tried to stand, and the second guard, still at his side, went to help him as they pulled off their helmet. "W… Wait… Trean?" he blinked.
"Dad?" Risha rose from her cell.
"But if you're…" he turned to the first guard, the one who'd knocked out Benedict, and under this helmet came a shower of raven hair.
"That felt good," Valerie gripped the club still in her hand.
TO BE CONTINUED (MONDAY)