Ahmed, the 049-2 Instance

Link to article: Ahmed, the 049-2 Instance.

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⚠️ **Content warning:** horror themes involving **spiders**, **suicide ideation**, **physical attack**, **Body Dismorphia** Intro may be very intense, **Coarse Language**.
**Notes-** Characters featured are **049 The Plague Doctor** and **070 Iron Wings**. Featured object is **859 The Arachnophobia Orb**.

**Estimated Reading Time** - 20 to 30 minutes, 5 to 8 minutes per chapter - there are 4 chapters.

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What was it about spiders? D-2206 wondered as he carried the usual stupid crap from one dark corner of research sector two to what was probably another waiting abomination needing lord knows what. Other bugs existed, things like parasitoid wasps and those horrific botflies. Damn, why couldn’t he just be afraid of those? It would make so much more sense. Something seemed to hang in the air behind him so he walked faster. The cage he was carrying nearly scraped a key pad. They would have his ass if he damaged anything else.

The itch had started up again. He wanted to lay down his burden and scratch it so badly but the cameras along the hall and the patrolling guard behind him would not be approving of that. He had enough citations already, ever since he had been under the jurisdiction of Dr. Greg.

A door was opened by a guard and he was ushered in by another. Time again to pass way to close to something non-expendable people observed behind glass. Why did it have to be so damn dark? Utility budget decisions he guessed.

“Just put it on the table.” said the guard from the door.

The thing sitting at the lighted table wasn’t visible until the D-class was right on top of it. A beaked white mask flashed into view when it turned, eyes full of concern. The eyes were goggles so they shouldn’t have been expressing anything.

“Sir, I can see you are suffering.” A soft mechanical voice echoed, as a hand came out of the dark.

“Fuck off Gonzo, No Touchy!” He threw the cage he carried, turned and ran.

The door closed behind him and he was safe, but what was safety worth? D-2206 was a junky who’d chosen the foundation over going back to prison because it meant he’d have a ration of decent smack whenever he needed or wanted it. But now his favorite poison wasn’t so enjoyable. He was always afraid, afraid of the damn spiders. Now nothing made him happy anymore and it was all because of Dr. Greg.
------

The man had an evil smile. At first D-2206 thought his hatred of lab coats was responsible for that. But then he saw a screaming woman strapped down and forced to receive a spider bite. He hadn’t feared spiders so much at the time. Those were the good old days. The spider in question was a daddy longlegs, not the harvestman variety, which technically wasn’t a spider at all - WHY DID HE HAVE TO CARE SO MUCH ABOUT SPIDERS!?

------

“Easy there buddy, don’t want to get in trouble again.” said the guard who helped him up, and gave him his next package for delivery.

------

The woman they had strapped down clearly had a fear of spiders. A daddy-longlegs wasn’t really such a terrible spider – again, at - the - time. Why couldn’t he just wash the memory out of his brain? Why couldn’t they have performed that test on someone who was okay with spiders, like his neighbor growing up who owned that damned tarantula? He had asked to hold it. At the time, it was no big deal. At the time, it was okay. Now the memory of how it felt in his hands was killing him!

The lab coats had a drug. They called it amnestics. Amnestics could make you forget. He’d asked for amnestics and they told him he’d have to talk to a guy. The guy turned out to be Dr. Greg and D-2206 had had to get out of there. His reaction brought no citations.

He heard Dr. Greg say, “Interesting” and the scribble of notes on a pad. But they had let him return to the barracks.

------

He could see them hanging in the air now as he walked to his next delivery, so much more of them – drifting down slowly on their threads. He just had to walk faster, before one of the things touched down on some part of him.

The guard pushed him into another room. This one, was a full-time living quarters. The last room had been for interviews only. The freakazoid known as the Doctor had not been at its peak in there. The point of the interview room was to get a humanoid out of its element. In a living quarters these things could become territorial, especially if you accidentally knocked something off a shelf and broke it. D-2206 had been a stumbling mess since –

------

He had felt protective of the Arachnophobic woman. That they even let him see her felt like a mistake. He broke rank and charged into the room throwing aside the people holding her down and ripping off one of the restraints they had put on her. D-2206 wasn’t a tall man but he was a solid man. His hollow cheeks often caused others to underestimate his strength, honed in prison gyms where there was nothing else to do.

A heart monitor started to flat-line. The woman had a hot rash and seemed suddenly unconscious. D-2206 started to perform CPR but was dragged away. They wrestled him to the floor and tranked him. He woke up in a hospital room with Dr. Greg in the corner taking notes and smiling that terrifying smile.

**Part 2**
------

The sound of swaying chains interrupted his thoughts.

That and a voice “The wings will get you if you don’t take a chill pill.”

At first all he saw was a square of blue light hovering in an otherwise dim space. Some of the rooms had windows, this had a small one and it had been broken, or had never been glassed at all. A cool, autumn breeze made him forget about spiders for a fraction of a second.

As his eyes adjusted to the contrast he became less worried about breaking anything, but he was becoming more worried about getting broken, for the concrete walls were badly damaged ceiling to floor.

A stocky man in boxer shorts lounged in the light of a small tablet atop a pile of rubble in the corner. He had used throw pillows to make it more comfortable. A smile lit up his cheeks.

“You brought the brewski’s!”

The D-class wasn’t supposed to talk to dangerous humanoids but that smile was disarming. He approached the speaker with his package. The sound of swaying chains grew louder.

“Woah there Sir, you’ll have to hold still – the wings, they don’t like sudden movement.” Silhouettes of over-sized arrow heads poised themselves like cobras.

“Tell ya what, just put it down and back away. There ya go, see their calming down. Hey want to see a neat trick I learned?”

The guard entered the room and took D-2206’s arm with a crushing grip. “He doesn’t want to see a trick!” The D-class flinched. What kind of Bullshit was the foundation feeding this lady!?

The iron arrow heads now took an interest in the guard. She let go and backed out of the room, waiting at the door for the situation to resolve. Weather this ended in a death or a close call was no longer any of her business.

A spray of foam erupted from the package D-2206 had delivered. It shot into the waiting arms of the smiling man and his small tablet. A dripping can was torn free and he poured the contents into his mouth; allowing the errant streams to flow festively down his carelessly posed figure.

“You know sometimes you just got a’ shrug and say – Fuck It!”

D-2206 now noticed the large structures that seemed to be attached to the man’s back. The structures resembled crudely-cobbled, scrap metal wings and were suspended from the ceiling with more of the arrow-headed chains hanging from them.

An intact can of beer was rolled in the direction of the D-Class.

“Looks like you need this more than I do. Come on, drink up. It’s not every day they let you have alcohol even if it’s something as weak as a beer.”

A torn bag of chips fell from the ceiling and landed at the D-Class’s feet. The smiling man once again expressed excitement at his growing control of his powers.

“You’re timid for a big scary dope fiend, or maybe you guys are supposed to be like that? See, I’m used to alcoholics and pot-heads mostly.” The smiling man frowned when it seemed the D-class wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

“Want to hear some music? They put a ton of stuff on this little device!”

D-2206 put down the unopened beer. The thought of hanging out with this friendly face made what was coming so much harder to bear. He felt that he was dying. He wished the pain wasn’t so great so as to rob him of this one final joy. He struggled to his feet and left the room, not sure what was about to happen but not wanting this kind stranger to see it.

If the iron arrows killed him so be it. If the guard killed him so be it. If the spiders killed him – no, there had to be some other way, some mezzanine he could throw himself off of, some monster that could make it quick. He didn’t know he was even capable of running until he started to feel the webs breaking across his face, and the legs, and the soft, squishy bodies that looked like they should be armored and hard. He felt the things popping under his feet. The thought of crushing them felt worse not better. There was simply no way for spiders to be good.
------

Dr. Greg had given him a nice private apartment to live in for a week. The apartment was rife with cameras but whatever horrible thing they were expecting never occurred. Dr. Greg was furious when he was sent back to the barracks. He recalled the man saying – “D-2206 was unconscious when he touched the Arachnophobia orb. What if it takes longer! My 859 project depends on this!”

------

D-2206 needed to get higher up in the building, he needed to find a fall that would kill him. To be paralyzed in this state was not something he wanted to risk.

The guard was reluctant to approach him. She was talking on her com-box and following at a safe distance. He must have looked sick. He had heard rumors of horrible, contagious things kept by the foundation and evidently, so had she. Soon a calm voice announced a code Jillian. He assumed that meant him. D-2206 rode the elevator up to the next level. There were only five stories to the building, but a couple of the floors had high ceilings. A fall from the roof should do the trick right? The elevator opened and so did the elevator to the side of him. A voice told him to stop and he ran down the hall instead.

Light spilled out of a cell into the dark corridor, it seemed the Doctor freak from before had been returned to its quarters. D-2206 couldn’t believe his luck. He pushed past an intern making a delivery and almost pounced on it hoping for the quick death he was told it offered. “Just do it! I take back everything I said! All things considered I’d rather be killed by you!”

He seized the creature's coat and almost let go. It looked like clothes but felt extremely – wrong. Was this thing naked? Why wasn’t he dead yet? For a second the Doctor seemed just as startled as he was. And then its expression softened and there was compassion, even tenderness in its gaze. It held him, carefully avoiding his skin and touching only his clothes. “Shhh, calm yourself.” It guided him into a chair. What was it waiting for? By now he could feel something crawling in his nose. His headache got worse, much worse.

“Hey you can’t just –” It was unclear whether the intern meant to tell D-2206 that he couldn’t just barge in to a cell, or if he meant to tell the Doctor that it couldn’t just lay claim to a loose D-class. For that was when something horrible happened. Something that felt like dozens of very large golden orb weavers (Though he couldn’t be sure of their color) Forcing themselves out of his face.

D-2206 would only half-remember what the two other clowns in the room said next. “No, No, they told me it wasn’t real!” shrieked the intern. “The Pestilence is real, you fool, so you’d better get out. I can treat it. I alone, can treat it! You should be quarantined. Let your superiors know that – hello? Now where did you go?

D-2206 was now blind, but he felt delicate fingers on his temples. His headache vanished like magic. “It was providence that brought you here.” said an inhuman voice that grew more soothing by the second. “I assure you my child. You will feel much better when you awake.”

“Wait what?” thought the D-Class. They told him it only killed people! Then he stopped thinking.

**Part 3**
------

He opened his eyes after what felt like a period of unconsciousness, as though he’d had a tooth pulled or some minor procedure done. He wasn’t blind after all, but his vision was – strange; like his eyes were positioned at odd angles. At first this was more noticeable than the black-splattered blue tarp he was facing, and the balsa wood blocks that supported his body as he lay face down.

Was this a dream? Had he been dreaming? Had the events of the past few hours been a drug induced nightmare and was he now recovering from some experiment yet again?

It felt pretty good though. He closed his eyes – they were pulled back into his head a little when he did this. It felt odd, but no drug was perfect. He needed to hang on to the feeling. Reality sucked, best to keep it off his back for as long as possible.

Someone was taking a shower. The sound was soothing, but the smell. The smell – it wasn’t the smell but what part of him was doing the smelling. He took a deep breath to confirm the odd feeling in his chest. He was smelling with his chest? Where was his nose?

Ahmed thought of touching his face but the thing that obliged him, startled him off the blocks and off of the tarp. The thing that tried to touch his face did not go away. It hovered in front of him no matter what he did. When he thought of moving his arms it just got closer. To defend himself he’d have to bite it, but he didn’t want it in his mouth let alone on his skin.

The thing was blurry in his recovering vision. It looked like the oversized fangs of a spider, disembodied and floating in the air. His body bit for him. Pain raced through his arm. THAT HORROBLE THING WAS PART OF HIM!?

He thought of moving both of his arms away from his face. They were both already supporting him on the floor, and yet it felt like he still had two free arms. He had not one, but two, of those inescapable appendages? He willed them, both of them, to touch the floor. They were oriented at his back and had to reach past his head. He shuddered as they brushed his ears, and as his ears brushed them. They did not look so bad from behind. He wiggled the two fingers on each strange appendage. From behind they were just weird hands. Ahmed used them to draw spirals in the black fluids on the gray floor, the fluids that were dripping from his body. Somehow, he would have to ride out this strange trip.

What sounded like an explosion came from the shower. He recalled what had happened to his own head and slipped in the black fluids pooling beneath him. The hole in his chest was smothered against the floor but he could breathe through his mouth. It was just more comfortable to keep it open anyway. Closing it didn’t feel right. He couldn’t feel his lips. Did he still have lips? He had teeth. He ran his tongue over them. That was something. The explosion from the shower was lasting too long. It sounded like a dog with too many floppy ears shaking itself dry.

A dark figure emerged from the hazmat shower in the corner of the rather large room. The figure came with the smells of chemicals harsh enough to melt skin, but seemed unscathed. It muttered to itself about spiders tracking plague all over its nice clean surgery. Then it turned. That white, beaked face confronted him again. It walked over to Ahmed, leaning in like a vulture. It reached for him. Ahmed shrank back, surprising himself at how coordinated he suddenly was. The beaked creature immediately kneeled on the floor and apologized clumsily for frightening him. It seemed to be casually disregarding its newly cleaned robes.

Ahmed was still struggling to make out words. He picked up on tone – the general idea of things but no specifics. Then the line came.

“Come now, what were you writing there? What is your name?”

He saw no reason not to comply, so he wrote his name, A-H-M-E-D in the black fluids on the floor.

The Doctor took one of Ahmed’s (original?) main hands. They felt numb. Ahmed wasn’t sure yet if that would be permanent. The Doctor’s hands seemed small as both gripped Ahmed’s elongated palm. The creature’s goggles had lids that matched their brassy frames but they wrinkled, like skin, over sad yellow eyes.

“Pleased to meet you, my child, so very, very pleased to meet you. See there, you now have your name. I gave you your name, gave it back to you.”

There was something about this thing; the way it moved, the way it stuttered when agitated, the way it sniffled with its oversized nose. It gave Ahmed an idea. He reached out toward the ribs on either side and scratched them like he had done with dogs. The thing called the Doctor seemed to resist a few times by shaking its head, then its eyes closed and it sat there like it was in a trance. Ahmed stopped scratching and it remained frozen for at least a minute.

A box was delivered through the mail slot of the cell and the Doctor got up to investigate, snapping out of its daze. It fussed over whatever it was it had ordered. And carried the object toward a table covered in a complex array of glass retorts and flasks.

Was the Doctor some kind of animal? wondered Ahmed. The fingers on his main arms must have been starting to perceive for the Doctor’s skin had felt loose like a cat’s. He gnawed his left main arm hoping to get feeling in it. The Doctor made its way back over and scolded him.

“No Sir, No. Not while your jaw is still healing!” It took the arm and rubbed it.

“Let’s see if you can read, my friend.”

The Doctor brought him a newspaper, perhaps to stop him from messing with his arm. Ahmed examined the paper in front of him. Reading was difficult but it was – possible. He hoped news of the outside was something the Doctor had access to, but it wasn’t a normal newspaper. It seemed to be issued by the foundation. The articles seemed to describe scientific subjects like biology but at a level more suited to children, as though the lab coats had a very low opinion of what was now his personal physician. Ahmed sighed, the hole in his chest blowing the paper out of his hands.

With measured (almost mechanical) movements, the Doctor picked up the paper, reassembled it and brought it back to Ahmed. A table and chair were provided also, and a desk lamp plugged in and turned on. Now he could read more effectively. Ahmed did not consider himself an educated or scientific person so reading about how cells divided and did battle with each other was new enough to offer diversion. Or it would have been, if the Doctor would just go away and stop breathing over his multiple shoulders. It seemed to have lungs that drove air in and out of two vent-like nostrils. Its breath smelled like rain at best, like an old air conditioner at worst, and it rustled the newspaper with more than the expected amount of force.

Ahmed was still trying to figure out if he hated or pitied his new roommate. He had wanted only to die and this thing that called itself a doctor couldn’t even manage that. But of how much control this thing had over its actions Ahmed couldn’t be sure. For all he knew, it had once been a person like him, another victim of the Dr. Gregs of the world. He turned and stared the thing down. Eventually it turned and went back to quietly cleaning up the by-products of whatever was currently wrong with Ahmed. At least for the time being, it was going to leave him alone. Ahmed eventually lay the paper down and put a nearby weight on top of it. The weight was a round, smooth thing that didn’t feel like it could harm him in any way. //Then he got a good look...//

The Doctor peeled him off the opposite wall, set him on the balls of his now knobby, toeless feet, then folded his four arms into a bundle and rolled him over to a moon-lit patch of floor. Ahmed must have zoned out while reading the paper and it now was much later. The Doctor held him uncomfortably close. Ahmed was glad he was wearing pants. It hummed a tune into his ear while rocking him back and forth. Cold metal seemed to pierce the back of his skull and he thought, "This is it."

------

Ahmed awoke again. The Doctor was in front of him this time and smiling broadly. Its mouth wasn’t visible, but its nose was slightly expanded – creating an up curve where it met the mask-like face. Or maybe, it was a trick of the shadows.

The Doctor presented him with the paperweight. The preserved black widow inside the transparent dome no longer triggered Ahmed as it once did. He would rather be dead but was thankful for small favors. Just the same he did not want to hold the spider for too long. There was still fear, but it was receding far back into memory. Already he couldn’t quite understand what his problem with spiders had been. He dropped the paperweight and the Doctor caught it; turning and tossing it into an open black bag on the seat of a dark-red, upholstered chair.

He was given another brisk examination that focused mainly on whether he would be comfortable in a squatting position and whether his breathing was still in a relative sense “normal”. Satisfied, the Doctor draped a sheet over him. Ahmed was left in blessed darkness until the next rude awakening. This would be the rudest so far, and there had been some bad ones.

“Ahmed, my child, wake! You must fight for your life. Fight! THEY MEAN TO KILL YOU!”

This seemed to come from inside his head with such unrelenting volume it was almost as if he was having a relapse of the face spiders.

Ahmed threw off the sheet and saw a pair of orange suited D-class staring dumfounded, with at least several guards behind them. Killing the D-class would be doing them a favor but he couldn’t bring himself to fuck with the underdogs. The guards would be armed and it had always been a fantasy of his to watch the hope die in a thug’s eyes as they realized their gun was not going to save them. Anomalies like himself could usually take at least a few bullets before going down. After that - ah, what the heck, he had wanted to die anyway.

Ahmed shoved the D-class aside and leapt upon the nearest guard (his stamina was increadible!) But then it all went to shit. A net – a freaken net! Was thrown over him and someone gave him a shot of something other than the lead he was expecting.

Ahmed’s strength left him as he was dragged out of the cell and pinned to the floor. He saw the doctor run up and get shock-batoned. He couldn’t blame the guards for that one. Being able to kill with a mere touch was scary as hell and what happened afterward was not great. But to learn the Doctor’s screams lacked the strange echo of his usual speech - that was disturbing. He sounded human, completely human. Sure Ahmed felt the guy had serious problems, but he would’ve really rathered to know what Dr. Greg sounded like.

**Part 4**
------

Yet again, Ahmed awoke. This time he was tied to a heavy chair that seemed to be bolted to the floor.

A female lab coat with resting bitch face and hair so red she certainly dyed it, was playing with colorful plastic letters on a magnetic dry-erase board that covered the table between them. The only light came from above them, with the remainder of the cold room being dark.

“Could you spell your name for me?” she said when she noticed his eyes were open “Like you did with the good doctor yesterday.”

Ahmed was still getting his bearings. Lab coat lady chose to assume he was stupid. She reached under the table and her hand came up with a small glove puppet resembling the Doctor. The puppet made gestures as though it was saying something important, while Lab coat lady played a recording of the Doctor’s voice.

“Come now, what were you writing there? What is your name?”

She produced a dry-erase marker and demonstrated its use before rolling it over to him. He realized all four of his arms were free enough to reach the section of white board in front of him.

He wrote “Fuck off” with one of his scary back arms because his distorted originals were limited more by the restraints.

The woman laughed (It wasn’t a bad laugh) and she answered with a famous blasphemy from the Exorcist film.

Ahmed replied with his marker, “Never knew mother.” and “Seems accurate.”

The Lab coat drew a smiley face on the board, slid the puppet over to Ahmed and left. Four guards entered and freed him. They seemed surprised he didn’t attack them. Was he supposed to?

------

That night he tried to sleep in the nice room they had given him. He really did prefer to crouch, but he figured his heavily modified feet were still healing so he sat on the edge of the bed. The voice in his head started out feint but was louder at times. My child this, and my child that, lullabies and prayers for his well-being, orders to defend himself; the Doctor wouldn’t shut up.

In the coming days the lab coat’s attempts to restore Ahmed’s humanity were thwarted by the incessant cawing of that damn bird! He tried to reach it with his own thoughts but it seemed the communication was only one way. This was causing Ahmed to start acting like what he would later come to know as a more typical instance of 049-2. That is, a literal fucking zombie. Maybe it would have been easier if he had been able speak as well as write. Ahmed wasn’t sure who to blame for that. What the spiders had done to his face and throat and then whatever the Doctor had done after, was anyone’s guess.

Ahmed was restrained again, and returned to the table in that dark room.

“You’re making a fool of me” said Lab Coat Lady as she sat across from him. “Help me help you. What’s going on? Why are you different now?”

Ahmed wrote, “In my head, noise from him, hard to think”.

Lab coat lady became visibly more excited. She got up and paced back and forth till she calmed down. Lab coat Lady was no Dr. Greg and yet her excitement over his plight was still demeaning. You just had to expect this kind of stuff from Lab coats.

She returned to the table. “What is he telling you?” Ahmed wrote “Worried.” “Worried about you?”

“Yes.”

Once they knew he could hear the Doctor’s thoughts, he’d probably just be doing a lot more of that, as they tried to figure out how it worked. But the quoting of the mad raven had reached such a fever-pitch inside him he doubted that it could get any worse.

Instead it soon fell silent.

Though he was grateful, he hoped they hadn’t needed to do anything drastic to the poor thing. Maybe now it was at peace.

Ahmed’s behavior improved, at least in the eyes of the lab coats. An assistant was assigned to him. She wore an impressive Doctor costume but he could guess her other uniform was orange. She brought him crossword puzzles and they played board games. Videogames were offered, but the controls weren’t made for his modified hands. Ahmed wasn’t used to them anyway. In the Barracks analog games had been the more standard fare.

She brought his king into check again. Ahmed watched her get up from the table so she could pretend to do chemistry for awhile. Who did they think they were fooling? If he didn’t know that was a costume he would have tried to tickle her ribs at least once to buy more time for his chess moves.

He figured he was still suicidal. It seemed odd he’d be able to tolerate having two armed guards in the room if he wasn’t. What was going on, why two? Was this Doctor look-alike so important that they’d need not one, but two? Could be they were about to do something that would make him really angry.

The costumed D-class turned from her pretend work and used her pointing stick to indicate a mop and bucket in the corner. Did they think he was that afraid of manual labor? It would serve them right if he was. Still, Ahmed thought he might give it a go. The room’s floor was quite rough and getting it wet would not make it overly slippery on his modified legs.

As Ahmed approached the bucket he felt the spiders again. He saw just enough through the visor of the nearest guard to make out that smile. Greg raised his gun. Ahmed could have just let it happen; he had no way of knowing they weren’t just going to kill him anyway. A lot of things here could kill him but Dr. Greg - would not have that privilege.

Ahmed’s fists were not what they used to be but he did technically have four now. And Dr. Greg was no boxer. Nor was he planning on doing any fighting today. Not that it would get him off the hook. After what he pulled, he was not allowed to simply run away.

Greg’s gun hand was seized and turned aside. It fired into the floor. The back arms Ahmed once feared seized Greg’s helmet and slammed his head into the door. In hindsight being so close to the door was not so great of an idea. The door of the room was already partly open and Greg was pulled through before he could be taken out for good. Ahmed roared as his right main arm was caught in the gap. He felt the sting of a shock baton and pulled it back into the room. He couldn’t talk but he could make a scary noise, small favors he guessed.

Ahmed turned around slowly. The other guard lowered his gun and the Assistant got out from behind the table she had knocked over to use as a barrier. They stared at him for awhile. Eventually the assistant righted the table, swept up the chess pieces and put them back in the box. She was trying to “deescalate” as Lady lab coat often said. The word was starting to grow on him.

The assistant then looked him over, guided him to his feet and led him back to the table where he could sit down. Ahmed was taller even than the Doctor now. He often felt the need to crouch so as not to tower over the assistant. She let the guard out first. She was supposed to be playing the role of the person in charge, ironic, as she wouldn’t be in here unarmed if she had any real power. She picked up a beaker of blue-green liquid and let herself out, still pretending to be the Doctor. Ahmed wondered what the consequences of his out-burst would be.

It was longer than usual before he was brought before Lady lab coat and this time he wasn’t strapped to the chair. There were guards restraining him though. This time the room was better lit. A long window at the back was revealed and behind it stood the Doctor. Its hands were tied behind its back so it leaned its head against the glass.

Ahmed received its thoughts again, “I believed they had killed you. They always kill you. I truly, deeply, apologize if my offers of comfort were painful to you. I didn’t think you still lived – I was, laying flowers on a grave.”

Ahmed was allowed to approach the glass and press his own elongated head against it. This was probably another stupid experiment, but he didn’t care. He had experiments of his own. He wanted to see if the Doctor’s telepathy worked both ways.

It was more than he bargained for. Something was wrong, very wrong, with the Doctor’s mind. Ahmed couldn’t tell if it was self-inflicted or not but this creature was damaged.

There was old damage. Layers upon layers of it, injury both physical and mental, literal holes almost, in its brain. He placed his own mind over this corrupted one, replacing if only briefly, what was lost. Ahmed wondered if he wasn’t just goofing around, being corny - pretending to be psychic - doing that stupid laying-on-of-hands thing.

The Doctor collapsed. Guards appeared and lowered it to the floor. “It’s like he’s just sleeping.” said one of the guards. “That’s odd.” said another “He never sleeps.” Someone else said, “Get some equipment on him let’s see if he dreams!” A shudder closed over the window and Ahmed turned away from it.

Lady lab coat said to a guard, “Put the cameras on cloaking footage, this is just going to be for us.” She pulled a gift-wrapped package out from under the table and presented it to Ahmed. The guards allowed him to get close enough to take it.

He held the package in his large main hands and tore it open with his scary back arms. The package contained the black widow paperweight from before, mounted on a trophy base with a plaque reading – “Champion Spider Squisher”.

Lights came on, revealing another window. This one had a group of Lab Coats behind it. They were clapping and cheering. The sound was muffled by the glass but Ahmed could hear shouts of “Fuck him!” “Fuck Dr. Greg” “Yeah Fuck that Asshole!”

As Ahmed was led back to his quarters by the guards, Lady lab coat followed at a safe distance. “Dr. Greg broke the rules when he pretended to be a guard like that. He wasn’t supposed to be in there. We’ve been trying to get him demoted. The ethics committee has been trying to get him demoted. You may not have killed him but I can promise - his days here are numbered.”

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Ahmed, the 049-2 Instance

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