Rest assured I'm going to help to ease your pain

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WHO: Boyd Langton and the Major
WHERE: The Attic
WHEN: 20 June, afternoon.
WARNINGS: Violence, mad science, evil, weirdness, faked character death.
SUMMARY: Boyd brings the Major to the Attic and probes the Major's mind.
FORMAT: Para

It had taken a lot of string pulling and in some cases more than one bribe, but Boyd finally had the Major in his custody. The extra effort he'd gone through to ensure that Major's transfer to the facility was an official one had been worth it. Now there would be less questions about what he was doing there and any discrepancies would be easy to dismiss as simply part of the therapy. A therapy that he could also report that Major as resisting allowing Boyd to keep him for as long as he liked. Which was good because Boyd was sure he'd need every minute of that time.

He was sure the Major still had some of his technology hidden away somewhere and Boyd was determined to find it. Of course he doubted the Major would simply tell him the location. The man was insane, but not that insane. No, Boyd would have to drag it out of him, a task he wasn't at all displeased with having to undertake. It was dangerous to be sure, but putting himself into the Major's dreams in the Attic was the surest way of obtaining a true answer and with having himself backed up there really wasn't any true threat to Boyd should anything go wrong. It also had the benefit of allowing him to learn more about what motivated the Major and what he held to be valuable. All useful information for future Attic scenarios to force him through. In time Boyd was sure he'd find the one that would push the Major enough to break him since there was no point in killing him as long as the Porter functioned, however much Boyd would have preferred to.

Walking into the lab he smiled smugly at the Major, secure on the subject table, confident in his soon to come victory. "Afternoon Major. Ready to begin your therapy?"

Comments

[liebe_krieg]

Boyd's instruments would show that each sample provoked a different reaction in the Major's body and mind. Brazil was tinged with a sense of delicious tension drawn out over decades, years and years of patient planning while webs were spun that spanned continents. The meetings from the Fuhrer were pleasantly nostalgic; the Major could have listened to that wonderfully insane ranting forever. And the Eastern Front! The Eastern Front really made the needles skip and jump as adrenalin began to flow. The Eastern Front filled the Major with intense joy and fulfillment as he recalled those days of terror and suffering.

Of course, all these results were biased by the fact that the Major's mood was already quite high. The moment the scenes began to change he knew that he had won, that he would win. That among all the defeats and temporary triumphs he had endured in the City, this little contest would be a victory. His will was the stronger, he had outlasted Boyd's patience. And so all the reactions to the Attic's visions were tinged by the emotion of insufferable smugness.

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None of the scenes produced the results Boyd wanted. He needed something the Major actually feared, but the man delighted in everything others were repulsed by. He was so proud of it all, proud of what he was.

And there it was. Simple and obvious. Take that away from him. Break him down. That was all Boyd had to do. Not a simple task, but with that last burst of adrenalin he had enough data to search and find the moment where the Major had become who he was. It took time, but he finally found a memory that might serve as a proper basis. The details weren't clear, but it was worth a try. It wasn't as if anything else was working.

The scenes playing out in front of the Major faded out and then slowly Berlin replaced them. It was not Berlin in it's glory days though. It was burning, being shelled and sacked by the Red Army. These were the Reich's final days in all their bloody horror. The Major was on the ground, wounded and surrounded by the bodies of his comrades and the Russian soldiers he'd just killed, the Reichstag above them. Slowly at first, but soon quickly the blood of the soldiers, German and Russian alike began to pool and then snake toward him. It promised eternal life, power, no fear of death. All he had to do was accept it.

[liebe_krieg]

This memory... this memory did not make him smile.

The final slaughter of the Reich had been wonderful in itself of course, as boys and grandfathers were desperately hurled into the grinder to stave off the inevitable. But it had signaled the end of the war that the Major had loved so much. And the end of more besides.

He knew this part. The crimson arrows, angling towards him. The ultimate temptation and prize that was offered only the chosen, bloody few throughout all of history. The Major knew what would happen. Though he was lying on the ground with his organs riddled with bullets and his life seeping away by the second, any moment now he would find the strength of will raise his arm and slam it down on the ground in front of him with enough force to scatter those arrows into droplets, like a stone thrown into a puddle. He would choose death as a human over immortality, saying 'Begone! My heart, my soul, and my life... all of it are mine and mine alone! From every strand of hair to every drop of blood! I am me! I am ME! I am ME!!!'

But that did not happen.

The arm did not raise. It did not come down. The words did not come. Instead, there was a smile, not the defiant grimace he had worn on that day so many years ago. This was a pleading, pitiable smile, of a dog happy to receive a treat from a master. And like a dog, he found himself sticking out his tongue to lap the blood of friend and foe alike from the scorched cobblestones of Berlin. Inside, he screamed and screamed and screamed, and it meant nothing.

Outside, in the Attic lab, the dials and meters and needles and wires all went crazy.

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Boyd smiled. He'd finally found something that the Major loathed. Something he could make him live over and over again until he broke. Confident, Boyd took form in the Major's nightmare, smiling smugly while he licked up the blood. "See Major I can get to anyone, even you. Now are you going to tell me what I want, or should I have you live this scenario a few thousand more times?"

[liebe_krieg]

The Major looked up at him, blood trickling from his mouth. His eyes were slowly turning from gold to red. "You impossible little fool," he hissed. "You really are completely hopeless, aren't you? Your worthless inventions have been out of my hands since last September! Their programming was too easily removed to be of use in future operations. Like all broken weapons, your technology was cast aside."

He started to laugh, crazed, bitter, showing sudden fangs within his mouth. "Arrogant American! Thinking you know so much more than you actually do. The thing you want doesn't even exist. You have done all this, gone through all this trouble... for absolutely nothing!"

[plays_with_dolls]

"Not for nothing. I'm still going to make you understand the consequences of stealing what's mine. Also the weapon works fine. You were just too obvious and unrefined in it's use to take full advantage of it. It's a tool for control, not war." Boyd took the insult to his technology personally. There was nothing wrong with it, the Major had simply used it wrong. He made assassin's when he could have stolen the election, or even reprogrammed the police commissioner.

"If you hadn't been so open in your use of the tech they might not have discovered a way to remove the programming."

[liebe_krieg]

"Control... is hardly a worthy objective." He was speaking with difficulty now. He could feel the corruption, the other, the blending of souls taking place within him. Soon he would be a glorified leech, one that had to draw on the power of other souls through their blood. His self was becoming a thing of the past. Immortality or not, the prospect still chilled him to his core no matter how much he told himself it was simply an illusion. Rossum's technology could not truly alter his soul the way vampirism could. Could it?

He put his hands beneath him, pushed, stood up. Around them, Berlin continued to burn. The wind from the fire stirred his bullet-riddled coat around his legs. Within himself, he could feel his heart going still and body growing cold. Would he really feel this a thousand more times?

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"To you it wouldn't be." To Boyd however it was the key to the end he desired. An end that would make the scene he was witnessing now look like a minor skirmish. That chaos though was for a purpose, it served his goals. It was ordered and planned for. Control the reaction and you controlled the result. "Of course, considering your current situation you might want to question your opinion on control."

Berlin begin to fade once again, and then it returned. The program had reset and was ready to force the Major to live through his nightmare once more.

[liebe_krieg]

Ridiculous. Unacceptable. He would not let it end like this. He had to get in the last word, the last blow. Had to. For that was the nature of the human spirit, to struggle to the end. And he was still human, no matter how many fangs this illusion gave him.

"The only truly valuable control... is over the self," he whispered as the blood began to snake towards him once again. But this time, his hand did rise up, just a little. "Allow me... to... demonstrate!" His hand came down, slapping the ground in front of him. And then the Major gave the order for himself to die.

It was not easy, to will one’s body to shut down while trapped in a nightmare. He had to work very hard at it indeed, using the interface between his mind and the Attic’s systems to delve deep into his own subconscious. But after all, this was what the Attic was built for: to allow the subject’s mind to be used against them. In this case, it was simply being used by the subject himself, wrenching the necessary control by sheer, overpowering will. The Major found the part of himself that said ‘Heart- beat! Brain- think! Lungs- breathe!’ and commanded ‘HALT!’

In the real world, the Major’s body spasmed and jerked on the table as alarms sounded from the Attic instruments. His teeth snapped against each other, his head threw itself from side to side, his legs banged against the table. Blood began to ooze, first from his nose, then his mouth, then his ears, then his eyes. Smoke curled from his head as circuits blew inside his cyborg body. It was joined by the smoke of instruments sparking from the massive feedback they were receiving.

No calculations from his mind for Herr Langton. No long enjoyment of his suffering. Only resurrection and then retribution. Or perhaps better yet- that final death so devoutly to be wished, to be yearned for and fought for over fifty long years, finally achieved in this last act of defiance.

There was one last convulsion of the Major’s body against its restraints, and then it slammed back against the table and was completely still. Within his mind, there was one last burst of demented laughter, and then darkness.