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To those with hearts gripped by fear, hearts seized by that invisible fist which seldom ever plans on letting go, the hallway seemed endless. They looked on as far as they could see, and they always swore to Celestia and back, often aloud, that this must be a dream, that no corridor of mortal creation could possibly appear so daunting as this.
None of this, of course, was of any significance to The Doctor. Such things were always trivial matters and were to be dealt with by his subordinates, if anyone at all. In fact, he held no enmity towards the grotesque symphony of screams emerging from each of the chambers in the facility. The voices carried down the passageways and flowed together with such a harmony that the man found he much preferred it to traditional music on his bad days.
Today was not one of these days. Today he was feeling rather pleasant, though perhaps only in his own introspection.
Regardless of the great clamor amassing, flowing with an almost musical air about it, The Doctor could hear into every room he passed as he progressed down the corridor. Each of his footsteps echoed, disseminating throughout the claustrophobic space.
Hearing his approach, the inhabitants of the rooms quieted as he passed.
Further down the hall, one of his underlings stepped through a threshold and gently closed the door behind himself. Upon seeing his superior advancing, he stood at attention.
The Doctor could see the man tremble under his scrutinizing gaze. He smiled and held out the clipboard that he had been carrying. The subordinate took it eagerly with hands that shook just a bit too much.
“This is for Subject 047, just down the hall over there. I’ve recorded the prognosis and I am certain you can take it from here,” said The Doctor, with a tone of baleful authority that the subordinate knew better than to question. He peered down at the paper. All manner of ruin machines stared back up at him from where they were scribbled in the margins of the form.
Upon returning his attention to the Harbinger who had delivered the document into his care, the subordinate found that The Doctor had already passed and was continuing to whatever his gruesome next task would be, his hands in the pockets of his pristine white laboratory coat. The subordinate glanced back at the prognosis.
Lobotomy, it read, followed by a wordy list of conditions.
I am not being paid nearly enough, thought the subordinate.
You’d heard the rumors. Everyone had. You’d just never guessed such a thing would happen to you.
This is how it always goes, of course. The Fatui play their cards well. Or maybe I didn’t play them well enough, you might have thought, had you been in a reasonable state of mind. That dreadful organization had gotten you. You’d gone willingly, though not for the reasons you’d expected.
You have no one to blame but yourself.
So there you are, lying chained to an operating table in a room with walls that seem to lean over you, further and further until you are certain you will feel their cold, barren stone surfaces against your skin.
You recall someone coming in earlier, adjusting your icy manacles, assembling rows and rows of wicked, shining instruments. You had tried not to look at them. To breathe slowly and evenly. The putrid air waits for its moment to rip the breath right out of you.
With no track of time, you have no way to tell how soon after your next visitor arrives.
There is a gentle click, and you know it is the door being closed.
You’ve heard the rumors. You know what happens to people like you in places like this.
Your guest hums a disorderly little tune as he enters, yet another part being played in the stomach-churning orchestra of screams and mechanical scratching and whirring. You crane your neck against your restraints. He is quite hard to miss, standing only feet away from where you are lying in a white laboratory coat that contrasts the darkness of the room.
Whispers from your hometown surround the Harbingers and their bewildering habits. But that is all they ever are: whispers, as if invoking the names of those eleven dignitaries would summon their wrath, even all the way out in the sparse villages of Snezhnaya. You, like everyone else, know very little of the Second Harbinger, but it is enough to frighten you just as much as it frightens everyone else. Standing here, he is not quite so looming and monstrous as in the stories, but there is certainly something very off about the man.
The Fatuus readies a pair of rubber medical gloves. He is unreadable, and after a moment you figure he won’t be speaking first—at least for now.
“Who—” Your voice is hoarse from disuse. You clear your throat and try again. “Are you a doctor?”
At first, the man says nothing. He pauses, standing over you, unmoving.
Then he laughs.
It is a terrible thing to witness—such laughter in a place like this. It is a laughter like shattering glass, like kicking in the window of a church. You cannot possibly fathom what you said to amuse him like this, but it makes you think that maybe your speculation regarding his position wasn’t so far-fetched.
“Why, yes, I suppose I am,” he answers. The Doctor has a way about him, you think, that reminds you of a cat toying with a mouse. “One way or another, that is.”
You can almost hear him inventorying the cruel instruments.
Scalpel, forceps, clamps.
“What... what is it you want with me?”
Scissors, chisel, bone saw.
The Doctor smiles pleasantly. “Nothing to be so worried about.” He raises a scalpel and examines the way the small blade glistens in the light. “Are you afraid?”
The last thing you want, really, is to admit your vulnerability to this man, though it is clear that you hardly have a chance of defending yourself, as you are tied down to the operating table. He’s playing with me, you think, that’s all it is. But I can’t stop him. You settle for not answering.
He meets your gaze and you cannot help but look away. There is something dark and horrible lurking in those eyes of his, something that you fear will jump out and tear your throat to pieces if you dare maintain eye contact. The Doctor’s shark-like grin widens.
Finally, the reality of the situation hits you. You’ve known it for the entirety of the time that you’ve spent here, you think, but you hadn’t truly realized.
I am going to die here. I am going to join the eternal cacophony of shrieks. I am going to wander these halls until the end of time.
Adjusting the glaring lamp that hovers above where you lie, The Doctor looks down at you and truly sees you. This will be the last time. You know it is not long until he ceases to view you as a person. You know he probably already has. “Surely you’d prefer to do this the way that is easiest for both of us.”
All of your reflexes scream to run, fight, do something. You want to lash out like a wild, cornered animal.
It’s futile, you remind yourself. But it isn’t your voice in your head anymore.
The Doctor tilts his head at you. You assume it is mock-sympathy plastered on his still-smiling face. Given what you've heard—and now what you've experienced—you find it rather difficult to imagine any genuine empathetic emotions from the man. "If it is any consolation to you, you never would have been a significant part of anything greater before now. A snowflake in a blizzard. Now, however…" He places the scalpel against your midsection, just below your chest. Your breath rattles in your lungs. "This sacrifice will memorialize you."
You open your mouth to protest, or to plead so desperately that your throat bleeds. You do not know which of the two would have emerged, because the breath is torn out of you by the burning, agonizing pain sliding down your torso.
For a moment, all seems quiet. There is only you, that awful artificial sun, and the wolf standing over you as he ponders the most interesting way to disembowel you. Then your ears stop ringing. You are back in your body, that form you can feel being torn apart at the seams.
It takes all of your effort to draw in your deepest breath yet. You grow dizzy at the suffocating taste of the air entering your throat.
The Doctor sighs, but does not hesitate in his actions. Having gone through the motions time and time again, he knows what is coming.
And so there you are, in only one room of many, inside a kaleidoscope, a mirror reflected back at itself tenfold, and you are shrieking, pleading with Death to take you, to tear you out of that place and let it all be over.
He does not. You know he will not. He raises the scalpel and it is bloodied.
A recruit down the hall tilts her head towards the most recent minute addition to the symphony. She imagines the conductor lifting his hands over the din, inviting a new player into the song. In her mind’s eye, he is covered in more gore than seems possible for a human to contain.
The recruit turns away and returns to her task. To look too closely into the perpetual carnage of The Doctor’s work is to give your entrails to the man with your own hands.