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paingoes · 8 days

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Destroyer

Medical Conference

hi guys um. i cant stop writing destroyer. i swear ill figure out a system to organize these “bonus” chapters soon i promise i promise

delta is eighteen in this but the chapter delves into abuse he experienced when he was a child so cw for that

(Content: living weapon whumpee, lab whump, medical whump, put on display, dehumanization, conditioning, noncon drugging, needles, non-consensual/nonsexual nudity, noncon touching, physical abuse, emotional whump, angst, child abuse, child death mention, parental whump?)

“I forgot, sir,” Delta tried weakly. He knew as soon as he said it that he should’ve just kept quiet.

“No, you didn’t. You’re going to lie about it as well?” Dr.Martino shut down the attempt, focusing his attention back to the device.

Delta laid down unmoving against the steel table as the scanner searched over him. It gave him mild electric shocks each time it passed. Of course, he hadn’t been looking forward to the diagnostic tests. But he hadn’t been trying to get out of it entirely. That wouldn’t have worked. He only wanted more time to psych himself up for it. Too long, apparently. He’d had to be collected for it. It’d been a bad note to start on.

The rest of the exam went on in silence, without anymore mention of his avoidance. As Delta redressed, he thought he might’ve been off the hook for it. Dr.Martino was fumbling though his desk drawers like he’d already left.

He produced two unopened packs of pencils from inside the desk. Delta deflated a little bit.

Delta took the pencils and arranged them in two rows along the floor, lined up flush against one another. Gingerly, he kneeled down on top of them.

“Hands behind your back,” the doctor said, leaning back in his chair.

Already there. He knew the drill. He lowered his head, silently counting. No longer than twenty minutes, usually. No fewer than ten.

When he looked up again, Martino was leaning back against the table, flipping through a folder.

“The ISCEM conference is coming up in a month,” he said offhandedly, as if this would mean something to him.

“Okay?” Delta answered, more in confusion than anything else. He hadn’t meant for it to be disrespectful.

Nevertheless, Dr.Martino’s shoe pressed down against his calf, driving the pencils further into his skin.

“Yes, sir,” he quickly corrected himself. The pressure disappeared. The pain stayed where it was.

“You were probably too young to remember the last one, weren’t you?” Dr.Martino sighed.

“Yes, sir.” He didn’t really think about it. He was pretty distracted by the numbness traveling down his legs.

“Well, put it on your calendar. Don’t want you forgetting again.”

“Yes, sir.”

He didn’t have a calendar.

“Mention the steady-state thing we discussed. I have files on it, I - is it too late to make a copy? I will. And if you could just please pass along a message for me, I would be ever so grateful,” Simon went on, fumbling through his own briefcase, trying to give what he could. Dr.Martino took the reports from him, flipping them around to see the equations he’d scribbled onto the back.

“You’re not coming? Sir?” Delta added the “sir” on as an afterthought, conscious of the doctor’s presence. Simon himself rarely demanded such formalities.

“Don’t interrupt,” Dr.Martino snapped, more tense than usual. But Simon obliged him, stepping a little closer.

“Not my scene.” Simon patted his head. It was soft, but Delta reflexively flinched away from any hands that drew too near to his face.

Something on the desk beeped. The transit had rafted up.

Delta held his wrists up easily as Martino presented the cuffs. They were psychic tech, meant to restrict his powers more than the collar already did. Presumably some kind of safety measure. He felt his world going flat as they clicked into place, all his spatial awareness reduced to a single field of view. The effect was extremely disorienting. He nearly fell over getting off of the table.

He’d mostly evened out by the time they’d gotten to the hotel. He sat idly against the chair he’d been placed in, watching the doctor unpack. Everything in the room was the same shade of beige.

It seemed like they should’ve been able to go. Martino abruptly produce a vial from the bag. Delta recognized it as a sedative. He inserted the syringe into it, drawing it back up.

“I’ll behave, sir,” Delta offered. He eyed the needle warily; he’d usually have been given something in the way of warning.

Martino shook his head. He took a firm grip of Delta’s arm.

“Believe me, this is for your own good.”

Delta tensed his arm up, holding still as the needle entered him. Something cold shot into his veins. It took a long time for the chamber to empty.

It hit him before they even reached the elevator. He clung to Martino’s arm, needing something to brace himself against, however briefly. Martino assured him he wouldn’t have to stand for long. They moved backstage at the panel. Delta nearly collapsed into the fold-up chair.

The cuffs were briefly removed as he was given the medical gown to wear. His hands moved slower than he would’ve liked, but he was able to put it on. It tied along the front, leaving much of his chest exposed.

Dr.Martino took a minute to make sure it was fitted correctly. He cursed, noticing for the first time the visible boot print against the side of Delta’s ribs.

“Great. They’re going to think I beat you.”

You do beat me, Delta thought. Not as much as he used to. Not as much as Paris. But Martino still hit him.

The doctor felt over the bruise with his hand, reigniting the pain. Delta winced. It was recent — still tender. The sedative helped a bit. All his thoughts were coming to him in a haze.

There was nothing that could be done to cover it, so apparently they were just going to ignore it. The cuffs came back on around his wrists. He led Delta out onto the platform regardless, sitting him up against the stool. It was had a back to it, luckily. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay upright without it. He’d been trained enough not to slouch or to look so outwardly high, but it was definitely a struggle to maintain neutrality. He kept his head down. It was the safest, the easiest to maintain for a long period. People gradually filed in. Though he was used to being put on display, the sterility and lack of decorum in this new space made the whole thing feel all the more jarring. It all felt far away, though.

His eyes closed without meaning to. When he tuned back in, Dr.Martino was droning on. He recognized some of the words. He would’ve recognized more if he wasn’t drugged. It was a talk about internal power generation. Conduits. There was a hand on his shoulder. Delta stood up from the chair. The gown was pulled down a bit from his shoulders.

Martino pressed the multimeter to his collarbones, watching the number climb until it broke. He pulled it away before it could burn up completely. He pressed a thin disk up against Delta’s chest, where it held there. It was some kind of controller. A thin arc of electricity emerged from it without any conscious intention on his part. More appeared, each of them branching away from his body like a plasma ball. The effect was immediate; that familiar fear crept into the eyes of the audience.

It cut all at once. The disk was removed. Delta sat back down on the chair, pulling the gown back up over himself.

The lights darkened. Behind him, a clip show began to play. He didn’t need to look back. He’d seen it plenty of times. Different explosions, annihilations, destructions. All his own work. He could recount each of them to the second. It played for a long time.

For some reason, they clapped when it was over.

“Sorry — do you mind if I look at it?”

Delta opened his eyes again, sensing the it in question. He tensed up.

He hated being touched. The moderator stripped the gown back again. He felt the electric pulse still going about Delta’s clavicle. His hands traveled around the collar.

“I’m biomedical by trade,” the man explained, tapping at the gold, “This is custom, yes? When was it made?”

“The model’s about five years old. It gets updated about once a year.”

“Incredible. I see some scarring, though.”

Delta shivered as the fingers traced the burn scars by his neck, a bit on his trapezius. They were in the shape of a Lichtenberg figure.

“That seems non-optimal?”

“Those actually predate the collar. They’re a natural result of it overextending itself during an exercise. The restrictor works as a stopgap to prevent that kind of burnout.”

Though he’d expected it, it still jarred Delta just how easily Martino slipped back into calling him it.

Another scientist approached. She slid up to Martino, shaking his hand eagerly.

“Oh, darling.” He embraced her. She grinned, readjusting her jacket as they pulled away.

“Danny, it’s been ages. How are the girls?” Her nails clicked together.

Danny. The girls. Martino actually had a family. Not that he ever saw them. He had daughters. They’d been kids, the one and only time Delta had ever met them. They had to be in their twenties by now.

“Brats, the lot of them. They’re smart, though. Smarter than I was at their age.”

“Well, that’s not saying much.”

Delta was not surprised when her hands traveled onto him. He barely flinched this time. But he hadn’t expected her to speak to him.

“Oh, and look at you. You’re all grown up now, huh?”

She gripped his chin in between her fingers, studying his face. The touch wasn’t harsh, nor was it gentle.

“You probably don’t remember me.”

That was correct. Her face was vaguely familiar, but he could find no memories to attach to it.

“He’s a bit distant at the moment. You’ll have to forgive him,” Martino answered for him.

She released her grip, turning her attention back to the doctor. Even in his current state, it didn’t take him long to put it together. She’d been one of the teachers at the Institute. He wondered how many of them were wandering around out there now. Most of them. Dr.Martino had been the only one to retain some semblance of his position. All the other administrators had been cast away just the same as the students.

He had forgotten nearly every one of their names.

Martino packed up the last of the day’s display materials, arranging all of it back into the suitcase. It’d been a success, as far as these things go. He’d revealed all he could without breaching the terms of his contract. All the real science was under a strict NDA. It was nice to catch up with some colleagues, though. It was healthy to be off of a spaceship every once in a while.

He tugged Delta’s sleeve, pulling him up from the plastic chair. He took a minute to undo the cuffs; he’d thought they were an excessive measure to begin with and they had prevented any real show of power. Delta rubbed idly at the marks they had left there.

They made their way back up to the hotel room. The drug had not yet worn off; Delta still stumbled a bit when he walked. He’d redressed himself in a thick hoodie, trying to keep out the chill from the overactive AC or perhaps just trying to hide.

The door opened. Martino dropped his suitcase onto the bed. Presumably out of habit, Delta lowered himself to the floor, kneeling there. Waiting for instructions, as if he could have followed them. Martino scoffed.

“You can sit on the bed. I booked a double room for a reason.”

He watched the whole minute it took for his words to sink in. The way it took even longer for Delta to actually rise, blearily climbing up onto the mattress. His hands gripped searchingly across the blanket, pulling up the edges like he needed something to hold onto.

Martino ignored him. He moved to the far side of the room and opened the door to the balcony. The city skyline was clearly visible just down the road. The lights from it shone brighter than the stars from space. Martino produced one of the foreign cigarettes from its packet. The ember burned in the dark night. It was all quiet.

“What was I like when I was little?”

He turned to look at Delta. The kid was drugged out of his mind. He might’ve given him too much.

Dr.Martino took a long drag. He rarely smoked, so used to the endless sterility that he would not so much as dirty the air. But tonight was a rare night.

“What were you like?” He ashed the cigarette, turning back to look at the night skyline. “I don’t remember.”

Delta looked down, disappointed. He pulled the blanket tighter around himself. Martino sighed, losing the battle.

“…You were quiet. Same as you are now. You mostly kept to yourself.”

He gave no visible reaction.

“You didn’t get along so well with the other kids,” Martino admitted, some disdain entering his voice.

Delta looked up. His expression was totally blank.

“Why do you hate me?” he asked.

It was manipulative, and self-pitying in a way that did not flatter him. Martino put the cigarette out. He stepped back into the room.

Delta shrank back a bit. The doctor looked him over. His eyes had dimmed some, no doubt due to the sedative. His hands were unbloodied. Just looking at him, no one would have know what he’d done. Martino remembered the sound of bones snapping and the bodies out in the yard. He remembered the expression Delta had worn the first time he’d killed — as blank and unfeeling as the one he wore now. He did hate him, he supposed. He’d never been his favorite. All his favorites had been buried a long time ago.

He didn’t say that. He remembered his lines — and he cursed himself for ever diverging from them, even for a second. He would correct it now.

“There is no you.”

Delta opened his mouth as if to object, then thought better of it. Good.

“No more talking tonight,” Martino said.

Delta nodded, laying down onto the mattress. He fell asleep with all the lights on.

…………

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