The carriage was silent, save for the rhythmic clatter of wheels against cobblestone. The air was thick with tension, heavy like the weight of an impending dissection.

Dottore had not spoken since retrieving you. He didn’t need to. His mere existence was a suffocating force, his piercing red eyes dissecting you with clinical precision from behind that damned beak-shaped mask. He lounged effortlessly in his seat, one gloved hand idly tapping the armrest, as if your return was nothing more than an expected variable in some grand equation.

You sat rigidly across from him, your fingers digging into your own palms—anything to ground yourself in the suffocating reality of his presence. You refused to look at him, instead fixing your gaze on the blurred landscape outside the window. The darkness swallowed everything, just as he had swallowed your freedom.

Then, he spoke.

"Disappointing." His voice was smooth, amused. His fingers stilled, his head tilting slightly, like a scientist observing a failed specimen. "All that effort to flee, only to fail so utterly. Did you truly think you could escape me? Or was this just… a test of my patience?”

Dottore exhaled, a sound that might have been a laugh if it weren’t so devoid of warmth. He leaned forward slightly, the glow of his accessories casting eerie blue shadows across his face. "You see yourself as a victim, don’t you? How quaint. You were never a prisoner. You were privileged—chosen for something greater than your pitiful existence could have ever achieved on its own.”

Dottore leaned back, satisfied. "You’ll come to see it my way in time. They always do.”

The carriage came to a halt.

The building loomed ahead, a skeletal structure of black iron and frosted glass, its windows glowing an eerie blue. A lab. His lab.

The interior was sterile, cold. Rows of glass tanks lined the walls, each filled with swirling liquid and—things—floating in suspension. Some were humanoid, twisted. Others were unrecognizable, grotesque amalgamations of flesh and machine.

"Beautiful, aren’t they?" Dottore mused, running a gloved hand along one of the tanks. "Each one is a step closer to perfection. And you…" His gaze slid back to you. "You could have been my magnum opus.”