supernova (11th doctor)

The Beast Below (pt 2) / Area 51 (pt 2)

I was pacing back and forth in a white room for about three minutes when the door finally opened. In walked my best friend Meredith and Professor Zodiac with stoic looks on their faces as they sat on the two chairs on the other side of the equally white table. I glared at them in disbelief as they pulled out their clipboards and began setting up the lie detector as professional as ever.

You'd think that with how worried and relieved Dylan had been to see me back, everyone else would react the same way. You'd think they would make me out to be the victim, but of course, this is America. So instead of first being sent to get a medical exam and make sure I was alive and okay and had only one heart, I was trapped in the interrogation room like some kind of criminal. Even worse, my best friend and my mentor were the prosecutors. 

This is Area 51 we're talking about. Weird stuff happens everyday, but there is never a constant. I had no clue what type of questions they would ask me, and I was worried that I had to lie. Not because of the polygraph machine, though. During my training, I was taught how to beat those machines, so why they went through all the effort to bring it out really beats me.

No, what I was really worried about was having to lie to two out of the four people in my life. Or in my... more normal life. In all honesty, I didn't work with or pay much attention to any other coworkers, because they always seemed to shun me no matter how hard I tried to be nice to them. Many of them had been sheltered from the outside world since the 80s, so sometimes it was just hard to communicate on the same level. I wasn't used to having only four friends, either. I had plenty of friends in high school, and one best friend named Deevia, so when I was officially stuck here, I promised myself I would keep the friends I have and do anything for them. I never wanted to lie to them, but now, as I put my hand to my chest and felt two different heartbeats, I knew that I didn't really have a choice.

Oddly enough, that wasn't even the strangest part. The strangest part was that I still had my locket around my neck, and no one even looked at it. It was as if it was invisible, even though I could touch it and see it. I stared down at the glowing crystal, with my hand still over my chest, and wondered if I could go back if I pressed the crystal again.

So as I stood leaning against the wall, glaring at my best friend and mentor with arms crossed, I knew that I had a research project now. And for the first time in my life, the American government didn't officially issue it to me. This was a personal thing I had to find out. Both worlds felt real, but I knew that I had to get back to the Doctor and save the star whale while also clearing my name here.

Although the nausea from landing in this universe earlier had subsided, I still really did feel like I had a headache.

I narrowed my eyes at Meredith and Zodiac, but they still didn't look up. "Are you kidding me?" I tried, but they refused to look up from the polygraph machine and clipboards. "What am I here for? What did I do wrong?" I asked, but they still kept working and ignoring me, Zodiac typing away on a small tablet, and Meredith writing with her trusty pen that had some fluffy cotton-candy pink fuzz at the end, bouncing everywhere as she continued jotting things down.

I thought for a moment before moving from my spot against the wall and sitting in the chair across them on the other side of the table. I wasn't going to play the victim here, I was going to play the Area 51 researcher I was.

"Mer, how long was I gone?" I asked her, hoping that my nickname for her would catch her attention.

Thankfully, it did, and she looked up at me through the top of her bright pink square reading glasses. "So you know that you were gone?"

I gulped, looking into her eyes in fear. Meredith had always been the warm and playful girly older-sister type. She was shy, and about the sweetest girl I knew. Now she was really interrogating me with a cold look in her eyes that I've never seen before.