Ian gave a sigh as he looked at the modified operating table. the subject had been removed from it, and the gurney that held it on it's anti-grav runners slid silently out the doors and they closed with a final hiss, as the room began to equalize the pressure.
He looked at his hands, and saw the blood staining them. it was colored dark, as if it had come from a corpse that had been long dead, enough to where it had stopped emitting foul odors. His cybernetics plugged and chipped into his brain and nervous system were keeping him calm, microdosing him with chemical compostions to keep him from losing his nerve. But this was the first time Ian wanted to truly be afraid, becuase he knew the blood wasn't real. He could feel the sticky, wet gruel of life soaking his hands under neath his sleeves and gloves, despite them being made out of hydrophobic material. His gaze didn't watch his hands though. His skin told of the blood on his hands, but his eyes viewed the blood on the table.

It pooled and coalesced akwardly, as if it still thought it pulsed within a body that needed it. As if listening in on his thoughts, it beagn to thrash more urgently, but drowsily, it's panic counter productive, as it expended it's non-life faster. Slowly he recalled the screams he had heard while the subject was still at the table, primal, shrieking screams of someone completely lost and afraid, with nothing to calm them. He closed his eyes tightly, and let a small shiver run around him.
"SURGEON GENERAL IAN!""
The shout ripped him from his cowardly reverie, and he stumbled to attention trying to suppress the sudden fright. "Sorry sir, it's just that the operation was tiring."
The array of storyt high screens projected into the air as holograms held faces of the elite of the governing forces, the army, the navy, and even certain individuals of high repute. One was frowning at him. His head was bald, and it looked as if some form of acid had been slathered onto his head.

High Supreme Admiral Froxworth gave a grunt at Ian's explanation for his odd inactivity. "You've one more question before we dismiss you Surgeon General." Some figures turned there heads away as if uncomfortable with that idea. Only four held their eyes locked towards Ians. The doctor felt a pit open up in his stomach. Years later he would find it would never be filled. "Can this operation be carried out with at least 15% success rate?" Some faces on the screen looked shocked and horrified at the Admiral's words. Ian numbly lowered his head and stared at his hands, the blood gone, from both the table and his hands.
"Sir, with all respect, the operations have a 100% chance of success if proper funding and infrastructure is in place for the operations." He paused and looked up, folding his arms behind his apron. Some faces lost thier horrified expressions and hope began to dawn on them.

Froxworth sucked his breath in with relief. "You have a month to prototype hardware and tech for this project. You have a another three months to prove to me that this one works, and if that is all sucessful, you will be cleared for funding and whatever means you need to continue the project. " He held ian's eyes level with him. "Just remember son, if this goes under, every single last one of us, goes under and extinction with the last sad tale of our species. You are dismissed."
Ian pulled his gloves off and avoided looking at the table as he collected his tools. The screens began to disappear until he was alone with his gloves and apron tossed into a recycling bin, and his glasses being washed under the mobile sink next to the operating table.
He could still smell blood. He was sure of it. The damp warm smell of liquid life felt stained into his nostrils, and he was sure it would never dull, always a sharp scent to haunt him. he had never been religious, but he knew he was damned.

Elara sighed as he looked at the to-do list for the day. The first item was to board a starship to deliver her to her new posting, supposedly a research station where her expertise was needed. She didn't know what it was, but there weren't many places where psionic research and theory experts were in demand. Most of the time her mother claimed she wasted her college years learning to be a psionic yoga instructor. The trip was absurdly long. Almost four weeks of travel, even aboard one of the fastest classes of ships in the galaxy. Elara did not like travel through space, but the lucrative offer for her expertise was enough to jump on a Sovereignty ship and do as she was told. She tossed the tablet away and told the house AI to start warming up a shower ot wash her clothes. Lord knew she needed clean clothes on a spacer vessel.

She regretted every minute aboard that ship. She began to have suspicions about it's true intent, when every other scientist and engineer aboard the ship bound for the same destination held different degrees in different fields. Marly was a military engineer who worked on weapon testing. Jamison was a navy Biopsyker who had extensive in-the-field experience, as he was happy enough to dead-panly recount every surgery he had to perform to date. Almost none of them had anything in common. Half of them weren't native to the Hades Tau sector. Add that to her fear of space travel, and she was not a happy camper. She was almost happy enough to run down the ramp and give a kiss to the terra firma when they landed, but when she looked up, gun barrels pointed sternly at her, and all wround were soldiers awaiting them. She began to believe that maybe her mother had been right after all.

Ian looked over all of the seated personnel that he had recruited, blackmailed, or forced to arrive at Research Station. He had just given his speech expecting them to work diligently and effectively, and was now waving them off to let them find their quarters and tour the station. He still rubbed his hands, trying to dissipate his dread. he filed out of the room, ignoring the stares, hostile, curious, or confused, and began to unscrew the cap off his grandfather's hip flask. He was tired, and wanted to rest. Or maybe, he just wanted to forget, and dwindle into his own little corner of oblivion. One of them, Elara, had a funny look on her face as he walked past her. It wasn't afraid, or angry. He mused as the alcohol did it's work. What did one expression matter in the end.

Elara began to dread waking up every morning on the clock. it began with a beeping to stir her from rest, and then a guard would bring her the manifesto for the day with her breakfest. The food wasn't terrible, or bad in anyway, and it was one of the solaces she took in the research station. Then she would head to her lab to begin her day at work. Mostly simple theory of psionic manifestion, controlling it, negating it, but some days the formulas stayed for weeks on the board until they were solved and neatly recorded before being replaced with another. But yesterday she had heard screams. Screams that shook her from a pleasant dream. It was as if she been minding her own business, and then a cry for help that tried to alert her. Everyone else seemed on edge. Jamison, who been the most lively of them all, now refused to speak to anyone, unless they were a guard, or Head Researcher Ian Grouly. There was something wrong, and she had the sinking feeling that she was helping in it.

"Come in." Ian answered as he poured two ice cubes into a glass. There was another set out politely, already poured and prepared. He had expected the company.
The head of his department of psionic theory opened the door and entered. Elara had made leaps and bounds within these walls, and in the outside world, she would recieve many an award after the research was published for all.
"Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Sir" He nodded politely and indicated the drink. He stood and looked out to the planet's horizon behind his office, admiring the soft green fog rolling tortuously through a mountain range.
Elara gratefully sat down and took the drink in one hand. With a moment of hesitation, she began to gulp it down.
Ian chuckled. "There are not many who down that kind of liquor around here. Old Fred's No. 56 White will put most anyone through a wild ride.
Elara put the glass down, now empty and paused.
"I know you have questions, please ask them. You deserve an answer.

"What are we exactly doing sir?" Elara began. "All over the Sovereignty's sectors, you've found the best and brightest in all theri fields, and they're all working here. It's an honor, but lately..."
"You've been having dreams."
Elara nodded slowly.
"And you've deduced that they are the result of psionic phenomena and not anything else."
She frowned "How-?"
"Your friends were not incredibly inconspicuous when testing the food, and enviroment for possible poison or gas products that could explain your dreams."
Elara began to feel fear run through her, but curiosity pushed her bravery forward.
"So you know what you're doing."
Ian looked at his hands, and rubbed them again, as if he was cleaning them. "Yes."
"What are you doing?" She half whispered.

Ian studied his hands. his cybernetics were hard at work, trying to suppress the memories of the event so long ago now it seemed. But they were fruitless. Blood still stained his front, and his hands. All he could was wait for it to go away, or try to wash it off. It never came out.
"Scientists like you are credited with building, with additions to our wonderful lives, and to anyone who can benefit." He gave up trying to wipe it away and took another drink from his glass. "But there are those who are opposite. Most of the time you wouldn't call them Scientists by my description. I don't."
Elara's confusion was still evident, but she listened along, captive to his words.
"What if to win this fight, this struggle, this incoming unstoppable end, you don't add to it."
"What if you create something that takes, and takes, and takes, and takes until nothing is left."

He sat down and watched as the blood slowly receded. Elara had always been confused by his odd actions with his hands. They probably had it explained as a psychosomatic injury. maybe they weren't half wrong.
"What happens when you need warriors, soldiers." Elara leaned back and gripped the arms of the chair, her fingers tense and rigid.
"You don't send a man who has everything, becuase they will lose everything."
His eyes slowly drooped until he looked at the floor in shame.
"You strip everything from them. Life, family, love, even their ability to continue forward in this physical realm. You take their hope, and take away their ability to fear anything."
"You don't stop taking and takin and taking until they are nothing in every sense."
he looked up, errant tears running down his face. He could feel the wet damp blood on his hands again.

"Because once they are nothing, they will do anything." He spoke, the disgust in his tone directed at himself. "They shatter crowns, they will defile and murder gods. They will dip their hands so willingly and happily into blood and slaughter until you give them but a glimmer of what they were."
"Because that is what they need. Anything, even one thing, that they cannot have."
Elara's face had gone pale and her breath was held.
"You ask for a god to save you. You don't ask for him to lift you out of your troubles."
Ian leaned back in his chair and looked at the celing.
"You deal with the devil, so that the foe has an adversary that not even God could overcome."

-Fin

Aliens come to the planet. Only those who didn't attack were spared. Only America and North Korea were destroyed. North Korea didn't put up much of a fight. Those that surrendered were given the opportunity to send their inhabitants to space with the aliens, and those that stayed neutral received nothing. On each of the surrendered countries, a facility was designated in each city with more than 1 million citizens. In those facilities, they take tests of strength, agility, wit and intelligence. Once a person completes three of these tests, they are given a coloured jumpsuit (depending on which tests they completed) and are able to take the elevator to a waiting ship, which then brings them to the mother ship.

One person who had completed the Agility, Wit and Intelligence tests was given a purple jumpsuit and sent into the mothership, which was sorted into sections depending on what colour you were wearing and therefore what job you would have. Those with mostly Strength and Agility were trained to be soldiers and wore red. Those with mainly Wit and Intelligence were put to work coming up with new ideas for the aliens to bring to reality. Those with wit and Agility were trained to work alongside the soldiers.

I don't know where I'm going with this. (As you may have heard, I can't finish stories)

*applause*
Kudos to you two

How about my story though?

If I had a dream like that, I'd never be able to sleep again
Doctor, you should write a book