Aaron had spent the past few minutes sat at his desk, hands clasped, forehead resting upon them. His desk was clean now; all of the paperwork previously cluttering it had been angrily swept off, then carefully picked up, sorted and archived afterward. He glared at the mirror on his desk, tired eyes looking back at him. He wanted to scream, sleep, cry, [i]hit something[/i]. There was still a dent in the wall, behind a picture frame now, from the last time the General had pulled his little trump card on Aaron. Since then, Aaron had decided that as a doctor, he needed his hands to be in good shape and thus had taken to other methods of calming himself after Genzken was out of earshot. 

He had a gift, that Genzken. No one before him or since had ever enraged Aaron to the point of publicly displaying it, much less to the point of violence, but the man had a knack for it. 

Voices outside his office alerted him to the now-customary ranting session which normally followed such visits. Grateful for the chance, he moved to the lab, leaning on a cabinet as Klaus said his piece. 

[i]“Sounds to me like he wants weapons.”[/i]

[i]“Weapons? We don’t even know what the black hole is. How on earth-“[/i]

This went on for a moment before Aaron had the heart to intervene. 

“He wants to begin human trials,” he stated, voice flat, eyes distant. “I uh, I think he wants us to artificially implant the same abilities we’re experiencing into his soldiers. Says it’s ‘invaluable’. [i]Arschloch.[/i]” His voice held no small amount of acid.

He was silent for a moment, wringing his hands before he continued, voice rising as he spoke. “The [i]saukerl[/i] wants to test this thing on human beings! I don’t even know what it can do! [i]You[/i] barely know what it can do! And he has the [i]gall-[/i]” 

Aaron freed himself from his perch, pacing aimlessly around in his ire, “-to threaten me! To [i]demand[/i] results! We can’t even begin to control our own damn selves and he thinks he can use it as a [i]weapon?![/i]” His eyes flashed to Mat, a concoction of fear and anger twisting his expression. 

Mathis got the message. He was familiar with the General’s particular form of leverage. 

Aaron whipped off his lab coat, throwing it to the ground. The skin on his hands and lower arms had become transparent, providing a fascinating display of the anatomy of the human arm. He was pulled from his rant, momentarily entranced by the sight. He could see the hundreds of nerve endings like crowded roots in his fingers, see his pulse as it rushed through his veins, observe as his tendons drew taught as he moved his fingers, and the incredible complexity of the opposable thumb. For a long moment, he simply watched, wide-eyed and entranced. 

After that moment, his skin grew steadily opaque once again, leaving the doctor yearning for more time. With a deep, calming breath, he picked up his lab coat and hung it on a hook, mumbling something along the lines of, “I’m a doctor, damn him…” 

After that episode, Mathis found it in himself, as he so commonly did, to dissipate the tension. “Hey, why don’t we all just forget about it for the day?” He grinned widely, encouraging the others to do the same.  "He’ll still be full of hot air and khaki when we get back from, say, a couple drinks and a well-deserved night off, won't he?”

Aaron couldn’t help but agree. God only knew, if there was anything in the world he could have used at the moment, it was a drink.