Up a Tree (p.27)
The Doctor and Rory walked into the Zone for quite a while. The area in here was strangely clear, as if plants refused to grow, and yet it sported some of the largest trees they’d seen so far. No twisty trees though, which was rather worrying.
Rory looked behind them, at least there were no ghosts following them.
“Any idea yet what we’re going to find in here?” Rory asked as they walked up a dusty incline.
“No,” the Doctor said as they crested the rise. They stopped. “But I didn’t expect that.”
In a dish shaped area beyond the rise they finally found the downed transport. And a black, obsidian complex of buildings rising into towers and onion domes.
It glowed like black glass. Squat to the ground, looking half buried, gleaming spires rising up like spears. A block of windowless structures completely at odds with the natural area surrounding it.
The downed transport had crashed into the building, knocking one corner of it to rubble. One black onion dome lay shattered on its downed crystal column.
The vague sunlight scintillated through the building, gleaming in waves like oil on water.
Rory followed the Doctor down, scrambling to keep his purchase on the dusty slope. The Doctor strode eagerly forward, eyes darting everywhere, taking it all in.
“What is it?” Rory asked.
“A building,” the Doctor called back over his shoulder.
Rory huffed. “I can see that. What’s it doing here?”
The Doctor walked right up to the wall, face practically glowing with interest. He didn’t touch the surface, luckily, Rory didn’t trust anything they found here. But he did tilt his head back, the building was only about fourteen feet tall, although the spires at the odd corners made it look taller. It looked almost like a palace, or a temple. But colder somehow. Rory shivered, imagining what might be inside.
The Doctor walked up and down the line of the gleaming, swirling wall, squinting and peering in, as if trying to see through the glass.
Rory caught up with him and steered him back, away from it. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice. He looked up at the nearest spire and tilted his head. “You know,” he said. “I think those are solid.”
Rory stared at the dome, one hand still firm on the Doctor’s arm. The spire was built into the corner of the building, part of the integral structure, and jutted upward another twenty feet before swelling out into the pointed onion dome.
“If you say so,” he said, unwilling to get any closer to be sure. “The whole thing looks solid to me.” He couldn’t see any windows or doors, he couldn’t even see any mortar cracks or places where blocks fit together, it seemed to be all one seamless edifice.
“Fascinating...” The Doctor started dragging him heedlessly closer, Rory dug his heels in.
“Let’s check on the transport first,” he said, feet shuffling in the dust, the Doctor’s unexpected strength dragging him along like a fish on a reel. “We did come here looking for survivors, remember?” he said, practically.
The Doctor turned to look at him, the blank look of fascination clearing to a more conscientious, aware expression. “Yes. Quite right. People might need our help.”
-----
The transport, not much more than a personal shuttle, had crashed through the line of jungle trees then slammed into a corner of the building, knocking one whole corner off in a pile of rubble and sending one onion dome rolling away to lay like a giant battered bowling ball thirty meters from its starting point.
The transport hadn’t fared well, crumbled, scratched, gouged, its undercarriage ripped out, it had come to rest at a drunken slant on the pile of black glassy rubble it had knocked off the building. The nose plowed into the soil.
They found their first survivor before they even cleared the corner of the building.
“Poor soul,” Rory said. He stared down at the ripped and tattered coverall, its chute harness still clasped around a ribcage of grey bones.
The entire body had been stripped clean, almost looking like it had disintegrated where it lay. Rory knelt to examine it. He looked up and down the long length, it was still wearing its boots. The skull lay sideways but unattached at the top of the spine. He reached down and compared the size of his hand to the outsplayed skeletal hand emerging from the sleeve. He accidentally brushed against a pinkie bone, which rolled to the side with a muted clatter. He guiltily rolled it back into place.
“Adult male by the look of it.” He looked up at the Doctor. “What could do this so fast? The transport only went missing a week ago.”
The Doctor shook his head and looked around, keeping a nervous lookout. Rory looked over his shoulder at the black building. It looked no more inviting from this angle, the walls weren’t square here, like the front, but sort of star shaped, a tower at each point. Black, opaque, oily. He shuddered.
“Let’s check the ship,” the Doctor said, shifting his shoulders at the chill wind that seemed to blow through the bowl.
They found the ship wasn’t just canted up on rubble, but on a collection of the large boulders that littered the area. Several huge trees ringed the complex on the other sides of the bowl, casting even more shade, the light seemed to come down out of a murky haze, as if through a black veil.
Rory looked up uncomfortably, he expected to see bats flying overhead, but it was just the light. He decided it must be some sort of refraction from the black glass of the building. He didn’t like it.
They searched the ground leading up to the crashed ship, looking for any more bodies. There were a few more clumps of weeds and some bushes down here, more ferns further on. But they reached the ship without finding anything.
The Doctor stood on tiptoe and looked into the cockpit. Miraculously, the glass of the cockpit window had somehow survived intact.
“See anything?” Rory asked, watching the Doctor squinting in through a low corner, hands shading his eyes.
“Nothing, no bodies anyway. Let’s try the door.” They climbed up the shifting black rubble to the hatch, it had warped in its frame, the bottom virtually torn out with the undercarriage. The Doctor turned the wheel with a rusty squeal, more from warping than rust, and tried to yank it open.
He stretched up on his toes, but couldn’t get any leverage. “Try pulling on it down there,” he instructed Rory, lower on the scree. Rory wedged his fingers in the warped bottom corner and pulled, managed to wiggle the door in its frame while the Doctor turned harder on the wheel.
A shadow fell over Rory, he looked up.
A treecat stared down at him. It crouched on top of the shuttle. Yellow eyes, blue-black hide mottled with green spotted circles, like something poisonous. Teeth the size of butcher knives, as silent as a Trelwin.
“Rory, pull,” the Doctor said testily, still struggling obliviously with the door. Rory squeaked, the cat leapt. Rory screamed.
The cat knocked him away from the ship, down the rubble, rolling onto the dirt. He rolled up, scrabbling for his machete. The cat knocked it out of his hand with one huge clawed paw.
“Rory!” The Doctor leaped to his side and threw a handful of dirt into the cat’s face. It wasn’t as large as the first treecat they’d seen, this one was smaller, and sleeker, black and green, meant to hide in the shadows, like a panther, but still twice as large as a lion.
“Run!” the Doctor yelled, pushing Rory to the side.
“Where to?!”
“The ship, I got the door open!”
The transport hatch gaped open like salvation. Rory sprinted, the Doctor at his side. And the cat leapt, knocked the Doctor aside with a huge paw, and pounced on Rory, bearing him to the ground and biting at the back of his neck.
It was only his chute that saved him.
The cat thrashed, whipping him around by his harness, its mouth full of parachute silk. The puffy flap at the back of his vest had ridden up, fortunately protecting his neck against the sharp scratch of teeth.
-----
“Rory!” the Doctor screamed. The treecat had him pinned, yanking at his back, looking like it was getting ready to drag him away and feast on him.
The Doctor jumped forward and grabbed its tail, he yanked and twisted, the cat threw back its head and yowled silently, it whipped its head back at him, striking like a tiger. The Doctor kept hold of the tail and was dragged around out of range of the teeth. The cat kept circling, the Doctor with it, he held on doggedly, whipping around, legs flailing, on one revolution he managed to get his toe under Rory’s machete and kick it to him.
“Rory! Catch!”
Rory rolled over, heart thumping at his near death experience, and scrambled for the knife. The Doctor twisted the cat's tail again, earning another silent yowl and snarl, and steered the circling, snatching cat toward the shuttle.
“Inside! Quick!”
Rory stared at the transport, stared at the Doctor circling closer, then lunged forward and slashed at the treecat’s face with his machete. He sliced a line across its nose, it yowled silently and turned to confront Rory. The Doctor let go and he and Rory both bolted for the shuttle.
They dove inside and turned and kicked the door shut. The cat hit the door with a resounding thud. Shrill screeches reverberated through the stale air of the shuttle as the cat clawed furiously at the door. The Doctor held the wheel lock in place to prevent the cat accidentally catching it and turning it open.
“Find something to jam this with!” he said, sweat staining his neck and floppy hair as the wheel jerked under his arms, the shuttle shuddering under the blows.
Rory climbed farther into the doomed shuttle, looking for something to bar the door.
-----
He came back with a six foot long piece of wall reinforcement edging, one big, black paw was clawing up under the warped bottom corner of the door, wrenching at the hatch, he slammed it with the rod. It jerked back.
He and the Doctor wedged the bar crossways into the flywheel and stood back. The wall shuddered, the wheel jerked, but the bar held.
“I think you’d better come see this,” Rory said.
The Doctor looked up at his tone. Rory led him back into the ship, the bottom of the transport had been virtually ripped out, leaving a tilted floor of rocks and debris, fortunately no holes large enough for the cat to get through. Although the shadows that passed in front of the gaps showed it was stalking them outside. Rory suppressed a shudder.
He pushed open an inner door with a screech, and nodded his head in. Inside were two more clothed skeletons, a woman, and what looked like a ten year old child. It looked like they had tried to barricade themselves in. They were huddled in a corner, skeletons half crumpled against the wall.
As they watched, a fat red ant, as long as Rory’s thumb, crawled out of the woman’s boot. Rory jumped, then promptly stamped on it. He and the Doctor backed out quickly, wrestling the door closed behind them, the Doctor grabbed a seat cushion off of the eating area behind them and crammed it under the gap at the bottom of the door, he and Rory kicking it under firmly with their boots, scuffing dirt over it to fill any cracks.
Rory’s heart was racing. He gulped at a dry throat. “I guess that explains what happened to the bodies.”
The Doctor nodded, hair flopping. “Nasty planet.”
Rory exhaled. “I guess we better see what else we can find.”
He and the Doctor checked the cockpit, which was in surprisingly good condition. There was no power, naturally. They decided to leave the equipment for Erik and Darvish to deal with. They continued on to the back of the shuttle, more of a one family camper van/personal airplane. The back end tilted up on the rubble, torn bulkheads, warped companionway, supplies and boxes tumbled every which way in the small hold.
“Doctor, look at this!” Rory pointed out through a porthole in the small exit ramp hatch. The Doctor squashed his face next to Rory’s in the glass.
“A hole!”
Outside, at the edge of the scree, a dark hole gaped in the broken corner of the building.
Suddenly the black treecat’s snarling face lurched at the port and they jumped back.
“Persistent, isn’t he?” the Doctor said. The cat scratched at the glass with a nails-on-chalkboard sound, but the door was solid.
The Doctor turned away. “I wonder if they have anything to eat in here?”
-----
Their reprieve didn’t last long.
Metal screamed as the tiger resumed raking its claws against the damaged shuttle door, determined to get at them, the whole transport lurched as the tree cat gained purchase. The door shrieked, and the reinforcing bar in the flywheel bent as the door started to wrench open.
Rory, a cracker hanging out of his mouth, and the Doctor ran in from the eating area and grabbed the flywheel, bracing their feet against the doorjamb.
There was a boom like lightning and the ground shook, a blinding flash of white light blasted through the porthole.
“What was that?” Rory asked.
-----
Rory woke up to the feeling of the Doctor patting his cheeks. “Come on, Rory, wakey, wakey!”
Rory grunted and coughed and shoved the Doctor’s hands away, the Time Lord beamed at him.
Rory sat up in the ruined hallway and looked around groggily, everything was silent. “What happened?”
“Don’t know,” the Doctor said. “You passed out.”
“The monster!” Rory grabbed for his ipod.
The Doctor shook his head. “No, this was something else.” He hauled Rory to his feet with one arm. “Come on, that flash came from the fence. We’d better go look.” He started to shove open the shuttle hatch door.
“Wait!” Rory grabbed his arm. “The cat!”
“It’s asleep.” The Doctor pointed through the porthole. Rory’s eyebrows beetled and he looked out through the hole. The cat lay sprawled outside, blue-black and green spots lightly undulating as it snored. He turned and gave the Doctor an incredulous look.
The Doctor tapped his ipod. “I had to modify this to wake you up.”
“It didn’t affect you?”
“Oh, well, I’m special.” The Doctor grinned and bounced on his feet.
-----
They snuck out of the shuttle, tiptoeing past the cat.
They ran worriedly back toward the fence, everything was silent. No birds sang, no rustlings of things in the trees, nothing.
They found the hunting party sprawled just inside the fence, the huge hump of a downed Herbivore behind them.
“Amy!” Rory yelled for his wife.
He and the Doctor skidded to a halt on their knees beside Amy and gently turned her over, her red hair spread out like spilled blood. Rory put his head to her chest. He let out a huge sigh. “She’s still breathing.”
He shook her lightly. No response. He tapped her cheek. “Amy? Amy!” he yelled. “What’s wrong?” he asked the Doctor.
The Doctor raised her eyelid with a thumb and checked her eyes. “Hmm.”
“What?” Rory looked at what he was looking at. Amy’s eyes were dilated and half rolled up.
“The same as you.” The Doctor dug in Amy’s pocket and pulled out his toolkit. He cracked her ipod open like a shell and started adjusting it. “Oh, that’s clever,’ he said, looking at the settings. “It must have sensed an incursion and increased the Alpha and Theta brainwaves. Probably used the natural emissions of the zone as a booster. It’s forced them all into a meditative state so deep they may as well be unconscious.” He looked around, checking, everyone seemed to be breathing.
“Then why are they waking up?” Rory asked, pointing.
The Doctor looked where Rory indicated. The crumpled white, brown, and dappled gray forms of the Trelwins were starting to stir.
“Huh.” He scratched his cheek. “They must have developed some sort of resistance over the millennia. That’s interesting.”
“Why didn’t it do this to us when we came in?” Rory asked, watching anxiously as the Doctor finished his tinkering and snapped the case closed.
The Doctor tapped the life support unit on his chest. “We’re invisible, remember?”
Amy groaned. Instantly all the Doctor and Rory’s attention reverted to her. She opened her eyes. “Oh, ow!” She rubbed the back of her head. “Did the monster get me again?” she asked.
“Again!” Rory exclaimed.
The Doctor left her to Rory and moved on to the others. He popped open the back of Erik’s ipod, then stopped and rooted in the Safari leader’s pockets. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and brandished it up with a “Hah!” then soniced the ipod.
Erik blinked surprisingly pretty eyes open at him. He looked at him in confusion, then saw the sonic in his hand. “What are you doing with that thing?” he demanded in a rough, gravelly voice, his hand going to his head.
The Doctor grinned at him. “Saving your life. You can thank me later.”
The Doctor jumped up cheerfully and went around quickly sonicing all the rest of the ipods. The Trelwins took up defensive positions around the recovering humans, watching for danger.
-----
It didn’t take long to wake everyone up.
“We found the crashed transport,” the Doctor reported to Erik and Darvish. “And something else, a building,” he nodded, “on the other side of that rise, there’s a bowl shaped depression in the land.”
“What the hell is a building doing out here?” Erik asked as all the other hunters climbed to their feet and righted their clothes and packs. He and Darvish kept half an eye on everyone as they listened to the Doctor’s report.
“I’m not entirely sure it is a building,” the Doctor said.
That brought their attention back to him.
“Explain,” Darvish said.
The Doctor scrubbed the back of his neck. “It looks solid, the spires aren’t towers, no internal stairs or structure, the damaged ones show them to be solid all the way through.”
“Why build towers if you can’t use them?” Erik asked.
“They may have a different use,” the Doctor suggested.
Darvish gave him a gimlet look. “What aren’t you saying?”
Amy and Rory straggled up to join them, Amy still protesting to Rory that she was all right.
“Have you told them about the survivors?” Rory asked, looking between the Doctor and the Safari leaders.
“Survivors?” Darvish’s interest perked up.
“I’m afraid there weren’t any. We found the bodies of a man, a woman, and a child. How many were there supposed to be?” the Doctor asked, his hands going into his pants pockets.
Darvish breathed out a rough breath. “Just the three.” He stabbed the point of his ax into the ground. “Damn.”
“I’m sorry.”
Darvish shook his head and waved it off. “It was always in the cards.” He reached up one long hand and rubbed at his forehead.
“So what do you think we should do about this building?” He pulled his hand down. “I certainly didn’t expect this ‘monster’ to live in a building,” he said wryly.
“We don’t know that it does, but it’s certainly an anomaly,” the Doctor said.
“Please don’t say, ‘let’s go poke it with a stick.'” Amy said.
“Well,” the Doctor said, bouncing on his toes. “There is a hole in the wall.”
-----
The hunters, apprised of the situation, angry and embarrassed, settled their earpods firmly, and started marching resolutely up the rise, weapons out, scanning for danger, determined not to be so easily overcome again. The Trelwins shambled along beside them, eyes twitching everywhere, as nervous as cats in a frying pan.
Suddenly all three Trelwin stopped, then suddenly bolted forward to the front of the group. They turned and put up their overlong arms, shoving large hands forward, as if they were trying to ward the hunters off. They stank of tar, and there was a feeling of desperate panic in the air.
“What are they...” Darvish turned to ask Amy. Then his eyes widened as a thick grey cloud rolled up over the lip of the rise.
It spilled slowly over the edge, self-contained, slowly billowing in on itself. Almost crawling across the ground.
The hair on Amy's nape stood up. "Oh my god, what now?" She grabbed Rory's arm and backed up.
This wasn't a normal weather phenomenon, it slid across the ground, almost as if it was searching. It looked like it would flow by past them, on the north, but abruptly it changed course, heading right toward them.
It wasn't blown by the wind, there was no wind.
"Incendiary bomb!" Darvish yelled. Eldon popped the cap on a grenade and lobbed it into the approaching mass. It exploded, fire blooming up in the cloud, licking at it, illuminating it from inside.
Despite Amy's expectations, there was no scream, not indication of life. The bomb left a scorched starburst on the dust as the cloud floated toward them, it was smaller, but not by much.
There was nothing to attack, guns and machetes were useless. "Flamethrower!" Erik yelled. "Again!" Darvish yelled after him. Jute cranked up his gun and stepped forward, swiping a long stream of flame back and forth over the front of the cloud. Eldon threw in three more incendiary grenades, one after the other. Each swipe and bloom of flame created a hiss of burning steam.
But the cloud only reduced slightly, its scattered streamers re-coalescing into the whole.
There was nowhere to run, no cover, and no time. The cloud kept sliding toward them, over the barren dust, like a hypercooled hockey puck. It stalked them as if it had intelligence. Bearing down.
“Retreat!” Darvish yelled.
"Scatter!" Erik bellowed.
They turned to run, and within three steps the cloud overtook them. It rolled over them, coiled around them, and seemed to clink. Amy felt her metal chute buckles suddenly seize up. Erik's second best gun snapped stuck to his harness, causing a misfire, everyone ducked, but their backpacks ruched up on their clips, cinching around ribs and groin, hobbling them.
Everyone’s hair stood straight up on their head, even Amy’s long hair flared out, making her look like exploded ketchup. Harnesses constricted around them, equipment stuck to each other, making it hard to move, the air pressed down, became heavier, their very muscles felt denser, weighted down, harder to move.
Moisture covered their skin, their tongues, their lungs.
Rory felt a chill pass over his brain, as if something touched him.
Then everyone’s ipods and life support units sparked out.
-----
Rory floated in the darkness, calm, quiet. The dark was soft, still, settling around him thick as concrete.
He could hear someone yelling but it didn’t seem to matter. He floated alone in the universe.
Suddenly the Doctor was in his head. “Wake Up!” Rapidly his furious voice became clearer. “I can hold the meditation wave at bay, but only for a few minutes. You’ve got to wake up!”
Rory opened his eyes to see the Doctor’s face right in front of him. “That’s it! Concentrate on me, Rory. Stand up!” The Doctor pulled his hands away from Rory’s temples and pulled him to his feet. Rory struggled upright, feeling like he wanted to do nothing but sleep, drowsiness dragging him down.
The Doctor grabbed him up by an arm and started waltzing him around in the dust, kicking at his feet to make them move. Rory stiffened in instinctive withdrawal.
“That’s it, stay awake. Concentrate.” Everyone else was down, collapsed around them like sheaves of wheat. The three Trelwin were huddled together looking terrified.
“Concentrate Rory!” The Doctor suddenly whirled him around in a neck cracking twirl. Rory turned and glared at the Time Lord. “What are you doing?!” he demanded in outraged dignity.
The Doctor kicked at his feet to keep him moving. “Keeping you awake. I need you to pay attention and do something for me.”
“What’s...” Rory’s head lolled, his eyes fluttered closed, blank limpness overtaking him.
“Rory!” The Doctor pinched him on the bum.
Rory jerked awake. “For God’s Sake, Doctor!” he cursed, galvanized.
“That’s it, stay awake. Pay attention. I need you to zone out.”
“What?” Rory glared at him, still being waltzed around like a marionette.
“When you watched over Amy for those 2,000 years, you must have learned the art of how to act without thinking, to just “be.” All those boring years locked in tombs and vaults, guarding, you’d go mad otherwise. Do that now. I need you, you’re the only one left who has a chance. I can’t keep waltzing you around forever. You’re heavy you know!”
Unfortunately, Rory understood exactly what he was talking about. “Stop.”
The Doctor stopped dancing him around and stood back. Rory felt the dragging drowsiness pull at him, weakening his knees. He looked down.
And just let it all go.
He looked back up, his face as calm as plastic. “What do you need?”
The Doctor grinned at him and clapped his hands. “Rory, you’re brilliant!”
He waved around at the safari group, all sprawled wherever they’d dropped. “The fog blew out all the ipods and support units. I should have altered the life support units too, made us all invisible, but I wasn’t thinking!” He smacked himself on the forehead. “There’s nothing more we can do for them now, until we get into that building and stop whatever’s doing this.” He looked up. “It’s just you and me now.” Rory stared at him calmly.
The Doctor scrubbed his hands over his face. He twirled a quick circle to make sure nothing else was sneaking up on them. Then he waved at Rory. “Help me move them together. We’ll have to leave them here, the Trelwins can watch over them.”
Rory didn’t argue. He simply walked over and picked up Amy, carried her over and lay her down beside Erik. The Doctor dragged Darvish over by the arms and laid him out. He apparently sent a thought to the Trelwins, they unhuddled, looked around nervously, then started dragging the others into the pile.
The Doctor wiped his hands off, looking at the helpless pile. Pickles and Jute, Bill and Eula were arrayed around the edges, looking disturbingly defenseless. The Trelwins took up positions on three sides of the pile of hunters. Looking outward, keeping watch. Shuffling, but determined.
The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck “That’s all we can do,” he muttered, almost to himself. They’d positioned Amy at the bottom of the pile, between Erik and Darvish, surrounded on all sides by the other hunters. “If we’re quick, nothing should happen to them,” he said, not very convincingly. He took one last look at the unprepossessing, skinny-limbed Trelwin crouched on all three sides, then turned resolutely away. “Come on.”
Rory leaned down and scooped up a machine gun one of the hunters had dropped. He saw the Doctor’s look.
“In case the cat is awake,” he said calmly, looping the strap over his head.
The Doctor nodded, but didn’t say anything else.
Fortunately, the cat was still asleep, sprawled by the open shuttle door. There was no sign of the fog. No sounds from the whole zone.
They climbed the pile of clattering rubble and debris, and inspected the hole they’d noticed earlier. It was partially blocked by a large rock. The Doctor set his shoulder to it and grunted. It didn’t shift. “Well, give us a hand!”
Rory slid his rifle to his back and pushed. Between them they dislodged the hundredweight stone and it rolled down into the building, crashing and bumping.
There was no response. No outcry. No snarl of monsters. Just echoes.
They crept inside.
Down the slope, into the dark. They finally found a level floor, somewhere below ground level. As they walked down the cracked corridor, they realized there was light coming from somewhere, filtering in dimly through the glassy obsidian walls.
The corridor seemed to lead in only one direction. There were no doors, like the outside it seemed to be completely seamless, solid.
A cracked archway opened at the end of the corridor, a crumbling false wall a few steps past it, light flickered beyond the edges.
They stepped out onto a floor of polished quartz, as they stepped from behind the wall Rory’s dispassionate gaze followed the quartz across a wide room, the crystal facets under their feet looked as if they extended far down into the earth.
The Doctor noticed the direction of his gaze. “It makes sense,” he whispered. “The zone is probably on top of a huge deposit of minerals, it’s what causes the electromagnetic currents.”
The Doctor clapped his hands and rubbed them briskly, beaming. “This is just what we need!” Rory looked up and followed the Doctor’s gaze. The walls were covered with equipment.
The Doctor leaped over, feet skidding on the floor, and bounded from panel to panel, examining everything. Burbling away with enthusiasm.
“If we can just find what controls the brainwave emanations we can shut down the meditation wave.”
Rory simply watched from beside the door, alert but calm. Clear as water. Not even surprised to find machinery in the middle of an alien jungle.
“Ah hah! Here!” The Doctor pulled a lever beside the far wall.
There was a horrendous grating sound, and the entire far wall started to rise. Stone grated on stone. The building trembled. Ancient stone knocked out of alignment by the shuttle crash protested the movement.
But the wall rolled upward, only an inch, scintillating multicolored light spilled out beneath, bringing the quartz floor beneath them alive with reflected rainbow colors.
The wall screeched and ground to a halt. “No! No, no, no!” The Doctor yanked on the lever several times, then gave up and threw himself on the floor, one eye peering under the crack. He slapped the floor. “Nothing!”
At least nothing lashed out and beheaded him Rory noted.
“Just white walls and colored lights.” He shuffled backwards, backside stuck in the air, his cheek pressed to the floor as he tried to get a better look.
Suddenly the ceiling cracked.
They both looked up.
Gears clashed and popped behind the walls, the entire structure shifted under the strain. A crack ripped across the room, one side of the ceiling dropping several inches. Only to shatter the false wall beside Rory.
The basalt wall cracked and crumbled, the ceiling fractured, and fell, raining boulders and debris.
“Rory!” the Doctor screamed and leapt. That’s all Rory saw before tons of black stone tumbled down around him.
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Chapter Index
Code Of Webcounter
Rory looked behind them, at least there were no ghosts following them.
“Any idea yet what we’re going to find in here?” Rory asked as they walked up a dusty incline.
“No,” the Doctor said as they crested the rise. They stopped. “But I didn’t expect that.”
In a dish shaped area beyond the rise they finally found the downed transport. And a black, obsidian complex of buildings rising into towers and onion domes.
It glowed like black glass. Squat to the ground, looking half buried, gleaming spires rising up like spears. A block of windowless structures completely at odds with the natural area surrounding it.
The downed transport had crashed into the building, knocking one corner of it to rubble. One black onion dome lay shattered on its downed crystal column.
The vague sunlight scintillated through the building, gleaming in waves like oil on water.
Rory followed the Doctor down, scrambling to keep his purchase on the dusty slope. The Doctor strode eagerly forward, eyes darting everywhere, taking it all in.
“What is it?” Rory asked.
“A building,” the Doctor called back over his shoulder.
Rory huffed. “I can see that. What’s it doing here?”
The Doctor walked right up to the wall, face practically glowing with interest. He didn’t touch the surface, luckily, Rory didn’t trust anything they found here. But he did tilt his head back, the building was only about fourteen feet tall, although the spires at the odd corners made it look taller. It looked almost like a palace, or a temple. But colder somehow. Rory shivered, imagining what might be inside.
The Doctor walked up and down the line of the gleaming, swirling wall, squinting and peering in, as if trying to see through the glass.
Rory caught up with him and steered him back, away from it. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice. He looked up at the nearest spire and tilted his head. “You know,” he said. “I think those are solid.”
Rory stared at the dome, one hand still firm on the Doctor’s arm. The spire was built into the corner of the building, part of the integral structure, and jutted upward another twenty feet before swelling out into the pointed onion dome.
“If you say so,” he said, unwilling to get any closer to be sure. “The whole thing looks solid to me.” He couldn’t see any windows or doors, he couldn’t even see any mortar cracks or places where blocks fit together, it seemed to be all one seamless edifice.
“Fascinating...” The Doctor started dragging him heedlessly closer, Rory dug his heels in.
“Let’s check on the transport first,” he said, feet shuffling in the dust, the Doctor’s unexpected strength dragging him along like a fish on a reel. “We did come here looking for survivors, remember?” he said, practically.
The Doctor turned to look at him, the blank look of fascination clearing to a more conscientious, aware expression. “Yes. Quite right. People might need our help.”
-----
The transport, not much more than a personal shuttle, had crashed through the line of jungle trees then slammed into a corner of the building, knocking one whole corner off in a pile of rubble and sending one onion dome rolling away to lay like a giant battered bowling ball thirty meters from its starting point.
The transport hadn’t fared well, crumbled, scratched, gouged, its undercarriage ripped out, it had come to rest at a drunken slant on the pile of black glassy rubble it had knocked off the building. The nose plowed into the soil.
They found their first survivor before they even cleared the corner of the building.
“Poor soul,” Rory said. He stared down at the ripped and tattered coverall, its chute harness still clasped around a ribcage of grey bones.
The entire body had been stripped clean, almost looking like it had disintegrated where it lay. Rory knelt to examine it. He looked up and down the long length, it was still wearing its boots. The skull lay sideways but unattached at the top of the spine. He reached down and compared the size of his hand to the outsplayed skeletal hand emerging from the sleeve. He accidentally brushed against a pinkie bone, which rolled to the side with a muted clatter. He guiltily rolled it back into place.
“Adult male by the look of it.” He looked up at the Doctor. “What could do this so fast? The transport only went missing a week ago.”
The Doctor shook his head and looked around, keeping a nervous lookout. Rory looked over his shoulder at the black building. It looked no more inviting from this angle, the walls weren’t square here, like the front, but sort of star shaped, a tower at each point. Black, opaque, oily. He shuddered.
“Let’s check the ship,” the Doctor said, shifting his shoulders at the chill wind that seemed to blow through the bowl.
They found the ship wasn’t just canted up on rubble, but on a collection of the large boulders that littered the area. Several huge trees ringed the complex on the other sides of the bowl, casting even more shade, the light seemed to come down out of a murky haze, as if through a black veil.
Rory looked up uncomfortably, he expected to see bats flying overhead, but it was just the light. He decided it must be some sort of refraction from the black glass of the building. He didn’t like it.
They searched the ground leading up to the crashed ship, looking for any more bodies. There were a few more clumps of weeds and some bushes down here, more ferns further on. But they reached the ship without finding anything.
The Doctor stood on tiptoe and looked into the cockpit. Miraculously, the glass of the cockpit window had somehow survived intact.
“See anything?” Rory asked, watching the Doctor squinting in through a low corner, hands shading his eyes.
“Nothing, no bodies anyway. Let’s try the door.” They climbed up the shifting black rubble to the hatch, it had warped in its frame, the bottom virtually torn out with the undercarriage. The Doctor turned the wheel with a rusty squeal, more from warping than rust, and tried to yank it open.
He stretched up on his toes, but couldn’t get any leverage. “Try pulling on it down there,” he instructed Rory, lower on the scree. Rory wedged his fingers in the warped bottom corner and pulled, managed to wiggle the door in its frame while the Doctor turned harder on the wheel.
A shadow fell over Rory, he looked up.
A treecat stared down at him. It crouched on top of the shuttle. Yellow eyes, blue-black hide mottled with green spotted circles, like something poisonous. Teeth the size of butcher knives, as silent as a Trelwin.
“Rory, pull,” the Doctor said testily, still struggling obliviously with the door. Rory squeaked, the cat leapt. Rory screamed.
The cat knocked him away from the ship, down the rubble, rolling onto the dirt. He rolled up, scrabbling for his machete. The cat knocked it out of his hand with one huge clawed paw.
“Rory!” The Doctor leaped to his side and threw a handful of dirt into the cat’s face. It wasn’t as large as the first treecat they’d seen, this one was smaller, and sleeker, black and green, meant to hide in the shadows, like a panther, but still twice as large as a lion.
“Run!” the Doctor yelled, pushing Rory to the side.
“Where to?!”
“The ship, I got the door open!”
The transport hatch gaped open like salvation. Rory sprinted, the Doctor at his side. And the cat leapt, knocked the Doctor aside with a huge paw, and pounced on Rory, bearing him to the ground and biting at the back of his neck.
It was only his chute that saved him.
The cat thrashed, whipping him around by his harness, its mouth full of parachute silk. The puffy flap at the back of his vest had ridden up, fortunately protecting his neck against the sharp scratch of teeth.
-----
“Rory!” the Doctor screamed. The treecat had him pinned, yanking at his back, looking like it was getting ready to drag him away and feast on him.
The Doctor jumped forward and grabbed its tail, he yanked and twisted, the cat threw back its head and yowled silently, it whipped its head back at him, striking like a tiger. The Doctor kept hold of the tail and was dragged around out of range of the teeth. The cat kept circling, the Doctor with it, he held on doggedly, whipping around, legs flailing, on one revolution he managed to get his toe under Rory’s machete and kick it to him.
“Rory! Catch!”
Rory rolled over, heart thumping at his near death experience, and scrambled for the knife. The Doctor twisted the cat's tail again, earning another silent yowl and snarl, and steered the circling, snatching cat toward the shuttle.
“Inside! Quick!”
Rory stared at the transport, stared at the Doctor circling closer, then lunged forward and slashed at the treecat’s face with his machete. He sliced a line across its nose, it yowled silently and turned to confront Rory. The Doctor let go and he and Rory both bolted for the shuttle.
They dove inside and turned and kicked the door shut. The cat hit the door with a resounding thud. Shrill screeches reverberated through the stale air of the shuttle as the cat clawed furiously at the door. The Doctor held the wheel lock in place to prevent the cat accidentally catching it and turning it open.
“Find something to jam this with!” he said, sweat staining his neck and floppy hair as the wheel jerked under his arms, the shuttle shuddering under the blows.
Rory climbed farther into the doomed shuttle, looking for something to bar the door.
-----
He came back with a six foot long piece of wall reinforcement edging, one big, black paw was clawing up under the warped bottom corner of the door, wrenching at the hatch, he slammed it with the rod. It jerked back.
He and the Doctor wedged the bar crossways into the flywheel and stood back. The wall shuddered, the wheel jerked, but the bar held.
“I think you’d better come see this,” Rory said.
The Doctor looked up at his tone. Rory led him back into the ship, the bottom of the transport had been virtually ripped out, leaving a tilted floor of rocks and debris, fortunately no holes large enough for the cat to get through. Although the shadows that passed in front of the gaps showed it was stalking them outside. Rory suppressed a shudder.
He pushed open an inner door with a screech, and nodded his head in. Inside were two more clothed skeletons, a woman, and what looked like a ten year old child. It looked like they had tried to barricade themselves in. They were huddled in a corner, skeletons half crumpled against the wall.
As they watched, a fat red ant, as long as Rory’s thumb, crawled out of the woman’s boot. Rory jumped, then promptly stamped on it. He and the Doctor backed out quickly, wrestling the door closed behind them, the Doctor grabbed a seat cushion off of the eating area behind them and crammed it under the gap at the bottom of the door, he and Rory kicking it under firmly with their boots, scuffing dirt over it to fill any cracks.
Rory’s heart was racing. He gulped at a dry throat. “I guess that explains what happened to the bodies.”
The Doctor nodded, hair flopping. “Nasty planet.”
Rory exhaled. “I guess we better see what else we can find.”
He and the Doctor checked the cockpit, which was in surprisingly good condition. There was no power, naturally. They decided to leave the equipment for Erik and Darvish to deal with. They continued on to the back of the shuttle, more of a one family camper van/personal airplane. The back end tilted up on the rubble, torn bulkheads, warped companionway, supplies and boxes tumbled every which way in the small hold.
“Doctor, look at this!” Rory pointed out through a porthole in the small exit ramp hatch. The Doctor squashed his face next to Rory’s in the glass.
“A hole!”
Outside, at the edge of the scree, a dark hole gaped in the broken corner of the building.
Suddenly the black treecat’s snarling face lurched at the port and they jumped back.
“Persistent, isn’t he?” the Doctor said. The cat scratched at the glass with a nails-on-chalkboard sound, but the door was solid.
The Doctor turned away. “I wonder if they have anything to eat in here?”
-----
Their reprieve didn’t last long.
Metal screamed as the tiger resumed raking its claws against the damaged shuttle door, determined to get at them, the whole transport lurched as the tree cat gained purchase. The door shrieked, and the reinforcing bar in the flywheel bent as the door started to wrench open.
Rory, a cracker hanging out of his mouth, and the Doctor ran in from the eating area and grabbed the flywheel, bracing their feet against the doorjamb.
There was a boom like lightning and the ground shook, a blinding flash of white light blasted through the porthole.
“What was that?” Rory asked.
-----
Rory woke up to the feeling of the Doctor patting his cheeks. “Come on, Rory, wakey, wakey!”
Rory grunted and coughed and shoved the Doctor’s hands away, the Time Lord beamed at him.
Rory sat up in the ruined hallway and looked around groggily, everything was silent. “What happened?”
“Don’t know,” the Doctor said. “You passed out.”
“The monster!” Rory grabbed for his ipod.
The Doctor shook his head. “No, this was something else.” He hauled Rory to his feet with one arm. “Come on, that flash came from the fence. We’d better go look.” He started to shove open the shuttle hatch door.
“Wait!” Rory grabbed his arm. “The cat!”
“It’s asleep.” The Doctor pointed through the porthole. Rory’s eyebrows beetled and he looked out through the hole. The cat lay sprawled outside, blue-black and green spots lightly undulating as it snored. He turned and gave the Doctor an incredulous look.
The Doctor tapped his ipod. “I had to modify this to wake you up.”
“It didn’t affect you?”
“Oh, well, I’m special.” The Doctor grinned and bounced on his feet.
-----
They snuck out of the shuttle, tiptoeing past the cat.
They ran worriedly back toward the fence, everything was silent. No birds sang, no rustlings of things in the trees, nothing.
They found the hunting party sprawled just inside the fence, the huge hump of a downed Herbivore behind them.
“Amy!” Rory yelled for his wife.
He and the Doctor skidded to a halt on their knees beside Amy and gently turned her over, her red hair spread out like spilled blood. Rory put his head to her chest. He let out a huge sigh. “She’s still breathing.”
He shook her lightly. No response. He tapped her cheek. “Amy? Amy!” he yelled. “What’s wrong?” he asked the Doctor.
The Doctor raised her eyelid with a thumb and checked her eyes. “Hmm.”
“What?” Rory looked at what he was looking at. Amy’s eyes were dilated and half rolled up.
“The same as you.” The Doctor dug in Amy’s pocket and pulled out his toolkit. He cracked her ipod open like a shell and started adjusting it. “Oh, that’s clever,’ he said, looking at the settings. “It must have sensed an incursion and increased the Alpha and Theta brainwaves. Probably used the natural emissions of the zone as a booster. It’s forced them all into a meditative state so deep they may as well be unconscious.” He looked around, checking, everyone seemed to be breathing.
“Then why are they waking up?” Rory asked, pointing.
The Doctor looked where Rory indicated. The crumpled white, brown, and dappled gray forms of the Trelwins were starting to stir.
“Huh.” He scratched his cheek. “They must have developed some sort of resistance over the millennia. That’s interesting.”
“Why didn’t it do this to us when we came in?” Rory asked, watching anxiously as the Doctor finished his tinkering and snapped the case closed.
The Doctor tapped the life support unit on his chest. “We’re invisible, remember?”
Amy groaned. Instantly all the Doctor and Rory’s attention reverted to her. She opened her eyes. “Oh, ow!” She rubbed the back of her head. “Did the monster get me again?” she asked.
“Again!” Rory exclaimed.
The Doctor left her to Rory and moved on to the others. He popped open the back of Erik’s ipod, then stopped and rooted in the Safari leader’s pockets. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and brandished it up with a “Hah!” then soniced the ipod.
Erik blinked surprisingly pretty eyes open at him. He looked at him in confusion, then saw the sonic in his hand. “What are you doing with that thing?” he demanded in a rough, gravelly voice, his hand going to his head.
The Doctor grinned at him. “Saving your life. You can thank me later.”
The Doctor jumped up cheerfully and went around quickly sonicing all the rest of the ipods. The Trelwins took up defensive positions around the recovering humans, watching for danger.
-----
It didn’t take long to wake everyone up.
“We found the crashed transport,” the Doctor reported to Erik and Darvish. “And something else, a building,” he nodded, “on the other side of that rise, there’s a bowl shaped depression in the land.”
“What the hell is a building doing out here?” Erik asked as all the other hunters climbed to their feet and righted their clothes and packs. He and Darvish kept half an eye on everyone as they listened to the Doctor’s report.
“I’m not entirely sure it is a building,” the Doctor said.
That brought their attention back to him.
“Explain,” Darvish said.
The Doctor scrubbed the back of his neck. “It looks solid, the spires aren’t towers, no internal stairs or structure, the damaged ones show them to be solid all the way through.”
“Why build towers if you can’t use them?” Erik asked.
“They may have a different use,” the Doctor suggested.
Darvish gave him a gimlet look. “What aren’t you saying?”
Amy and Rory straggled up to join them, Amy still protesting to Rory that she was all right.
“Have you told them about the survivors?” Rory asked, looking between the Doctor and the Safari leaders.
“Survivors?” Darvish’s interest perked up.
“I’m afraid there weren’t any. We found the bodies of a man, a woman, and a child. How many were there supposed to be?” the Doctor asked, his hands going into his pants pockets.
Darvish breathed out a rough breath. “Just the three.” He stabbed the point of his ax into the ground. “Damn.”
“I’m sorry.”
Darvish shook his head and waved it off. “It was always in the cards.” He reached up one long hand and rubbed at his forehead.
“So what do you think we should do about this building?” He pulled his hand down. “I certainly didn’t expect this ‘monster’ to live in a building,” he said wryly.
“We don’t know that it does, but it’s certainly an anomaly,” the Doctor said.
“Please don’t say, ‘let’s go poke it with a stick.'” Amy said.
“Well,” the Doctor said, bouncing on his toes. “There is a hole in the wall.”
-----
The hunters, apprised of the situation, angry and embarrassed, settled their earpods firmly, and started marching resolutely up the rise, weapons out, scanning for danger, determined not to be so easily overcome again. The Trelwins shambled along beside them, eyes twitching everywhere, as nervous as cats in a frying pan.
Suddenly all three Trelwin stopped, then suddenly bolted forward to the front of the group. They turned and put up their overlong arms, shoving large hands forward, as if they were trying to ward the hunters off. They stank of tar, and there was a feeling of desperate panic in the air.
“What are they...” Darvish turned to ask Amy. Then his eyes widened as a thick grey cloud rolled up over the lip of the rise.
It spilled slowly over the edge, self-contained, slowly billowing in on itself. Almost crawling across the ground.
The hair on Amy's nape stood up. "Oh my god, what now?" She grabbed Rory's arm and backed up.
This wasn't a normal weather phenomenon, it slid across the ground, almost as if it was searching. It looked like it would flow by past them, on the north, but abruptly it changed course, heading right toward them.
It wasn't blown by the wind, there was no wind.
"Incendiary bomb!" Darvish yelled. Eldon popped the cap on a grenade and lobbed it into the approaching mass. It exploded, fire blooming up in the cloud, licking at it, illuminating it from inside.
Despite Amy's expectations, there was no scream, not indication of life. The bomb left a scorched starburst on the dust as the cloud floated toward them, it was smaller, but not by much.
There was nothing to attack, guns and machetes were useless. "Flamethrower!" Erik yelled. "Again!" Darvish yelled after him. Jute cranked up his gun and stepped forward, swiping a long stream of flame back and forth over the front of the cloud. Eldon threw in three more incendiary grenades, one after the other. Each swipe and bloom of flame created a hiss of burning steam.
But the cloud only reduced slightly, its scattered streamers re-coalescing into the whole.
There was nowhere to run, no cover, and no time. The cloud kept sliding toward them, over the barren dust, like a hypercooled hockey puck. It stalked them as if it had intelligence. Bearing down.
“Retreat!” Darvish yelled.
"Scatter!" Erik bellowed.
They turned to run, and within three steps the cloud overtook them. It rolled over them, coiled around them, and seemed to clink. Amy felt her metal chute buckles suddenly seize up. Erik's second best gun snapped stuck to his harness, causing a misfire, everyone ducked, but their backpacks ruched up on their clips, cinching around ribs and groin, hobbling them.
Everyone’s hair stood straight up on their head, even Amy’s long hair flared out, making her look like exploded ketchup. Harnesses constricted around them, equipment stuck to each other, making it hard to move, the air pressed down, became heavier, their very muscles felt denser, weighted down, harder to move.
Moisture covered their skin, their tongues, their lungs.
Rory felt a chill pass over his brain, as if something touched him.
Then everyone’s ipods and life support units sparked out.
-----
Rory floated in the darkness, calm, quiet. The dark was soft, still, settling around him thick as concrete.
He could hear someone yelling but it didn’t seem to matter. He floated alone in the universe.
Suddenly the Doctor was in his head. “Wake Up!” Rapidly his furious voice became clearer. “I can hold the meditation wave at bay, but only for a few minutes. You’ve got to wake up!”
Rory opened his eyes to see the Doctor’s face right in front of him. “That’s it! Concentrate on me, Rory. Stand up!” The Doctor pulled his hands away from Rory’s temples and pulled him to his feet. Rory struggled upright, feeling like he wanted to do nothing but sleep, drowsiness dragging him down.
The Doctor grabbed him up by an arm and started waltzing him around in the dust, kicking at his feet to make them move. Rory stiffened in instinctive withdrawal.
“That’s it, stay awake. Concentrate.” Everyone else was down, collapsed around them like sheaves of wheat. The three Trelwin were huddled together looking terrified.
“Concentrate Rory!” The Doctor suddenly whirled him around in a neck cracking twirl. Rory turned and glared at the Time Lord. “What are you doing?!” he demanded in outraged dignity.
The Doctor kicked at his feet to keep him moving. “Keeping you awake. I need you to pay attention and do something for me.”
“What’s...” Rory’s head lolled, his eyes fluttered closed, blank limpness overtaking him.
“Rory!” The Doctor pinched him on the bum.
Rory jerked awake. “For God’s Sake, Doctor!” he cursed, galvanized.
“That’s it, stay awake. Pay attention. I need you to zone out.”
“What?” Rory glared at him, still being waltzed around like a marionette.
“When you watched over Amy for those 2,000 years, you must have learned the art of how to act without thinking, to just “be.” All those boring years locked in tombs and vaults, guarding, you’d go mad otherwise. Do that now. I need you, you’re the only one left who has a chance. I can’t keep waltzing you around forever. You’re heavy you know!”
Unfortunately, Rory understood exactly what he was talking about. “Stop.”
The Doctor stopped dancing him around and stood back. Rory felt the dragging drowsiness pull at him, weakening his knees. He looked down.
And just let it all go.
He looked back up, his face as calm as plastic. “What do you need?”
The Doctor grinned at him and clapped his hands. “Rory, you’re brilliant!”
He waved around at the safari group, all sprawled wherever they’d dropped. “The fog blew out all the ipods and support units. I should have altered the life support units too, made us all invisible, but I wasn’t thinking!” He smacked himself on the forehead. “There’s nothing more we can do for them now, until we get into that building and stop whatever’s doing this.” He looked up. “It’s just you and me now.” Rory stared at him calmly.
The Doctor scrubbed his hands over his face. He twirled a quick circle to make sure nothing else was sneaking up on them. Then he waved at Rory. “Help me move them together. We’ll have to leave them here, the Trelwins can watch over them.”
Rory didn’t argue. He simply walked over and picked up Amy, carried her over and lay her down beside Erik. The Doctor dragged Darvish over by the arms and laid him out. He apparently sent a thought to the Trelwins, they unhuddled, looked around nervously, then started dragging the others into the pile.
The Doctor wiped his hands off, looking at the helpless pile. Pickles and Jute, Bill and Eula were arrayed around the edges, looking disturbingly defenseless. The Trelwins took up positions on three sides of the pile of hunters. Looking outward, keeping watch. Shuffling, but determined.
The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck “That’s all we can do,” he muttered, almost to himself. They’d positioned Amy at the bottom of the pile, between Erik and Darvish, surrounded on all sides by the other hunters. “If we’re quick, nothing should happen to them,” he said, not very convincingly. He took one last look at the unprepossessing, skinny-limbed Trelwin crouched on all three sides, then turned resolutely away. “Come on.”
Rory leaned down and scooped up a machine gun one of the hunters had dropped. He saw the Doctor’s look.
“In case the cat is awake,” he said calmly, looping the strap over his head.
The Doctor nodded, but didn’t say anything else.
Fortunately, the cat was still asleep, sprawled by the open shuttle door. There was no sign of the fog. No sounds from the whole zone.
They climbed the pile of clattering rubble and debris, and inspected the hole they’d noticed earlier. It was partially blocked by a large rock. The Doctor set his shoulder to it and grunted. It didn’t shift. “Well, give us a hand!”
Rory slid his rifle to his back and pushed. Between them they dislodged the hundredweight stone and it rolled down into the building, crashing and bumping.
There was no response. No outcry. No snarl of monsters. Just echoes.
They crept inside.
Down the slope, into the dark. They finally found a level floor, somewhere below ground level. As they walked down the cracked corridor, they realized there was light coming from somewhere, filtering in dimly through the glassy obsidian walls.
The corridor seemed to lead in only one direction. There were no doors, like the outside it seemed to be completely seamless, solid.
A cracked archway opened at the end of the corridor, a crumbling false wall a few steps past it, light flickered beyond the edges.
They stepped out onto a floor of polished quartz, as they stepped from behind the wall Rory’s dispassionate gaze followed the quartz across a wide room, the crystal facets under their feet looked as if they extended far down into the earth.
The Doctor noticed the direction of his gaze. “It makes sense,” he whispered. “The zone is probably on top of a huge deposit of minerals, it’s what causes the electromagnetic currents.”
The Doctor clapped his hands and rubbed them briskly, beaming. “This is just what we need!” Rory looked up and followed the Doctor’s gaze. The walls were covered with equipment.
The Doctor leaped over, feet skidding on the floor, and bounded from panel to panel, examining everything. Burbling away with enthusiasm.
“If we can just find what controls the brainwave emanations we can shut down the meditation wave.”
Rory simply watched from beside the door, alert but calm. Clear as water. Not even surprised to find machinery in the middle of an alien jungle.
“Ah hah! Here!” The Doctor pulled a lever beside the far wall.
There was a horrendous grating sound, and the entire far wall started to rise. Stone grated on stone. The building trembled. Ancient stone knocked out of alignment by the shuttle crash protested the movement.
But the wall rolled upward, only an inch, scintillating multicolored light spilled out beneath, bringing the quartz floor beneath them alive with reflected rainbow colors.
The wall screeched and ground to a halt. “No! No, no, no!” The Doctor yanked on the lever several times, then gave up and threw himself on the floor, one eye peering under the crack. He slapped the floor. “Nothing!”
At least nothing lashed out and beheaded him Rory noted.
“Just white walls and colored lights.” He shuffled backwards, backside stuck in the air, his cheek pressed to the floor as he tried to get a better look.
Suddenly the ceiling cracked.
They both looked up.
Gears clashed and popped behind the walls, the entire structure shifted under the strain. A crack ripped across the room, one side of the ceiling dropping several inches. Only to shatter the false wall beside Rory.
The basalt wall cracked and crumbled, the ceiling fractured, and fell, raining boulders and debris.
“Rory!” the Doctor screamed and leapt. That’s all Rory saw before tons of black stone tumbled down around him.
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