Up a Tree (p.28)
The dust settled.
The rumbling gradually ceased, the tinkle of small rocks bouncing down the rubble, the occasional crunch of a larger stone dropping.
Rory coughed and shifted. He was in a clear space, his thigh uncomfortably pressed against a stone that fortunately hadn’t landed on him and crushed his leg.
“Rory!” the Doctor’s muffled voice yelled through the stone. He could hear scrabbling at the rocks.
“I’m all right!” he yelled back.
“Zone out!” the Doctor snapped immediately, sounding panicked.
Rory’s eyebrows went up, he realized he’d slipped out of his meditative state. “It’s okay, I don’t think the wave works in here.”
The frantic scrabbling sounds stopped. “Really?” He could practically hear the Doctor’s mind whirring through the rocks. “That’s great! I wonder how...”
“Never mind that now,” Rory yelled back. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just now there’s a rockslide where the door should be.” The scrabbling sounds resumed. “Can you see a way through?”
Rory shoved himself up onto all fours, the roof didn’t allow him much more headroom. He looked around.
Faint light still filtered through the walls and crystal floor. He’d fallen in a lee where a slab of the false wall had crashed and landed against the doorway behind it. The doorway was crushed, but mostly open. However, in front of him was a solid wall of rocks.
He pushed, he prodded, he shoved, he poked, he caused several cascades of dust and pebbles, and one worrying shift that lowered the roof a few terrifying inches.
“I don’t think I can get through, Doctor!” he yelled through the rubble.
“I’m not having any better luck here, either!” the Doctor yelled back.
“Can’t you use the sonic to shake something loose?” Rory yelled back, brushing grit out of his hair.
“No, it shorted out with the rest of the electronics,” the Doctor yelled back.
“I thought you shielded everything?” Rory yelled, a bit accusingly.
“I shielded everything against electromagnetic radiation, not against creeping magnetic mist,” the Doctor yelled back, a bit defensively.
“Then what are we...”
“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!” the Doctor yelled from the other side of the rockfall. Rory could hear sounds of the Doctor’s boots scrambling, random rocks clinking and rolling as he kicked them. “If I can find the brainwave controls, I might be able to turn off the meditation wave. Then the others can come help.”
A pause and more sounds of movement, Rory looked around, trying to see if he could find any hole he could widen, any rock that looked loose. “Aargh!” the Doctor yelled from the other room. “I can’t access it! I need a translation matrix. I need... Zeke! I need Zeke.
“Rory, go get Zeke, he’s got longer arms, more leverage, between the two of you you might be able to move some of those stones. Make a way in.”
Rory nodded and started to crawl out, then stopped. He stared at the threshold of the door, the demarcation where the crystal floor stopped. “Uh, Doctor? Where do you think the meditation wave starts, outside the complex, or outside this room?”
“Oh, uh.” He could hear the Doctor stammering, even through the stone. “It probably starts outside the complex,” he said hesitantly.
“How probable?” Rory demanded.
“About 50/50.”
“Not something we want to risk then,” Rory yelled back.
“Not really, no.” He could hear the Doctor shuffling around, “I don’t really fancy being stuck in here while the rest of you sleep yourselves to death. Otherwise,” he said in a forcedly brighter tone, “you could just carry everyone in here and they’d wake up. But I don’t suppose there’s room.”
Rory looked around at the small cave he was currently kneeling in, it would be a squeeze, just with him and Zeke.
“Right, guess I’d better zone out, just to be on the safe side. Don’t touch anything while I’m gone!” he yelled back through the rock.
“Right, right. I’ll just... look at stuff,” the Doctor yelled back, not very reassuringly.
Rory shook his head. God knows what the Time Lord’s curiosity would get him into if he didn’t hurry. The idea sent chills up his spine. “I’m going now!” he yelled.
“Yes! Hurry back,” the Doctor’s voice came through distractedly.
Rory shook his head, he knelt there on all fours in front of the door, took a deep breath, let the worries roll over him for a minute, then let it all go.
-----
He returned with Zeke an hour later. The Trelwin had seemed to understand he was needed, without words. Rory followed the waddling gray-dappled shape into the crumbled entryway. He felt the change as he crawled over the threshold onto the crystal floor, a sudden absence of a faint vibration against his mind that he hadn’t even been aware of outside.
“Doctor?” he yelled calmly.
“Rory!” The word was filled with such delight that he let his zen mode drop and grinned. He shook his head, no doubt the Doctor would have hugged him if he could.
“I’ve brought Zeke.”
“Great! I cleared away all the small stones and debris away from around that big stone on my side. The one by the mostly intact part of the wall, can you see it?”
“Yeah, we’ve got it on this side too.” Zeke was already using his long hands to scoop away dirt and debris from the edges, yanking loose larger fist sized rocks that had been wedged too tightly for Rory to move.
“Well, if you two pull, and I push, maybe we can move it enough to get through,” the Doctor yelled.
Rory looked at Zeke, the Trelwin turned a blank, dappled-gray face to him, but seemed willing. “Alright, on three!” he yelled.
He probed his fingers around the stone, searching for handholds. Zeke spread his large arms wide and grabbed both edges. “1 ,2, 3!”
They pulled, the Doctor pushed. Dirt rained down, sharp shards, the rock didn’t move.
“Right, again!” the Doctor yelled.
“1, 2, 3...”
They heaved, Zeke bent himself backward, bracing his foot hands on the surrounding stones. Rory hauled until he felt like his fingertips were going to scrub off. The stone shifted.
And Zeke’s foot went right through the rocks beside it, letting in multicolored light from the room beyond.
The Trelwin scrambled back and pressed his face right into the hole, almost kissing the Doctor who was doing the same thing from the other side.
“Oh, hello, Zeke.” They both pulled back and started hauling away at the other debris, widening the hole. Zeke slipped through first, in a hole that looked smaller than his simian body could fit, apparently all those limbs were double jointed.
It took several more minutes before the hole was big enough for Rory to crawl through, and even then it took both the Doctor and Zeke pulling on him to drag him through. He flopped onto the cracked crystal floor like a skinned fish.
“Sorry about that,” the Doctor said. “I suppose we should have taken your chute off first.’
Rory gave him an annoyed scowl.
“Still,” the Doctor clapped his hands and twirled, “now that Zeke’s here we can turn off the defense systems before it can show us what other nasties it has up its sleeve.”
He grabbed the elderly Trelwin by the hand and led him over to a wall covered with strange equipment that looked more like a metal frieze made of swirled taffy than a machine. He coaxed the Trelwin to sit down, apparently had a brief telepathic discussion with him, then pulled out a lead and stuck it in the Trelwin’s ear.
The Doctor sat down crosslegged in front of the Trelwin and touched both Zeke’s temples with his fingers. Then shut his eyes.
And didn’t do anything. For a long time.
After a while, Rory went over and started quietly widening the hole.
-----
Eventually the Doctor sat back, with a huge sigh. And a grin.
“That’s got it!” Zeke blinked up at him, and the Doctor patted him on the shoulder. “Good work, old boy.”
“What?” Rory asked, walking over, dusting his hands, asking for clarification.
The Doctor clambered to his feet. “We turned off the security systems. The meditation wave should be down, the others should start waking up.”
Rory smiled.
The Doctor abruptly frowned. “Oh no, the cat!”
He ran for the hole.
“It’s okay, Doctor. I took care of the cat,” Rory said.
The Doctor stopped and turned to look at him. His look of surprise abruptly fell into one of disappointment. “Oh, Rory...”
Rory stared at him. “What? I didn’t shoot it. I used the medical slings to drag it into the transport’s hold and locked it in. I didn’t want it waking up before our guys did.”
The Doctor’s eyes brightened, and he bounded over and pounded Rory on the back. “Rory Williams! You are magnificent!” He beamed.
Then his face froze. His eyes swiveled to Rory. “That might not be the only cat out there.”
They both stared at each other, then ran for the hole. They dove and shimmied through, darting to their feet on the other side and running.
Rory scooped up his machine gun. They burst out of the complex on top of the hill of scree beside the shuttle.
They slithered down, half falling with their momentum. The jungle was suddenly alive with cheeping birds and jungle sounds.
“No, no, no, no!” the Doctor chanted as they ran for the rim of the bowl, and the unconscious pile of Amy and the others on the other side.
They crested the rise just in time to hear Amy say, “I like you guys, but really, there’s a thing called personal space...”
They frantically scanned the area, the Doctor turned in a complete circle, looking. There were no deadly animals, no deadly plants, no ghostly apparitions, just dust, and a pile of disgruntled hunters. They both whooshed out a big breath and glanced at each other, grinning shamefacedly. Below them, Chitchi and Nelda were helping the recovering humans to their feet.
Amy emerged from the bottom of the pile, looking wrinkled and creased and like she’d just woken up from a late night at a bad party.
For some reason, that made the Doctor and Rory feel better.
Erik spotted them. “Doctor! There you are. Would you mind explaining, again, what is going on?” he demanded in his loud voice.
The Doctor looked over the group, reassuring himself. They were all helping each other up, looking a bit embarrassed and shaking it off by checking each other over, helping one another straighten clothes and packs, and find their weapons.
Rory ran up and hugged Amy, and handed Pickles back his gun. The Doctor heard him explaining that there might be treecats in the area. The word spread quickly, and with that reassuring familiarity, the hunters quickly re-organized themselves and took up guard positions.
Nelda hugged Amy’s leg with one arm, and Chitchi came and sat beside Rory.
“Just another one of the Zone’s tricks,” the Doctor answered Erik as Darvish took a head count. “I’ve turned them off now, there shouldn’t be any more surprises.”
Darvish’s head whipped around. “Turned them off?” he said. Several of the other hunters turned to stare at the Doctor.
“We got inside the building,” the Doctor explained to all the stares. “There’s a wall we need your help to get through.”
-----
The Doctor and Rory, holding Amy’s hand, led them to the complex. They crested the rise and looked down on the doomed transport shuttle and the obsidian building in the center.
The hunters ignored the building for the moment, concentrating on the crashed ship. They all trooped cautiously down the slope of the bowl, and solemnly examined the skeletal remains of the male, and the wreck of the transport. Darvish and Erik checked the cockpit for the black box, and could hear the snarls and thumps of the treecat in the hold. The others solemnly surveyed the remains of the woman and child.
“Let’s get this over with,” Darvish said grimly.
With a few hunter hand signals, Erik and Darvish gathered the others together. They left Bill, Pickles, Eula, and the two younger Trelwins, to guard the entrance; to keep an eye out for treecats, or anything else that might interfere with their mission, and to guard their escape route, just in case.
The rest of them stalked quietly into the complex, unnerved by the shifting black light and heavy dead silence.
“We need to clear this away before anything else,” Rory said as they reached the caved in entrance. Zeke scuttled back through the hole to the control chamber, but the hunters were all too big to follow. Erik and Darvish were both impossibly wide shouldered and large, Eldon was built solid and not likely to fit, and even Jute, lanky as he was, was still very wide in the shoulders.
“You all take this side, we’ll get the other,” the Doctor said. “We don’t want to get trapped in there when we try to get through the wall. This all came down when we tried to open it,” the Doctor waved a finger up at the shattered roof that canted over the wall, the broken stones. “I figure we can take the stones from this less shattered end and use them to prop up the other side,” the Doctor instructed.
“You forget,” Darvish said, “some of us are miners.” He waved a thick thumb between him and Eldon.
“Yes,” the Doctor said, looking surprised. “Quite right.”
“What’s behind this wall you keep mentioning?” Eldon said, eyeing the stones as if choosing which to move first.
“I’m not sure. At the very least, it’s a clue to the monster,” the Doctor said.
They all looked at each other uncomfortably. As much hassle as it had been to get here, it was unnervingly quiet. With the sure instinct of hunters, they all silently agreed it was too easy.
Darvish looked at the skinny hole the Doctor, Rory and Zeke had managed to open up. “Well, I’m not getting through that. We could try widening it with a grenade.”
“Uh,” Rory held up a finger. “I’d really rather you didn’t do that. The roof came down on me last time, and most of this building seems to be made of glass and crystal, there’s no telling what a grenade would do.”
“Besides,” the Doctor said, clapping his hands. “We don’t want to go blowing things up until we have an idea of what it is.”
“If it’s the monster,” Erik growled, “then surely blowing it up is an option.”
“Depends on what kind of monster it is. Or even if it’s here. All we know at the moment is that there’s a control center through there, and a mysterious door.”
“Best to move gently,” Jute said in his quiet voice. “Besides,” he lifted his rifle. “If we need to, I can always burn through the door with this.” Rory’s eyebrows popped up. Jute shrugged. “I can adjust it for flame thrower or welding torch.”
Rory nodded, looking impressed.
“Are we going to stand here and talk all day?” Amy demanded, having listened with uncharacteristic silence.
Zeke’s head poked back in through the hole, looking at them. “Right!” the Doctor said, under stares from both Amy and the Trelwin. “You lot start here, we’ll start on the other side.” He knelt down and crawled through the hole, Rory and Amy right behind him.
-----
Amy admired the crystal floor, and looked uneasily at the small gap at the bottom of the far wall.
“What’s behind there?” she asked.
“We won’t know until we get these rocks cleared and get the others in here. Give us a hand,” Rory said, as he and the Doctor looked for some loose stone they hadn’t already cleared away. Zeke was already tugging at a large boulder, his foot hands splayed on the crystal floor for balance.
Amy shrugged and joined them, throwing a curious glance at the array of strange controls on the far wall.
“Right, let’s concentrate on this one,” the Doctor said, indicating the large boulder they hadn’t been able to move before. They could hear clinks and grunts on the other side.
They each found a grip and pulled, Amy shoving at it with her long legs. “Let’s see if we can shimmy it,” the Doctor said, brushing his hands on his trousers. “Maybe we can wiggle it loose.”
They concentrated on one side, trying to slide the stone sideways out of the pile, this seemed to be the stone that was locking all the rest in place. They could see the large hole in the roof it had dropped from.
They grunted, and heaved, sweat started to trickle down their necks. Something shifted. It wasn’t them.
Suddenly the far wall gave a wrenching scream and jerked up a foot. They all whirled and stared. Scintillating, multi-colored light spilled through, it jerked and coruscated, intense and active.
“What did you do?” Rory yelled to the others beyond the rockpile. They all stepped back, the floor became increasingly brilliant under their feet.
“Do that again!” the Doctor yelled. He bent over peering into the brightness.
“Doctor,” Rory protested in a fierce whisper, “we don’t have a clear path out of here yet, and the others aren’t here.”
“Yeah,” Amy said, staring at that glowing, flickering, moving light. “I’d like some guns.”
“What’s happening?” Darvish yelled.
“The wall’s opening,” the Doctor yelled back distractedly, starting to creep forward toward the wall, still bent over. Rory grabbed him by the sleeve.
“Wait until we’re in there!” Erik yelled. “Rory, keep a glove on him!”
“I’m trying!” Rory yelled back, but the Doctor kept flapping his arm at him, shaking him off.
“Doctor,” Amy started.
The wall popped, and creaked, and suddenly shot up into the ceiling as pressure was released on the mechanism inside.
They stopped and stared, bathed in a rainbow of bright flashing colors.
“What is that?” Rory asked.
Beyond the wall, in a completely white, sterile room, floated a giant, complex maze of colorful lightning.
Rory blinked, his eyes dazzled. Amy made choking noises beside him.
It looked like a giant brain, with all the matter taken away, leaving only the flashing, neural pathways of colorful energy. A fantastically complex network of lightning of all different colors and sizes, sizzling, traveling, interconnecting, they could see thoughts flashing from point to point, each flare probably another person turned off.
“What the hell is that thing?” Rory demanded.
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Chapter Index
Know Visits
The rumbling gradually ceased, the tinkle of small rocks bouncing down the rubble, the occasional crunch of a larger stone dropping.
Rory coughed and shifted. He was in a clear space, his thigh uncomfortably pressed against a stone that fortunately hadn’t landed on him and crushed his leg.
“Rory!” the Doctor’s muffled voice yelled through the stone. He could hear scrabbling at the rocks.
“I’m all right!” he yelled back.
“Zone out!” the Doctor snapped immediately, sounding panicked.
Rory’s eyebrows went up, he realized he’d slipped out of his meditative state. “It’s okay, I don’t think the wave works in here.”
The frantic scrabbling sounds stopped. “Really?” He could practically hear the Doctor’s mind whirring through the rocks. “That’s great! I wonder how...”
“Never mind that now,” Rory yelled back. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just now there’s a rockslide where the door should be.” The scrabbling sounds resumed. “Can you see a way through?”
Rory shoved himself up onto all fours, the roof didn’t allow him much more headroom. He looked around.
Faint light still filtered through the walls and crystal floor. He’d fallen in a lee where a slab of the false wall had crashed and landed against the doorway behind it. The doorway was crushed, but mostly open. However, in front of him was a solid wall of rocks.
He pushed, he prodded, he shoved, he poked, he caused several cascades of dust and pebbles, and one worrying shift that lowered the roof a few terrifying inches.
“I don’t think I can get through, Doctor!” he yelled through the rubble.
“I’m not having any better luck here, either!” the Doctor yelled back.
“Can’t you use the sonic to shake something loose?” Rory yelled back, brushing grit out of his hair.
“No, it shorted out with the rest of the electronics,” the Doctor yelled back.
“I thought you shielded everything?” Rory yelled, a bit accusingly.
“I shielded everything against electromagnetic radiation, not against creeping magnetic mist,” the Doctor yelled back, a bit defensively.
“Then what are we...”
“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!” the Doctor yelled from the other side of the rockfall. Rory could hear sounds of the Doctor’s boots scrambling, random rocks clinking and rolling as he kicked them. “If I can find the brainwave controls, I might be able to turn off the meditation wave. Then the others can come help.”
A pause and more sounds of movement, Rory looked around, trying to see if he could find any hole he could widen, any rock that looked loose. “Aargh!” the Doctor yelled from the other room. “I can’t access it! I need a translation matrix. I need... Zeke! I need Zeke.
“Rory, go get Zeke, he’s got longer arms, more leverage, between the two of you you might be able to move some of those stones. Make a way in.”
Rory nodded and started to crawl out, then stopped. He stared at the threshold of the door, the demarcation where the crystal floor stopped. “Uh, Doctor? Where do you think the meditation wave starts, outside the complex, or outside this room?”
“Oh, uh.” He could hear the Doctor stammering, even through the stone. “It probably starts outside the complex,” he said hesitantly.
“How probable?” Rory demanded.
“About 50/50.”
“Not something we want to risk then,” Rory yelled back.
“Not really, no.” He could hear the Doctor shuffling around, “I don’t really fancy being stuck in here while the rest of you sleep yourselves to death. Otherwise,” he said in a forcedly brighter tone, “you could just carry everyone in here and they’d wake up. But I don’t suppose there’s room.”
Rory looked around at the small cave he was currently kneeling in, it would be a squeeze, just with him and Zeke.
“Right, guess I’d better zone out, just to be on the safe side. Don’t touch anything while I’m gone!” he yelled back through the rock.
“Right, right. I’ll just... look at stuff,” the Doctor yelled back, not very reassuringly.
Rory shook his head. God knows what the Time Lord’s curiosity would get him into if he didn’t hurry. The idea sent chills up his spine. “I’m going now!” he yelled.
“Yes! Hurry back,” the Doctor’s voice came through distractedly.
Rory shook his head, he knelt there on all fours in front of the door, took a deep breath, let the worries roll over him for a minute, then let it all go.
-----
He returned with Zeke an hour later. The Trelwin had seemed to understand he was needed, without words. Rory followed the waddling gray-dappled shape into the crumbled entryway. He felt the change as he crawled over the threshold onto the crystal floor, a sudden absence of a faint vibration against his mind that he hadn’t even been aware of outside.
“Doctor?” he yelled calmly.
“Rory!” The word was filled with such delight that he let his zen mode drop and grinned. He shook his head, no doubt the Doctor would have hugged him if he could.
“I’ve brought Zeke.”
“Great! I cleared away all the small stones and debris away from around that big stone on my side. The one by the mostly intact part of the wall, can you see it?”
“Yeah, we’ve got it on this side too.” Zeke was already using his long hands to scoop away dirt and debris from the edges, yanking loose larger fist sized rocks that had been wedged too tightly for Rory to move.
“Well, if you two pull, and I push, maybe we can move it enough to get through,” the Doctor yelled.
Rory looked at Zeke, the Trelwin turned a blank, dappled-gray face to him, but seemed willing. “Alright, on three!” he yelled.
He probed his fingers around the stone, searching for handholds. Zeke spread his large arms wide and grabbed both edges. “1 ,2, 3!”
They pulled, the Doctor pushed. Dirt rained down, sharp shards, the rock didn’t move.
“Right, again!” the Doctor yelled.
“1, 2, 3...”
They heaved, Zeke bent himself backward, bracing his foot hands on the surrounding stones. Rory hauled until he felt like his fingertips were going to scrub off. The stone shifted.
And Zeke’s foot went right through the rocks beside it, letting in multicolored light from the room beyond.
The Trelwin scrambled back and pressed his face right into the hole, almost kissing the Doctor who was doing the same thing from the other side.
“Oh, hello, Zeke.” They both pulled back and started hauling away at the other debris, widening the hole. Zeke slipped through first, in a hole that looked smaller than his simian body could fit, apparently all those limbs were double jointed.
It took several more minutes before the hole was big enough for Rory to crawl through, and even then it took both the Doctor and Zeke pulling on him to drag him through. He flopped onto the cracked crystal floor like a skinned fish.
“Sorry about that,” the Doctor said. “I suppose we should have taken your chute off first.’
Rory gave him an annoyed scowl.
“Still,” the Doctor clapped his hands and twirled, “now that Zeke’s here we can turn off the defense systems before it can show us what other nasties it has up its sleeve.”
He grabbed the elderly Trelwin by the hand and led him over to a wall covered with strange equipment that looked more like a metal frieze made of swirled taffy than a machine. He coaxed the Trelwin to sit down, apparently had a brief telepathic discussion with him, then pulled out a lead and stuck it in the Trelwin’s ear.
The Doctor sat down crosslegged in front of the Trelwin and touched both Zeke’s temples with his fingers. Then shut his eyes.
And didn’t do anything. For a long time.
After a while, Rory went over and started quietly widening the hole.
-----
Eventually the Doctor sat back, with a huge sigh. And a grin.
“That’s got it!” Zeke blinked up at him, and the Doctor patted him on the shoulder. “Good work, old boy.”
“What?” Rory asked, walking over, dusting his hands, asking for clarification.
The Doctor clambered to his feet. “We turned off the security systems. The meditation wave should be down, the others should start waking up.”
Rory smiled.
The Doctor abruptly frowned. “Oh no, the cat!”
He ran for the hole.
“It’s okay, Doctor. I took care of the cat,” Rory said.
The Doctor stopped and turned to look at him. His look of surprise abruptly fell into one of disappointment. “Oh, Rory...”
Rory stared at him. “What? I didn’t shoot it. I used the medical slings to drag it into the transport’s hold and locked it in. I didn’t want it waking up before our guys did.”
The Doctor’s eyes brightened, and he bounded over and pounded Rory on the back. “Rory Williams! You are magnificent!” He beamed.
Then his face froze. His eyes swiveled to Rory. “That might not be the only cat out there.”
They both stared at each other, then ran for the hole. They dove and shimmied through, darting to their feet on the other side and running.
Rory scooped up his machine gun. They burst out of the complex on top of the hill of scree beside the shuttle.
They slithered down, half falling with their momentum. The jungle was suddenly alive with cheeping birds and jungle sounds.
“No, no, no, no!” the Doctor chanted as they ran for the rim of the bowl, and the unconscious pile of Amy and the others on the other side.
They crested the rise just in time to hear Amy say, “I like you guys, but really, there’s a thing called personal space...”
They frantically scanned the area, the Doctor turned in a complete circle, looking. There were no deadly animals, no deadly plants, no ghostly apparitions, just dust, and a pile of disgruntled hunters. They both whooshed out a big breath and glanced at each other, grinning shamefacedly. Below them, Chitchi and Nelda were helping the recovering humans to their feet.
Amy emerged from the bottom of the pile, looking wrinkled and creased and like she’d just woken up from a late night at a bad party.
For some reason, that made the Doctor and Rory feel better.
Erik spotted them. “Doctor! There you are. Would you mind explaining, again, what is going on?” he demanded in his loud voice.
The Doctor looked over the group, reassuring himself. They were all helping each other up, looking a bit embarrassed and shaking it off by checking each other over, helping one another straighten clothes and packs, and find their weapons.
Rory ran up and hugged Amy, and handed Pickles back his gun. The Doctor heard him explaining that there might be treecats in the area. The word spread quickly, and with that reassuring familiarity, the hunters quickly re-organized themselves and took up guard positions.
Nelda hugged Amy’s leg with one arm, and Chitchi came and sat beside Rory.
“Just another one of the Zone’s tricks,” the Doctor answered Erik as Darvish took a head count. “I’ve turned them off now, there shouldn’t be any more surprises.”
Darvish’s head whipped around. “Turned them off?” he said. Several of the other hunters turned to stare at the Doctor.
“We got inside the building,” the Doctor explained to all the stares. “There’s a wall we need your help to get through.”
-----
The Doctor and Rory, holding Amy’s hand, led them to the complex. They crested the rise and looked down on the doomed transport shuttle and the obsidian building in the center.
The hunters ignored the building for the moment, concentrating on the crashed ship. They all trooped cautiously down the slope of the bowl, and solemnly examined the skeletal remains of the male, and the wreck of the transport. Darvish and Erik checked the cockpit for the black box, and could hear the snarls and thumps of the treecat in the hold. The others solemnly surveyed the remains of the woman and child.
“Let’s get this over with,” Darvish said grimly.
With a few hunter hand signals, Erik and Darvish gathered the others together. They left Bill, Pickles, Eula, and the two younger Trelwins, to guard the entrance; to keep an eye out for treecats, or anything else that might interfere with their mission, and to guard their escape route, just in case.
The rest of them stalked quietly into the complex, unnerved by the shifting black light and heavy dead silence.
“We need to clear this away before anything else,” Rory said as they reached the caved in entrance. Zeke scuttled back through the hole to the control chamber, but the hunters were all too big to follow. Erik and Darvish were both impossibly wide shouldered and large, Eldon was built solid and not likely to fit, and even Jute, lanky as he was, was still very wide in the shoulders.
“You all take this side, we’ll get the other,” the Doctor said. “We don’t want to get trapped in there when we try to get through the wall. This all came down when we tried to open it,” the Doctor waved a finger up at the shattered roof that canted over the wall, the broken stones. “I figure we can take the stones from this less shattered end and use them to prop up the other side,” the Doctor instructed.
“You forget,” Darvish said, “some of us are miners.” He waved a thick thumb between him and Eldon.
“Yes,” the Doctor said, looking surprised. “Quite right.”
“What’s behind this wall you keep mentioning?” Eldon said, eyeing the stones as if choosing which to move first.
“I’m not sure. At the very least, it’s a clue to the monster,” the Doctor said.
They all looked at each other uncomfortably. As much hassle as it had been to get here, it was unnervingly quiet. With the sure instinct of hunters, they all silently agreed it was too easy.
Darvish looked at the skinny hole the Doctor, Rory and Zeke had managed to open up. “Well, I’m not getting through that. We could try widening it with a grenade.”
“Uh,” Rory held up a finger. “I’d really rather you didn’t do that. The roof came down on me last time, and most of this building seems to be made of glass and crystal, there’s no telling what a grenade would do.”
“Besides,” the Doctor said, clapping his hands. “We don’t want to go blowing things up until we have an idea of what it is.”
“If it’s the monster,” Erik growled, “then surely blowing it up is an option.”
“Depends on what kind of monster it is. Or even if it’s here. All we know at the moment is that there’s a control center through there, and a mysterious door.”
“Best to move gently,” Jute said in his quiet voice. “Besides,” he lifted his rifle. “If we need to, I can always burn through the door with this.” Rory’s eyebrows popped up. Jute shrugged. “I can adjust it for flame thrower or welding torch.”
Rory nodded, looking impressed.
“Are we going to stand here and talk all day?” Amy demanded, having listened with uncharacteristic silence.
Zeke’s head poked back in through the hole, looking at them. “Right!” the Doctor said, under stares from both Amy and the Trelwin. “You lot start here, we’ll start on the other side.” He knelt down and crawled through the hole, Rory and Amy right behind him.
-----
Amy admired the crystal floor, and looked uneasily at the small gap at the bottom of the far wall.
“What’s behind there?” she asked.
“We won’t know until we get these rocks cleared and get the others in here. Give us a hand,” Rory said, as he and the Doctor looked for some loose stone they hadn’t already cleared away. Zeke was already tugging at a large boulder, his foot hands splayed on the crystal floor for balance.
Amy shrugged and joined them, throwing a curious glance at the array of strange controls on the far wall.
“Right, let’s concentrate on this one,” the Doctor said, indicating the large boulder they hadn’t been able to move before. They could hear clinks and grunts on the other side.
They each found a grip and pulled, Amy shoving at it with her long legs. “Let’s see if we can shimmy it,” the Doctor said, brushing his hands on his trousers. “Maybe we can wiggle it loose.”
They concentrated on one side, trying to slide the stone sideways out of the pile, this seemed to be the stone that was locking all the rest in place. They could see the large hole in the roof it had dropped from.
They grunted, and heaved, sweat started to trickle down their necks. Something shifted. It wasn’t them.
Suddenly the far wall gave a wrenching scream and jerked up a foot. They all whirled and stared. Scintillating, multi-colored light spilled through, it jerked and coruscated, intense and active.
“What did you do?” Rory yelled to the others beyond the rockpile. They all stepped back, the floor became increasingly brilliant under their feet.
“Do that again!” the Doctor yelled. He bent over peering into the brightness.
“Doctor,” Rory protested in a fierce whisper, “we don’t have a clear path out of here yet, and the others aren’t here.”
“Yeah,” Amy said, staring at that glowing, flickering, moving light. “I’d like some guns.”
“What’s happening?” Darvish yelled.
“The wall’s opening,” the Doctor yelled back distractedly, starting to creep forward toward the wall, still bent over. Rory grabbed him by the sleeve.
“Wait until we’re in there!” Erik yelled. “Rory, keep a glove on him!”
“I’m trying!” Rory yelled back, but the Doctor kept flapping his arm at him, shaking him off.
“Doctor,” Amy started.
The wall popped, and creaked, and suddenly shot up into the ceiling as pressure was released on the mechanism inside.
They stopped and stared, bathed in a rainbow of bright flashing colors.
“What is that?” Rory asked.
Beyond the wall, in a completely white, sterile room, floated a giant, complex maze of colorful lightning.
Rory blinked, his eyes dazzled. Amy made choking noises beside him.
It looked like a giant brain, with all the matter taken away, leaving only the flashing, neural pathways of colorful energy. A fantastically complex network of lightning of all different colors and sizes, sizzling, traveling, interconnecting, they could see thoughts flashing from point to point, each flare probably another person turned off.
“What the hell is that thing?” Rory demanded.
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