1x14 Terror in the Deep (2/3)
Title: Terror in the Deep
Author: wotcher_wombat
Pairing: Ten II/Rose
Summary: Beneath the frozen waves of Woman Wept, Rose and the Doctor discover a community on the brink of destruction.
Rating: PG
A/N: Thanks to Debbie for the beta and Lisa for the science-y advice. Also thanks to shinyopals for the britpickery and her endless patience.
Episode 14 of the the_altverse following The Taste of Fear.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part One
“PLEASE COME. SAVE US. PLEASE.”
The child’s message kept repeating inside the TARDIS. Rose’s horror did not lessen.
“It’s biological-the literal flesh and blood of this child used to carry the message.” The Doctor set his sonic screwdriver down, looking ill. “I can’t imagine anyone doing that unless-well…”
Rose felt something in her stomach turn, but she forced herself to think of something productive to do. “We can find the kid, then. Right? We have his genetic make-up-we can use that to track him down.”
The Doctor looked at her like he wasn’t really seeing her. “Right. Of course we can,” he said with a sharp shake of his head. He started twisting dials on the console and entering in combinations of numbers faster than Rose could follow.
The child’s pleas echoed in the silence.
“So, we’ll find this kid,” Rose said aloud, mostly to reassure herself. She ran her hand down the wall of the TARDIS. “And whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it. Right, Doctor?”
“Of course we will.” He smiled at her, but his eyes were tight. “It’s what we do best.”
At that moment, a small light appeared on the monitor and they both rushed forward to see what it was. The screen displayed a small map of the planet, and at the top there were coordinates written in Gallifreyan.
“What does it mean?” Rose asked.
“It means we’ve found the boy.” The Doctor pointed to the last coordinate. “He’s at the very bottom of the ocean.”
Panic threatened to close Rose’s throat. “That doesn’t mean he’s-he can’t be dead already. His message is still going.”
“I don’t…” The Doctor closed his eyes slowly. “We’ll see.”
He programmed the TARDIS to follow the coordinates and they started to dematerialize. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to arrive at the bottom, and the sides of the ship shuddered and groaned. Rose gripped the sides of the console with white knuckles, her eyes wide with apprehension. Was the atmospheric shell enough to hold? The water pressure must be immense at the bottom of the ocean, but as the boy’s pleas kept repeating, she found that she could not go back to shore. With a grating, metallic sound, the TARDIS finally came to a stop.
“You might want to stay back here,” the Doctor said guiltily. “I don’t know what sort of scene will be on the other side.”
Rose rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand. “Not on your life.”
Together they opened the doors to the TARDIS. This time there was no trace of light coming from above, and the entire scene before them was pitch black. Fumbling for the switches on their spotlights, the Doctor and Rose tried to prepare themselves for whatever waited for them in the darkness.
In the glare of their spotlights, they could see a large chimney-like rock with a fissure spewing thick masses of what looked like black smoke into the water before them. Anything beyond that was obscured by the smoke and the limited range of their lights. There was a continual sound of churning, bubbling water. The combined effect was moody and majestic. Rose had never seen anything like it.
“Is that smoke?” Rose asked.
“Looks like it,” replied the Doctor.
“Can that even happen?” She held her hand to her forehead, her eyes wide.
He gave her a wink. “You wanted to show me something new.”
Rose smiled, feeling a rush of affection for her husband. He was right, of course. In a way, her plan had worked. Right before them was a sight neither of them had ever seen before-something surprising. She waved an arm out the door. “Ta-da!”
They grinned at one another and let the ship drift down until they were away from the columns of black smoke. Doctor started to say something, but at that moment a chorus of voices sounded around the TARDIS.
“What’s the problem?” someone hissed.
“Who’s screaming?” came a high, panicked voice.
Rose and the Doctor turned their spotlights every which way, but they could not find the speakers in the darkness. “Er, hello there!” the Doctor shouted to the water. Rose gave a little wave, but she wasn’t sure the invisible speakers would see it. “I’m the Doctor and this-”
“It’s mute,” proclaimed a gruff voice.
Someone with a breathy tone started to huff. “How can it be mute if it’s screaming?”
“No, I promise we’re not mute-really, we talk quite a bit-” the Doctor tried again.
“Perhaps it knows no other way,” whispered another voice, oblivious to the Doctor’s reply.
“What a sad place it must come from, if all it knows are screams. What terror, what pain, what sorrow,” someone sighed. “It must be so much worse than our troubles.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” another voice growled.
“I say we need to protect ourselves,” declared a strong voice. “Who knows what kind of threat it brings? They could be scavengers. We must fight!”
“Easy, child,” someone wheezed. “We must watch and understand.”
“Yes, that is the first rule,” said a slow, menacing voice. “The prey must come to you.”
The Doctor and Rose looked at one another uneasily. “Great,” whispered Rose. “Surrounded by invisible aliens who can’t hear us-and have already started calling us prey.” She let out a nervous laugh. “Now what?”
Suddenly, as if in answer, the lights in the TARDIS and the spotlights shut off of their own accord, leaving Rose and the Doctor in pitch blackness.
“Doctor?” Rose asked in panic, fearing another crippling problem with the TARDIS. How could they hope to repair the ship at this depth if something was truly wrong? She felt her way back to the console room behind the Doctor. It was odd to be in such complete darkness. She slowly closed her eyes and opened them again, but there was no difference.
“I-It’s just the lights, I think,” the Doctor said. She could hear him crashing his knee into the console and his subsequent yelp of pain. “I’m okay!” he said quickly.
“I’d say watch where you’re going, but…” The half-hearted joke died on her lips, and the Doctor made no reply.
With nothing to see, Rose concentrated on feeling the presence of the TARDIS. At first she couldn’t sense it and she had a moment of panic. Then she felt it in her mind. Yes, the TARDIS was still there-at least she wanted to believe it was still there. Though she couldn’t explain how, its subtle companionship made her feel immediately safer. Somehow she knew there was nothing wrong with the ship, even before the Doctor confirmed it.
“No problem that I can figure out,” said the Doctor. “I’d rather not run a full diagnostic here, but we’ll be alright for a little while. It’s strange, though. Why would she-”
“Oh, I think she had a reason,” said Rose. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, a faint flash shone from the child’s message at the exact time it said the word “PLEASE.” Without any other light source around, she could see that it wasn’t a single sporadic flash, but rather an intricate series of flashes, several so dim that they were barely perceptible. In an instant, Rose understood. “It’s not telepathy, Doctor,” she explained. “It’s the light-that’s how they’re talking. They’re using flashing light. No wonder they thought we were screaming with all the lights we had shining in here-and the spotlights.”
She heard the Doctor moving across the room. “Clever. Very clever. We couldn’t respond until the TARDIS doused the lights in here-we were still inhibiting her translation circuits!” Rose heard something rattle, then came a tremendous crash of metal parts falling to the ground. “Maybe with a little jiggery-pokery, I can get the light on the top of the TARDIS to do some talking for us…” The Doctor’s voice trailed off as he blundered around in the dark.
“PLEASE. PLEASE HELP US. SOMEONE. ANYONE,” repeated the child’s message. Rose shivered.
“All right,” said the Doctor. “Let’s go back to the doorway and see if those people can hear us now.” She felt him brush against her arm, probing the darkness until he could find her hand. His palms were clammy inside her grasp.
***
Without lights, the scene outside the TARDIS doors was quite different. A crowd of bioluminescent figures floated in the water, their shapes strange and dissimilar in the surrounding darkness.
“It’s stopped screaming.” A large snail-like creature moved forward, with flashes of iridescent light rippling around its shell in a spiral as it spoke.
“But what does that mean?” asked what looked to be a round, puffed-up, transparent fish with bright blue veins flashing in time to its words.
An alien with a passing resemblance to a jellyfish swam forward, its long frills of ruffled stingers undulating with a deep red glow. “Is it dead?” she asked anxiously.
“No, can’t you see its hum?” said a squid with glowing yellow spots along its tentacles.
“Sorry about that,” said the Doctor, and as he spoke the light on the top of the police box flashed the translation of his words. When the light from the TARDIS shone, even briefly, the beings before them lost their color and oscillating glow, turning into transparent gelatinous blobs like child’s message. Every word the Doctor spoke created an odd, strobe-light effect. “Can you hear us now?”
“Of course we can hear you,” said the snail. “You’re right there, shouting at us.”
“It works!” he whispered to Rose. The Doctor sounded both guilty and delighted when he addressed the alien creatures. “I’m afraid there’s not much we can do about the volume.”
“Our language isn’t as… sophisticated as yours,” Rose offered. “We’re beginners.”
“They must be from another village. They have to be! The stories were true-the other villages exist!” exclaimed the jellyfish in a rush. “Are your vents thriving? Is there food there? Is your coral still alive?”
“There are no other villages,” the yellow-spotted squid said in a firm tone. “The elders have said so.”
“Then how do you explain it?” huffed the jellyfish with a great undulating swell that rolled out all the way to the ends of her stingers. As she and the squid argued, the crowd around the TARDIS grew until the water was filled with glowing creatures of every hue. They whispered and muttered to one another in a frenzy, their communications lighting up the dark water like the flickering of strange starlight.
“Actually, we come from above the water-and very far away,” said Rose said to the group at large. The light flashing at the top of the TARDIS seemed impossibly bright, and it certainly got everyone’s attention. “We got a message-a call for help. We followed it down here.”
“You got my message!” cried a clear, familiar voice. “I knew it would work! I knew there was somebody who would save us!” An orange blur raced through the crowd and stopped directly before the doors of the TARDIS, and for the first time Rose and the Doctor could see the boy who had sent that haunting message. He looked like a small octopus with luminous orange flesh, pink veins, and bright spots of light glowing at the end of each cloaked tentacle. His large, pale eyes studied the open doors of the TARDIS expectantly as the small fins on either side of his head flapped with excitement. “You’ll save us, won’t you?”
Rose held her breath, her heart hammering away in her chest. The boy was still alive. Relief flooded her senses. “Of course we will,” she replied without hesitation.
“Swim away from them, child,” warned the yellow-spotted squid. “You know neither their native waters nor their intent. Do not trust them. They may be scavengers for all we know.”
“If they were scavengers, would they scream and announce their presence so?” asked the ruffled red jellyfish. “They said they would save us-let them speak! You must see that any chance for survival outweighs-”
The argument continued on with many people in the crowd adding their opinion to the fray, but Rose had had enough of these people’s spats. She turned to the boy. “What’s your name?” she asked. She tried to whisper, but the light on top of the TARDIS was still very bright.
The boy literally lit up, thrilled to be addressed. “Grimpoteuthis Ignotus, 1,028th born,” he said. He flexed his tentacles in what might have been an attempt to look impressive.
Rose grinned bemusedly. “They don’t call you anything for short?”
The boy laughed. “You’re strange.”
“We are very strange,” the Doctor said. Even in the darkness, Rose could hear his grin. “So, Grimpoteuthis Ignotus, 1,028th born-you’ve brought us down here to save you, but save you from what?”
The fins on the side of the boy’s head flattened. “The end of the world, of course.”
“Now, really, this is too much,” interrupted the yellow-spotted squid. “We must cease all communications with these… foreigners. Let us at least wait until the elders gets here.”
“You can wait, if you wish, but the other elder will not come,” declared a hoarse voice. Immediately, the crowd cleared a path in the water as a large, long alien swam into view. She had glowing green eyes, with numerous gills ruffling out from the back of her broad, rounded head. Shimmering deep green stripes trailed down the sides of her immense, eel-like body. Her wide jaw hung open and unmoving as she spoke, her razor sharp teeth glinting in the reflected light of her peers. She spoke with gravity, and even her bioluminescent display seemed severe. “Coelacanthus Insolitus, 709th born, is dead. I am now the only elder left.”
The aliens in the crowd seemed to dim their lights as a sign of respect.
The last remaining elder turned to the TARDIS. “I am Chlamydoselachus Cladodonts, 722nd born,” she proclaimed. “As the only remaining caretaker for this community, I must have information from you. Who are you, and what is your purpose here?”
Rose smiled. She felt like they’d done this part a thousand times before. She knew she’d never get tired of it. “He’s the Doctor-”
“-and she’s Rose-”
“And we found a message from this boy, from-from-”
“Grimpoteuthis Ignotus, 1,028th born,” the Doctor supplied.
“And we’ve come to help you lot out, any way we can,” Rose finished.
“I see,” said the elder. “I’m afraid you have come for nothing, then. There is nothing left to do.”
“Now, don’t be so sure about that,” said the Doctor. “We’ve heard a little something about it being the end of the world down here-it just so happens that Rose and I specialize in saving worlds. I’m sure that with a little finagling we can work it out.”
“Finagling,” the elder repeated. Her glowing green eyes showed no trace of amusement.
“At least help us understand,” appealed Rose. “What’s going on? Why is the world ending?” She tried to think of anything she’d seen so far that might have been a cause of disaster. “Is it the black smoke?” she asked.
“Ah, you have much to understand,” the elder said. “We live, and have lived for many generations, from the superheated minerals that spew forth from the vents in the ground-what you deem to be black smoke. Bacteria fed on the minerals, shrimp fed on the bacteria, and we farmed the shrimp. Our society was built upon this foundation. However, what you see now is but a shadow. This was merely one of a vast chain of vents that fed our village.”
“What happened?” Rose asked.
“One by one, over the past year, the vents have closed, leaving us with nothing. Tube worms once flourished here, gardens of coral that would sing the most peaceful melodies, schools for our youngest, theaters, and reenactments of our revered histories. As the vents failed, so did our farms, so did our civilization. We are at the end of days.”
Rose turned to her husband. “What could have caused the vents to fail? And how can we reverse it?”
The Doctor waited a beat too long before he replied. She heard him gulp beside her. “If the vents are putting out superheated minerals, then that can only be coming from the planet’s core. And if the vents are closing everywhere, then that means that the core is cooling.”
Rose waited, but it seemed the Doctor wasn’t going to explain any further. “So, we just need to figure out what’s causing the core to cool?” she prodded.
The Doctor squirmed beside her. “It’s not that simple-”
At that moment, there was a commotion at the edge of the crowd. “Get! Get away from there, you scum!” someone shouted.
A crab-like being slinked into sight, only the slightest traces of light shone from the ends of his claws. His voice was little more than a whisper, but it still held a note of menace. “I have come to see the anomaly-the one who screams. You will let me pass.”
“There is nothing for your appetites here, scavenger, for we few still live,” said the elder. Her voice held a peculiar coldness as she addressed the crab. “Leave this place.”
At that moment, a mournful wail went up from the back of the crowd. “No! No, not my child!” someone cried. “Put her down! Leave her be!”
Several aliens lunged forward, as if wanting to attack the crab, and Rose squinted to see what had caused the offense. If she strained her eyes, she could just begin to make out a small transparent figure being dragged along by the crab. Her mouth opened in horror, but she was stunned speechless.
“Allow me to feed or you murder me,” whispered the scavenger in the same menacing tone. He pulled forward the remains of a small fish and slowly, deliberately tore off a hunk of its flesh and devoured it.
The aliens around the TARDIS shouted in outrage and impotent fury, while the scavenger fastidiously cleaned his mouth. Rose felt sick to her stomach. The Doctor was breathing heavily next to her, his fury apparent even in the dark.
“I will live as my kind has always lived,” continued the scavenger. “I will gorge myself on your dead, and after your society falls, I will still be here, feasting on your bones. You cannot move me, no more than you can escape from me. I am fact.” He took another bite of the corpse, and somewhere in the crowd the mother of the scavenger’s prey let out a heartbreaking moan.
The boy octopus pulled his tentacles closer to his body, trembling in revulsion. He appealed to Rose and the Doctor. “Please help us. I sent the message because I don’t want-I don’t-” The boy broke off and swam further from the scavenger. “Can you at least take us away from them?” he pleaded.
“Right. Of course,” Rose said firmly. She needed action. She needed to do something other than stand around in horror. If she focused on the possibilities, she and the Doctor could solve this problem. She had to get down to business or she would go mad. She wracked her brain. “If there are vents here, maybe there are vents somewhere else on the planet? Maybe there’s another place where you can live, someplace where the vents aren’t closing. You could join another village.”
The Doctor moved beside her, but she couldn’t see his expression in the dark, and he made no comment.
“There is no other village,” said the elder. “There is nothing but this place and miles of empty water scattered with… his kind.” She gestured to the scavenger with repugnance.
The scavenger laughed. “But there are other civilizations. You are not the only ones-this child knows it. Why else would he call for help? If nothing else, these foreigners are proof of what my kind have long known. The world is much bigger than you have ever allowed-and countless worlds exist beyond that.”
“That is impossible,” the elder said simply.
“Well, not impossible,” said the Doctor. “The universe is expanding, so it’s always a bit bigger than you think it is. You see, it’s all a matter of…” he trailed off at the blank looks from the crowd.
The scavenger closed his claws with a snap. “Your complacency has made you blind. It has led you to your destruction. Only we, who have braved the barren waste between vents, have seen these other communities. They cannot save you, of course; they are perishing alongside you. You are right to abandon hope. Only we will survive once the vents are closed. Your lot has come to its end, and my kind will devour your remains.”
“Enough of this!” roared the yellow-spotted squid. He flung himself down on the scavenger, his tentacles surrounding the crab in a chokehold, his beak snapping fiercely.
“Stop!” ordered the elder, the green stripes down her side flashing violently. The squid released his hold and propelled himself away in rage. The elder turned towards the scavenger with barely suppressed fury in her glowing green eyes. “You will leave this place, or I shall give my permission for your slaughter. Do you understand? Do not return.”
The scavenger seemed unfazed as he whispered, “Oh, I will return… once you are all dead.” He crept away from view, still dragging the corpse behind him.
“That manages one being who is not supposed to be within our midst,” said the elder, turning back to Rose and the Doctor. The ruffled gills around her head fluttered as she sighed, and when she spoke her tone carried an edge of kindness. “And now I must deal with you, foreigners. It speaks highly of your characters that you would come, but it is all in vain. I’m afraid that the child is too young to grasp the situation and has brought you here under a false understanding. Let me enlighten you. There is no hope. The last vent will close, and there is nothing to be done. We can only wait until our village dies.”
Rose set her mouth in a thin line. “No. You can’t just give up like that-there’s always hope. There’s got to be something-some way to fix this. But you have to look for it-you have to try!”
“Rose,” said the Doctor quietly.
She pushed her husband’s hand away from her shoulder and addressed the crowd. “You can’t just sit here and wait to die-to let the scavengers come and pick your bones! You’ve got to fight!” she continued.
“Foolish stranger,” the elder said sadly. “Do you think we wish to die? Do you imagine that we choose this fate-to watch our offspring and ancestors starve before our eyes?”
Rose wanted to reply in anger, but her words froze on her tongue. She took a deep breath. “But that was before. The Doctor and I are here now. We can find a way. I promise, we’ll save you all.”
A murmur of hope rippled through the crowd. The boy octopus looked at the TARDIS with trust in his pale eyes.
“Empty promises,” said the elder. She shook her head. “They mean well, but do not let yourselves be fooled. We must prepare for the end.”
“It’s not empty, and you’ll see,” said Rose. “We’re going to save you-so hold on to hope. If hope is all you have left-even if it’s this faint, crazy hope that maybe these two strangers might do the trick-then I’m telling you to hold on to it. Because we’re coming back-and we’re going to fix this.” She looked straight into the eyes of the boy octopus. “I promise.”
***
Inside the TARDIS, Rose’s mind was going a mile a minute. “Right, so we need to go back to shore and figure this out. Maybe the scientists can help us-consider it field research. You know at Torchwood we had a-”
“Rose, a word,” the Doctor whispered. He put a gentle hand on her shoulders. The lights had come back up in the TARDIS, and Rose could see that her husband looked tired-more so than the situation warranted. “I don’t think you should get these people into a frenzy,” he said, his eyes very serious. “You’re just giving them false hope.”
She glared at her husband, suddenly furious with him. “Not you too. How could you say that? We’re going to save them, Doctor. We will.”
“We can’t.” She was about to argue back, but the desperation in his voice stopped her. “Sometimes there are things that have to happen. If the planet’s core is cooling down… there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It’s natural causes. These people are going to die, and there’s nothing we can do to save them.”
Rose blinked back the tears in her eyes, shaking with fury. “So we came all this way for nothing. They’re all going to die anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” He tried to pull her in a hug, but Rose backed away.
“No!” she cried. “I just can’t-no. There’s got to be something. What about the other villages-the other vents on the sea floor?”
The Doctor shook his head. “If the core’s cooling off, Rose, they’re all going to close. There’s no way to stop it.”
“Yeah, but maybe one of those vents will last a bit longer?”
He sighed. “It’s not going to change anything.”
Rose wouldn’t take that for an answer. She had to give these people something. She reached forward and ran her fingers along his cheek. “If you had a choice between letting nature take its course or spending a few more weeks with me, what would you choose, Doctor?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes, his expression torn. “That’s not fair.”
Rose came closer, bending down until the Doctor had to look her in the eye. “They at least deserve the option, yeah?” she whispered. “Don’t give up on this.”
He reached up and held her hand against his cheek, letting out an uneven breath. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. We’ll find… something.” He crossed the room to the console, shaking his head as if trying to shake off his gloom.
“If nothing else, we can give them more time.” Rose ran her hand along the wall of the TARDIS, thinking of how important time had become in her life.
His eyes searched her face carefully. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up too much,” he said. He blinked slowly and sighed. “The planet’s called Woman Wept, remember? Sometimes its stories are going to be sad.”
Author: wotcher_wombat
Pairing: Ten II/Rose
Summary: Beneath the frozen waves of Woman Wept, Rose and the Doctor discover a community on the brink of destruction.
Rating: PG
A/N: Thanks to Debbie for the beta and Lisa for the science-y advice. Also thanks to shinyopals for the britpickery and her endless patience.
Episode 14 of the the_altverse following The Taste of Fear.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part One
“PLEASE COME. SAVE US. PLEASE.”
The child’s message kept repeating inside the TARDIS. Rose’s horror did not lessen.
“It’s biological-the literal flesh and blood of this child used to carry the message.” The Doctor set his sonic screwdriver down, looking ill. “I can’t imagine anyone doing that unless-well…”
Rose felt something in her stomach turn, but she forced herself to think of something productive to do. “We can find the kid, then. Right? We have his genetic make-up-we can use that to track him down.”
The Doctor looked at her like he wasn’t really seeing her. “Right. Of course we can,” he said with a sharp shake of his head. He started twisting dials on the console and entering in combinations of numbers faster than Rose could follow.
The child’s pleas echoed in the silence.
“So, we’ll find this kid,” Rose said aloud, mostly to reassure herself. She ran her hand down the wall of the TARDIS. “And whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it. Right, Doctor?”
“Of course we will.” He smiled at her, but his eyes were tight. “It’s what we do best.”
At that moment, a small light appeared on the monitor and they both rushed forward to see what it was. The screen displayed a small map of the planet, and at the top there were coordinates written in Gallifreyan.
“What does it mean?” Rose asked.
“It means we’ve found the boy.” The Doctor pointed to the last coordinate. “He’s at the very bottom of the ocean.”
Panic threatened to close Rose’s throat. “That doesn’t mean he’s-he can’t be dead already. His message is still going.”
“I don’t…” The Doctor closed his eyes slowly. “We’ll see.”
He programmed the TARDIS to follow the coordinates and they started to dematerialize. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to arrive at the bottom, and the sides of the ship shuddered and groaned. Rose gripped the sides of the console with white knuckles, her eyes wide with apprehension. Was the atmospheric shell enough to hold? The water pressure must be immense at the bottom of the ocean, but as the boy’s pleas kept repeating, she found that she could not go back to shore. With a grating, metallic sound, the TARDIS finally came to a stop.
“You might want to stay back here,” the Doctor said guiltily. “I don’t know what sort of scene will be on the other side.”
Rose rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand. “Not on your life.”
Together they opened the doors to the TARDIS. This time there was no trace of light coming from above, and the entire scene before them was pitch black. Fumbling for the switches on their spotlights, the Doctor and Rose tried to prepare themselves for whatever waited for them in the darkness.
In the glare of their spotlights, they could see a large chimney-like rock with a fissure spewing thick masses of what looked like black smoke into the water before them. Anything beyond that was obscured by the smoke and the limited range of their lights. There was a continual sound of churning, bubbling water. The combined effect was moody and majestic. Rose had never seen anything like it.
“Is that smoke?” Rose asked.
“Looks like it,” replied the Doctor.
“Can that even happen?” She held her hand to her forehead, her eyes wide.
He gave her a wink. “You wanted to show me something new.”
Rose smiled, feeling a rush of affection for her husband. He was right, of course. In a way, her plan had worked. Right before them was a sight neither of them had ever seen before-something surprising. She waved an arm out the door. “Ta-da!”
They grinned at one another and let the ship drift down until they were away from the columns of black smoke. Doctor started to say something, but at that moment a chorus of voices sounded around the TARDIS.
“What’s the problem?” someone hissed.
“Who’s screaming?” came a high, panicked voice.
Rose and the Doctor turned their spotlights every which way, but they could not find the speakers in the darkness. “Er, hello there!” the Doctor shouted to the water. Rose gave a little wave, but she wasn’t sure the invisible speakers would see it. “I’m the Doctor and this-”
“It’s mute,” proclaimed a gruff voice.
Someone with a breathy tone started to huff. “How can it be mute if it’s screaming?”
“No, I promise we’re not mute-really, we talk quite a bit-” the Doctor tried again.
“Perhaps it knows no other way,” whispered another voice, oblivious to the Doctor’s reply.
“What a sad place it must come from, if all it knows are screams. What terror, what pain, what sorrow,” someone sighed. “It must be so much worse than our troubles.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” another voice growled.
“I say we need to protect ourselves,” declared a strong voice. “Who knows what kind of threat it brings? They could be scavengers. We must fight!”
“Easy, child,” someone wheezed. “We must watch and understand.”
“Yes, that is the first rule,” said a slow, menacing voice. “The prey must come to you.”
The Doctor and Rose looked at one another uneasily. “Great,” whispered Rose. “Surrounded by invisible aliens who can’t hear us-and have already started calling us prey.” She let out a nervous laugh. “Now what?”
Suddenly, as if in answer, the lights in the TARDIS and the spotlights shut off of their own accord, leaving Rose and the Doctor in pitch blackness.
“Doctor?” Rose asked in panic, fearing another crippling problem with the TARDIS. How could they hope to repair the ship at this depth if something was truly wrong? She felt her way back to the console room behind the Doctor. It was odd to be in such complete darkness. She slowly closed her eyes and opened them again, but there was no difference.
“I-It’s just the lights, I think,” the Doctor said. She could hear him crashing his knee into the console and his subsequent yelp of pain. “I’m okay!” he said quickly.
“I’d say watch where you’re going, but…” The half-hearted joke died on her lips, and the Doctor made no reply.
With nothing to see, Rose concentrated on feeling the presence of the TARDIS. At first she couldn’t sense it and she had a moment of panic. Then she felt it in her mind. Yes, the TARDIS was still there-at least she wanted to believe it was still there. Though she couldn’t explain how, its subtle companionship made her feel immediately safer. Somehow she knew there was nothing wrong with the ship, even before the Doctor confirmed it.
“No problem that I can figure out,” said the Doctor. “I’d rather not run a full diagnostic here, but we’ll be alright for a little while. It’s strange, though. Why would she-”
“Oh, I think she had a reason,” said Rose. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, a faint flash shone from the child’s message at the exact time it said the word “PLEASE.” Without any other light source around, she could see that it wasn’t a single sporadic flash, but rather an intricate series of flashes, several so dim that they were barely perceptible. In an instant, Rose understood. “It’s not telepathy, Doctor,” she explained. “It’s the light-that’s how they’re talking. They’re using flashing light. No wonder they thought we were screaming with all the lights we had shining in here-and the spotlights.”
She heard the Doctor moving across the room. “Clever. Very clever. We couldn’t respond until the TARDIS doused the lights in here-we were still inhibiting her translation circuits!” Rose heard something rattle, then came a tremendous crash of metal parts falling to the ground. “Maybe with a little jiggery-pokery, I can get the light on the top of the TARDIS to do some talking for us…” The Doctor’s voice trailed off as he blundered around in the dark.
“PLEASE. PLEASE HELP US. SOMEONE. ANYONE,” repeated the child’s message. Rose shivered.
“All right,” said the Doctor. “Let’s go back to the doorway and see if those people can hear us now.” She felt him brush against her arm, probing the darkness until he could find her hand. His palms were clammy inside her grasp.
***
Without lights, the scene outside the TARDIS doors was quite different. A crowd of bioluminescent figures floated in the water, their shapes strange and dissimilar in the surrounding darkness.
“It’s stopped screaming.” A large snail-like creature moved forward, with flashes of iridescent light rippling around its shell in a spiral as it spoke.
“But what does that mean?” asked what looked to be a round, puffed-up, transparent fish with bright blue veins flashing in time to its words.
An alien with a passing resemblance to a jellyfish swam forward, its long frills of ruffled stingers undulating with a deep red glow. “Is it dead?” she asked anxiously.
“No, can’t you see its hum?” said a squid with glowing yellow spots along its tentacles.
“Sorry about that,” said the Doctor, and as he spoke the light on the top of the police box flashed the translation of his words. When the light from the TARDIS shone, even briefly, the beings before them lost their color and oscillating glow, turning into transparent gelatinous blobs like child’s message. Every word the Doctor spoke created an odd, strobe-light effect. “Can you hear us now?”
“Of course we can hear you,” said the snail. “You’re right there, shouting at us.”
“It works!” he whispered to Rose. The Doctor sounded both guilty and delighted when he addressed the alien creatures. “I’m afraid there’s not much we can do about the volume.”
“Our language isn’t as… sophisticated as yours,” Rose offered. “We’re beginners.”
“They must be from another village. They have to be! The stories were true-the other villages exist!” exclaimed the jellyfish in a rush. “Are your vents thriving? Is there food there? Is your coral still alive?”
“There are no other villages,” the yellow-spotted squid said in a firm tone. “The elders have said so.”
“Then how do you explain it?” huffed the jellyfish with a great undulating swell that rolled out all the way to the ends of her stingers. As she and the squid argued, the crowd around the TARDIS grew until the water was filled with glowing creatures of every hue. They whispered and muttered to one another in a frenzy, their communications lighting up the dark water like the flickering of strange starlight.
“Actually, we come from above the water-and very far away,” said Rose said to the group at large. The light flashing at the top of the TARDIS seemed impossibly bright, and it certainly got everyone’s attention. “We got a message-a call for help. We followed it down here.”
“You got my message!” cried a clear, familiar voice. “I knew it would work! I knew there was somebody who would save us!” An orange blur raced through the crowd and stopped directly before the doors of the TARDIS, and for the first time Rose and the Doctor could see the boy who had sent that haunting message. He looked like a small octopus with luminous orange flesh, pink veins, and bright spots of light glowing at the end of each cloaked tentacle. His large, pale eyes studied the open doors of the TARDIS expectantly as the small fins on either side of his head flapped with excitement. “You’ll save us, won’t you?”
Rose held her breath, her heart hammering away in her chest. The boy was still alive. Relief flooded her senses. “Of course we will,” she replied without hesitation.
“Swim away from them, child,” warned the yellow-spotted squid. “You know neither their native waters nor their intent. Do not trust them. They may be scavengers for all we know.”
“If they were scavengers, would they scream and announce their presence so?” asked the ruffled red jellyfish. “They said they would save us-let them speak! You must see that any chance for survival outweighs-”
The argument continued on with many people in the crowd adding their opinion to the fray, but Rose had had enough of these people’s spats. She turned to the boy. “What’s your name?” she asked. She tried to whisper, but the light on top of the TARDIS was still very bright.
The boy literally lit up, thrilled to be addressed. “Grimpoteuthis Ignotus, 1,028th born,” he said. He flexed his tentacles in what might have been an attempt to look impressive.
Rose grinned bemusedly. “They don’t call you anything for short?”
The boy laughed. “You’re strange.”
“We are very strange,” the Doctor said. Even in the darkness, Rose could hear his grin. “So, Grimpoteuthis Ignotus, 1,028th born-you’ve brought us down here to save you, but save you from what?”
The fins on the side of the boy’s head flattened. “The end of the world, of course.”
“Now, really, this is too much,” interrupted the yellow-spotted squid. “We must cease all communications with these… foreigners. Let us at least wait until the elders gets here.”
“You can wait, if you wish, but the other elder will not come,” declared a hoarse voice. Immediately, the crowd cleared a path in the water as a large, long alien swam into view. She had glowing green eyes, with numerous gills ruffling out from the back of her broad, rounded head. Shimmering deep green stripes trailed down the sides of her immense, eel-like body. Her wide jaw hung open and unmoving as she spoke, her razor sharp teeth glinting in the reflected light of her peers. She spoke with gravity, and even her bioluminescent display seemed severe. “Coelacanthus Insolitus, 709th born, is dead. I am now the only elder left.”
The aliens in the crowd seemed to dim their lights as a sign of respect.
The last remaining elder turned to the TARDIS. “I am Chlamydoselachus Cladodonts, 722nd born,” she proclaimed. “As the only remaining caretaker for this community, I must have information from you. Who are you, and what is your purpose here?”
Rose smiled. She felt like they’d done this part a thousand times before. She knew she’d never get tired of it. “He’s the Doctor-”
“-and she’s Rose-”
“And we found a message from this boy, from-from-”
“Grimpoteuthis Ignotus, 1,028th born,” the Doctor supplied.
“And we’ve come to help you lot out, any way we can,” Rose finished.
“I see,” said the elder. “I’m afraid you have come for nothing, then. There is nothing left to do.”
“Now, don’t be so sure about that,” said the Doctor. “We’ve heard a little something about it being the end of the world down here-it just so happens that Rose and I specialize in saving worlds. I’m sure that with a little finagling we can work it out.”
“Finagling,” the elder repeated. Her glowing green eyes showed no trace of amusement.
“At least help us understand,” appealed Rose. “What’s going on? Why is the world ending?” She tried to think of anything she’d seen so far that might have been a cause of disaster. “Is it the black smoke?” she asked.
“Ah, you have much to understand,” the elder said. “We live, and have lived for many generations, from the superheated minerals that spew forth from the vents in the ground-what you deem to be black smoke. Bacteria fed on the minerals, shrimp fed on the bacteria, and we farmed the shrimp. Our society was built upon this foundation. However, what you see now is but a shadow. This was merely one of a vast chain of vents that fed our village.”
“What happened?” Rose asked.
“One by one, over the past year, the vents have closed, leaving us with nothing. Tube worms once flourished here, gardens of coral that would sing the most peaceful melodies, schools for our youngest, theaters, and reenactments of our revered histories. As the vents failed, so did our farms, so did our civilization. We are at the end of days.”
Rose turned to her husband. “What could have caused the vents to fail? And how can we reverse it?”
The Doctor waited a beat too long before he replied. She heard him gulp beside her. “If the vents are putting out superheated minerals, then that can only be coming from the planet’s core. And if the vents are closing everywhere, then that means that the core is cooling.”
Rose waited, but it seemed the Doctor wasn’t going to explain any further. “So, we just need to figure out what’s causing the core to cool?” she prodded.
The Doctor squirmed beside her. “It’s not that simple-”
At that moment, there was a commotion at the edge of the crowd. “Get! Get away from there, you scum!” someone shouted.
A crab-like being slinked into sight, only the slightest traces of light shone from the ends of his claws. His voice was little more than a whisper, but it still held a note of menace. “I have come to see the anomaly-the one who screams. You will let me pass.”
“There is nothing for your appetites here, scavenger, for we few still live,” said the elder. Her voice held a peculiar coldness as she addressed the crab. “Leave this place.”
At that moment, a mournful wail went up from the back of the crowd. “No! No, not my child!” someone cried. “Put her down! Leave her be!”
Several aliens lunged forward, as if wanting to attack the crab, and Rose squinted to see what had caused the offense. If she strained her eyes, she could just begin to make out a small transparent figure being dragged along by the crab. Her mouth opened in horror, but she was stunned speechless.
“Allow me to feed or you murder me,” whispered the scavenger in the same menacing tone. He pulled forward the remains of a small fish and slowly, deliberately tore off a hunk of its flesh and devoured it.
The aliens around the TARDIS shouted in outrage and impotent fury, while the scavenger fastidiously cleaned his mouth. Rose felt sick to her stomach. The Doctor was breathing heavily next to her, his fury apparent even in the dark.
“I will live as my kind has always lived,” continued the scavenger. “I will gorge myself on your dead, and after your society falls, I will still be here, feasting on your bones. You cannot move me, no more than you can escape from me. I am fact.” He took another bite of the corpse, and somewhere in the crowd the mother of the scavenger’s prey let out a heartbreaking moan.
The boy octopus pulled his tentacles closer to his body, trembling in revulsion. He appealed to Rose and the Doctor. “Please help us. I sent the message because I don’t want-I don’t-” The boy broke off and swam further from the scavenger. “Can you at least take us away from them?” he pleaded.
“Right. Of course,” Rose said firmly. She needed action. She needed to do something other than stand around in horror. If she focused on the possibilities, she and the Doctor could solve this problem. She had to get down to business or she would go mad. She wracked her brain. “If there are vents here, maybe there are vents somewhere else on the planet? Maybe there’s another place where you can live, someplace where the vents aren’t closing. You could join another village.”
The Doctor moved beside her, but she couldn’t see his expression in the dark, and he made no comment.
“There is no other village,” said the elder. “There is nothing but this place and miles of empty water scattered with… his kind.” She gestured to the scavenger with repugnance.
The scavenger laughed. “But there are other civilizations. You are not the only ones-this child knows it. Why else would he call for help? If nothing else, these foreigners are proof of what my kind have long known. The world is much bigger than you have ever allowed-and countless worlds exist beyond that.”
“That is impossible,” the elder said simply.
“Well, not impossible,” said the Doctor. “The universe is expanding, so it’s always a bit bigger than you think it is. You see, it’s all a matter of…” he trailed off at the blank looks from the crowd.
The scavenger closed his claws with a snap. “Your complacency has made you blind. It has led you to your destruction. Only we, who have braved the barren waste between vents, have seen these other communities. They cannot save you, of course; they are perishing alongside you. You are right to abandon hope. Only we will survive once the vents are closed. Your lot has come to its end, and my kind will devour your remains.”
“Enough of this!” roared the yellow-spotted squid. He flung himself down on the scavenger, his tentacles surrounding the crab in a chokehold, his beak snapping fiercely.
“Stop!” ordered the elder, the green stripes down her side flashing violently. The squid released his hold and propelled himself away in rage. The elder turned towards the scavenger with barely suppressed fury in her glowing green eyes. “You will leave this place, or I shall give my permission for your slaughter. Do you understand? Do not return.”
The scavenger seemed unfazed as he whispered, “Oh, I will return… once you are all dead.” He crept away from view, still dragging the corpse behind him.
“That manages one being who is not supposed to be within our midst,” said the elder, turning back to Rose and the Doctor. The ruffled gills around her head fluttered as she sighed, and when she spoke her tone carried an edge of kindness. “And now I must deal with you, foreigners. It speaks highly of your characters that you would come, but it is all in vain. I’m afraid that the child is too young to grasp the situation and has brought you here under a false understanding. Let me enlighten you. There is no hope. The last vent will close, and there is nothing to be done. We can only wait until our village dies.”
Rose set her mouth in a thin line. “No. You can’t just give up like that-there’s always hope. There’s got to be something-some way to fix this. But you have to look for it-you have to try!”
“Rose,” said the Doctor quietly.
She pushed her husband’s hand away from her shoulder and addressed the crowd. “You can’t just sit here and wait to die-to let the scavengers come and pick your bones! You’ve got to fight!” she continued.
“Foolish stranger,” the elder said sadly. “Do you think we wish to die? Do you imagine that we choose this fate-to watch our offspring and ancestors starve before our eyes?”
Rose wanted to reply in anger, but her words froze on her tongue. She took a deep breath. “But that was before. The Doctor and I are here now. We can find a way. I promise, we’ll save you all.”
A murmur of hope rippled through the crowd. The boy octopus looked at the TARDIS with trust in his pale eyes.
“Empty promises,” said the elder. She shook her head. “They mean well, but do not let yourselves be fooled. We must prepare for the end.”
“It’s not empty, and you’ll see,” said Rose. “We’re going to save you-so hold on to hope. If hope is all you have left-even if it’s this faint, crazy hope that maybe these two strangers might do the trick-then I’m telling you to hold on to it. Because we’re coming back-and we’re going to fix this.” She looked straight into the eyes of the boy octopus. “I promise.”
***
Inside the TARDIS, Rose’s mind was going a mile a minute. “Right, so we need to go back to shore and figure this out. Maybe the scientists can help us-consider it field research. You know at Torchwood we had a-”
“Rose, a word,” the Doctor whispered. He put a gentle hand on her shoulders. The lights had come back up in the TARDIS, and Rose could see that her husband looked tired-more so than the situation warranted. “I don’t think you should get these people into a frenzy,” he said, his eyes very serious. “You’re just giving them false hope.”
She glared at her husband, suddenly furious with him. “Not you too. How could you say that? We’re going to save them, Doctor. We will.”
“We can’t.” She was about to argue back, but the desperation in his voice stopped her. “Sometimes there are things that have to happen. If the planet’s core is cooling down… there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It’s natural causes. These people are going to die, and there’s nothing we can do to save them.”
Rose blinked back the tears in her eyes, shaking with fury. “So we came all this way for nothing. They’re all going to die anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” He tried to pull her in a hug, but Rose backed away.
“No!” she cried. “I just can’t-no. There’s got to be something. What about the other villages-the other vents on the sea floor?”
The Doctor shook his head. “If the core’s cooling off, Rose, they’re all going to close. There’s no way to stop it.”
“Yeah, but maybe one of those vents will last a bit longer?”
He sighed. “It’s not going to change anything.”
Rose wouldn’t take that for an answer. She had to give these people something. She reached forward and ran her fingers along his cheek. “If you had a choice between letting nature take its course or spending a few more weeks with me, what would you choose, Doctor?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes, his expression torn. “That’s not fair.”
Rose came closer, bending down until the Doctor had to look her in the eye. “They at least deserve the option, yeah?” she whispered. “Don’t give up on this.”
He reached up and held her hand against his cheek, letting out an uneven breath. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. We’ll find… something.” He crossed the room to the console, shaking his head as if trying to shake off his gloom.
“If nothing else, we can give them more time.” Rose ran her hand along the wall of the TARDIS, thinking of how important time had become in her life.
His eyes searched her face carefully. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up too much,” he said. He blinked slowly and sighed. “The planet’s called Woman Wept, remember? Sometimes its stories are going to be sad.”