Author's Notes
Welcome to the third instalment of the Twelfth Doctor Adventures, featuring the Doctor and Charlie Drake. (It follows Lucid Dreams and Virtual Insanity.)
The story will also feature a guest historical character, who I'm surprised hasn't actually appeared in any proper Doctor Who episodes.
The story so far...
Despite a warning from his allies at UNIT, the Doctor has decided to take Charlie with him on adventures in the TARDIS.
Hyperboloids of wondrous Light
Rolling for aye through Space and Time
Harbour there Waves which somehow Might
Play out God's holy pantomime.
The light blazed, and the world was burning.
Another flash of white light, and an ancient, beautiful building was engulfed in flames. Fluid, twisting columns toppled, dashing marble pebbles as the stones crashed into the earth.
As a colossal eruption of orange flame punched through the crumbling wall, shattering the stained glass, a petrified girl staggered out of the building.
She turned back, and looked up at the old library, which had once been a place of safety. It had been her joy. A place where she had never been happier.
She glanced down at the oozing shards of glass, her shining black eyes glimmering with tears. The wonderful pictures were gone. Shattered, and charred.
She looked up again, at the gaping, dark mouth of the library. Splinters of wood bent limply over the former doorway, fangs dripping with an inky sludge.
The girl's heart emptied in despair. Nobody was following her. Why weren't they following? If they didn't get out…
The library yielded, and crumpled into the ground, heaving up a cloud of stone dust.
…they never would.
The girl stumbled back a few steps, her wide eyes desperately picking at the rubble. There was no movement.
She tugged at her violet, braided hair, unable to comprehend the idea that she might be alone.
Fireworks lit up the sky. She looked up at them in wonder, but she was scared. They weren't pretty fireworks, like the fireworks that glittered at festivals. These were deafening, colourless monstrosities.
That was when she heard them. The machines. They were coming.
The nightmare was coming true. It was just like the elders had told her, when she was little. The machines would come for her, and punish her.
She didn't understand. She hadn't done anything wrong. In the stories, the machines only came for the bad children.
Through the dust – hanging in the air like mist, she saw them. They marched down the old road, their identical footfalls precisely synchronised with one another. Their right arms were raised; bent ninety degrees at the elbow.
She couldn't be sure how many there were. The dust amplified their presence, making their number appear stronger than it really was. There were at least four, maybe twice that. But that was enough to make her run.
She raced down the old, winding streets, skipping over toppled columns, and taking care not to trip over exposed roots.
The machines were following her, slowly, but always close behind her.
She spotted an old house, its windows shattered, but still standing. With any luck, it might offer a bit of protection, and here, she could hide from the machines.
The girl crept into the ruins of the house, stepping carefully over the smouldering timbers strewn across the floor.
As she ventured further into the gloomy ruin, she sensed a creak behind her, and froze. Her feet seemed glued to the floor; her ears strained to listen.
Someone – or something – had stepped on the wooden floorboards she had passed at the front door.
They were still following.
She tiptoed into a small room, and quietly closed the brightly painted door, without stopping to examine the now-charred images, as she normally would.
The girl quickly looked over the room, which was some kind of study. A heavy, ornate desk lay upturned in the centre of the room, surrounded by scores of scrolls, littered across the polished floor.
She heard the footsteps, pausing just outside the door, and she scrambled into a wardrobe, hiding amongst the opulent robes, not unlike the one she was wearing.
She held her breath, and tried not to move.
The thing outside had thrown the door open, and was pacing around the room, searching for her. With every passing second, it was getting nearer. The footsteps were accompanied by a sinister buzz. A machine?
Her blood pumped faster, and she could feel her forehead searing.
Holding her breath was not as easy as she'd hoped, and her lungs were bursting as she let out a shaky breath – as silently as she could. She prayed that it wouldn't hear her.
Stillness. Just for a second. Only the sinister buzz of the machine, like a hundred angry veno-mites.
The thing wrenched open the wardrobe, and she screamed.
It leapt back, startled by her reaction.
"Oh, no. Shh! Don't do that!" it cried, raising a finger to its lips.
She stopped screaming, and looked up at it. It looked like an elder, with grey hair, and angry, wiry eyebrows. However, the eyes weren't angry. They were kind.
Thankfully, it wasn't a machine. It was just a man.
The man was holding a strange tool, which was emanating a soft, rosy glow. He switched it off, and stowed it away in his strange robes.
"Please don't hurt me," she begged.
The man frowned, his lips parted in revulsion, as if horrified by the very idea of hurting her. But once his confusion had disappeared, he offered her a gentle smile.
"I promise I won't. Look – no weapons."
The man showed her his hands, and she inspected them carefully. She stared in amazement at the man's many digits. He had more fingers than she did.
"Isn't that amazing?" he uttered softly. The man seemed to have read her thoughts, as he waggled his fingers excitedly.
"You're not a machine?" she asked.
"Nope," he confirmed.
"Are you a human?"
The man grimaced. "God, no. I just happen to look a bit like one."
"Then who are you?"
"I'm just a passer-by. My name's the Doctor. What's yours?"
She was a little fearful, but somehow, the Doctor's voice – calm amongst all this chaos – comforted her.
"Ariana."
The Doctor opened his mouth to say something, but his words were drowned out by an explosion.
The Doctor had noticed her jump in fright.
"I'm scared," Ariana explained.
"There are… machines crawling all over the city. Of course you're scared," the Doctor said gently. "Shall we get out of here? Somewhere safe?"
The Doctor held out his hand.
Ariana nodded, and grabbed his hand, and they started running. Out of the ruined house, and down the old street.
And as they ran further away from the town, Ariana realised with a lurch of horror that the muddy wasteland they sprinted through used to be a meadow. A meadow where she had spent countless afternoons identifying the exotic flowers with the aid of a book from the library. A book she would never be able to read again.
"Where are we going?" Ariana shouted.
The Doctor stopped, and motioned with his hands for her to be quiet. He knelt down in front of her, his peculiar leggings sinking into the muddy ground.
"We're going to have to go through this battlefield, so you're going to have to be brave," he urged her. "Can you do that?"
"I think so," Ariana replied, "But why?"
"Because in the middle of this battlefield, is my magic box. And it'll take us far away from this war zone, and the machines."
Ariana nodded. "Okay."
The Doctor gave her an encouraging smile, and they started running again.
There were deafening bangs and zaps ringing out all around them.
She couldn't see any of the fighting through the thick fog, but she could hear it all.
There was another explosion – this one so close, Ariana could feel the heat on her forehead.
They dived to the ground, the Doctor shielding her as best he could.
Ariana peeked over his shoulder, but couldn't see anything – the fog was so heavy, she couldn't tell where they were, or which way they needed to run.
She was glad the kind Doctor was here; otherwise she'd be utterly lost and alone.
There were shapes moving in the fog: tall silhouettes, surrounding them. As they got closer, Ariana could see them properly.
They were at the mercy of six soldiers, dressed identically in camouflaged combats. They were all female; slender, and beautiful – in complete contrast to their surroundings.
As Ariana stared at them, she realised they all looked exactly the same.
One of them spoke, in a strange, lifeless voice.
"You are one of the Myrox. You will be destroyed."
