"So where are we now Doctor?" Rose asked as she stepped out of the Tardis doors.
"He won't admit it, but I don't think he knows." Captain Jack Harkness was hot on Rose's heels as they walked into what appeared to be a forest.
"This," said the Doctor, "Is megopolis." The Doctor spoke as he secured the Tardis doors, as he continued, he turned to face his travelling companions. "It's one of the largest, most technologically advanced planets in the Cosmos and..." He stopped as he gazed for the first time at his surroundings. "Hang about, that's not right. We should be outside the Central archive building." The Doctor looked around the area in consternation. "This should be a bustling urban landscape."
Rose, who had wandered off a few scant meters from the Tardis, pulled away some of the shrubbery that blocked her advance into the wilds, and a gasp left her lips. "Doctor? Jack? You'd best have a look at this." The edge of a marble like structure seemed to erupt from the foliage in front of her. The Doctor was almost instantly behind her, looking on in disbelief.
"Told you. It's the Central Archive building. But it looks like it hasn't been used in Centuries. What's happened here?" The Doctor looked genuinely disturbed by this turn of events. "Come on, I see the main entrance over there." The Doctor almost ran off towards a once regal entrance, Rose and Jack found it difficult to keep up with the Doctor's sudden burst of speed. On her way, Rose noticed that most of the Ground level windows had been smashed, several of the higher windows had also been demolished, she looked at Jack who was pacing her, step for step.
"Vandals?" She asked.
"I'd give 'em all Asbo's." Jack looked serious, despite his flippant response. "I don't like this Rose, you stay by either me or the Doctor." Rose felt a smile touch her lips at Jack's concern.
"Aye, aye cap'n" She joked, Jack stared back at her bemused by her retort.
Up ahead, the Doctor had finally reached the main entrance, only to find the door barricaded, from inside. "Now why would they have done that?" He began shoving at a table that had been upended and used to block the majority of the doorway. "Jack, some help please?" Jack was still trying to catch his breath after the short run.
"You're gonna be the death of my Doc." He said as he put his shoulder alongside the Doctors and pushed with all of his strength. Working in unison, they felt the table move slightly.
"You two are useless, you know that?" Rose's voice rang out from behind them, both men turned as Rose approached with a large metal rod. She slid it into the gap between the doorway and the table creating a makeshift fulcrum. "If you want a job done right, you get a woman in." She smiled as she started to push on one end of the fulcrum, even working on her own, she noticed the table moving slightly, further than both Jack and the Doctor had managed to budge it. "See? Give me a big enough lever, and I can move the thingie."
"World." The Doctor Grunted as he too put his weight behind the fulcrum.
"You what?" Rose asked?
"He means that the saying is, 'give me a big enough lever, and I can move the world." Jack added, as he too put his strength into pushing the lever.
"Oh, right. I knew that, just wanted to check you two did as well." Rose bluffed as the table juddered a few feet away from the doorframe, leaving ample room for the trio to enter the building.
"Alright Rose. I want you to stay close to either Jack or myself while we're in here. We don't know what to expect, and it could be dangerous." The Doctor stared earnestly at Rose. "If anything happened to you... Well, your mother might slap me again, and I don't want that." He smiled lightly, but Rose could hear the seriousness in his voice.
As one, they entered the abandoned building. "OK, the main records room is through here." The Doctor strode off purposefully towards a large black granite doorway. Rose looked around, behind the table that had blocked their way, there was a pile of wood, stone and what looked like computer terminals. Anything that could add weight to the door itself.
"They really didn't want someone to get in here, did they?" Jack grunted in response, "and what's that smell?"
"You don't want to know, Rose. Trust me." Jack knew the stench of death. Old death, but that kind of smell never really went away. It hung in the air and stagnated with time. Jack took Rose's arm and followed the Doctor. As they entered the room behind the Doctor, they spotted him hunched over a terminal, prodding controls trying to make the thing work. In the chair in front of the terminal, there was a dessicated corpse. What flesh remained on it's form was ragged, and attatched to the skeleton by atrophied and decayed sinew. Rose clenched her eyes shut, but still the image lingered in her memory.
"There's no power." The Doctor tutted as he turned to face his friends, "I'm going to have to.." he noticed Rose's expression and immediately looked at the dead body in the chair, "ah, give me a moment." Rose kept her eyes closed as she heard a scraping noise, like something being dragged across the once polished floor. A few moments later she heard the Doctor's voice, "It's OK now Rose, it's gone." Rose opened her eyes, and true to his word, the Doctor had removed the corpse, and the chair it was sitting on. Rose could see the trail in the dust leading to a small door at the far end of the room.
"Now, as I was saying. I'll need to find a power source for this thing to run off. I need to find out what happened here."
"What about your sonic screwdriver? You're able to make that do everything else?" Rose asked in an uncharacteristicly hushed tone.
"Good girl. That's why I like having you around." The Doctor beamed at her as he pulled the device from his jacket pocket. He altered the settings on the device and placed it on the table next to the work terminal. A constant beam of blue light erupted from the doctor's sonic screwdriver, hitting the terminal. The computer, after a few seconds, lit up as it activated. "It's rebooting." The Doctor said. "Lets find out what's on here shall we?" The doctor struck a few controls on the keyboard. "It looks like it's a diary, a journal, let's see what's been going on." The Doctor hit another key, and the air behind the terminal shimmered as a figure appeared. "A hologram? Fantastic."
"Journal entry 6668548/58-6. This may very well be my final entry. They are at the door again tonight. I fear they may break through any time now. These savages, they've thrown it all away, they've killed us all." The figure began to sob, "and all because their Gods demand it. All science is heresy to them, but is it heretical, or a threat? I have worked so long trying to find out for sure, but I think I now understand the power they hold over my people. They are ancient. They are legend in almost all cultures, they are..." The hologram disappeared in a flurry of light and sound.
"The power must have been cut. Right then. It's ridiculously bad timing if you ask me." The Doctor looked around the room. "What happened here?"
Outside the building, figures approached. "Is it not as I told you? The temple of the heretics has been entered."
"Find the heretics, and kill them. Our Gods must be obeyed in all things.
To be continued.