The Doctor frowned and growled softly to himself as the TARDIS bumped to a slightly less-than-smooth halt. His blue eyes gleamed, a second later, when he took in the current co-ordinates. Just as he'd expected, he'd landed in Chiswick, and he had business to attend to. He was chasing something, something big. The Seriph had chewed their way through time, leaving a trail of paradoxes and chaos in their wake. The Doctor was always one step behind, but not for long.
"Fantastic!" he grinned manically, his hands rubbing together in glee, as he observed through the sonar capability of the screen, that they had stopped running, at least for now. The one thing that he could guarantee, the one thing he knew he could rely on, was that the Seriph, would need to feed along the way. It was by chance, he'd chased them far enough, even after losing their trail, that time had spat them out so close to him.
He pulled the slick, black, weathered leather jacket onto his broad shoulders, his thin jersey jumper allowing it to glide on with ease. He checked his pockets with haste; sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, TARDIS key, banana. Check.
"Ready," he uttered to himself, and sauntered to the TARDIS door and pulled open the great, blue door. The air that hit his face was blustery and cool; Typical Seriph trick. Changing the weather; making innocents more vulnerable to their attacks by either herding them inside for easy pickings, or slowing them as they walk through the streets. Cowards. He rolled his eyes at his own soliloquized thoughts. He scoured the area, lighting up areas of brick-work and pavement, discreetly for a few seconds, tracking his play-thing. Passers-by barely noticed his presence at all, and as he walked past tall office building, after tall office building, he began to feel uneasy.
He whipped his head around, as he saw the ethereal shape of a Seriph, dart behind a building, that announced itself as H.C Clements. The Doctor, looked around with haste, checking the current people count in the general area. He was relieved to see it was merely two; a jumpsuit-clad caretaker, who was grumbling to himself, as he spiked up garbage from the courtyard, and a red-headed woman, in full black suit jacket, red jumper beneath, a black skirt, and high black, polished shoes. She was talking on the phone, laughing, and being generally loud.
The Doctor rolled his eyes, and began to cross the courtyard. He was going to ask her to go back inside, and from her obnoxious demeanour, he assumed it would be quite the task. He was merely two feet away, when the sentient, ghostly shape began making a beeline for the woman; the Doctor bolted into a run, colliding with the woman, to derail the Seriph's path. The woman screeched, not with fear, but with outrage, her phone clattering to the floor as she used her closed fists to beat at the Doctor's chest.
"Get OFF me, you bloody idiot!" she growled, a slap connecting with his face, which now contorted in pain, mixed with exasperation.
"I was SAVING you. I think 'thank you' is the phrase you were looking for," he climbed off of the woman, and straightened his jacket.
"Don't you try and play games with me, Sunshine!" she straightened out her jacket, and retrieved her phone from the floor. Upon seeing that it no longer worked, she launched it towards the Doctor.
"You broke my bloody phone! I hope you have a flipping good job, because you're buying me a new one," her face blanched, as her anger grew.
"Stupid apes, and their stupid mobiles, I don't know why I bother sometimes. Do you have a name?" he sighed angrily, a mere side-step being enough to avoid the rage-thrown object. This caused the woman to become more infuriated with his presence.
"WHAT did you just call me?! And yes I have a bloody name, it's Donna, thank you very much!" her eyes became narrow and blazing, and she swiped at him again. This one connected, and he winced.
"I called you a stupid ape, just like every other human on the planet," he snapped and rubbed his arm.
"Uh, YOU'RE a human being too, dumbo. What have you been taking?" she rolled her eyes, her hand back in its usual position on her hip, in defiance.
"No I'm not. I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time-Lord," he grinned suddenly; this perturbed Donna slightly.
"What the bloody hell is a Time-Lord?" she sounded both angry, and bored at the same time. He opened his mouth to respond, but the inhuman screech that tore through the fabric of the air, silenced any words he had potentially released into fruition. He grabbed Donna by the hand, her heels hitting the pavement hard, as she scampered after him, quite unwillingly. She pulled against the hand that gripped hers, and raged at him, until she turned around.
Upon seeing the deathly, marred form of what looked like both a shadow, and some form of clear glue creation at the same time, she screamed, unlike any other sound she had ever made. The Doctor felt her close into him, and they ran faster, as there was no longer any resistance.
The Seriph continued to zip through the air, its presence ragged and dominant. It littered the sky with blazing ash, and a smog of grey in its wake. It was gaining on them, it salivated as it tasted the air they resided in, and it stretched out a thin, tendriled claw. It caught a swatch of the woman's hair, tangling it, using it to pull her towards its open jaws, the black voids of its tooth-sockets raw, oily, and alive.
She screamed, and the Doctor pulled her, with everything he had, his hand grappled higher up her arm to gain more leverage. He pulled, and yanked as hard as he can, so hard that he heard a crack, and an agonised scream. The sound of it jarred the Seriph, it recoiled at such a human sound, and the Doctor was able to wrench Donna from its grasp.
He clambered, with Donna in his arms, into the TARDIS, the Seriph lashing and crashing against the TARDIS walls, unable to penetrate the shielding. Even though her entire body was shaking, Donna managed to grapple the console with her one good arm, and her head was spinning. She pulled herself up, and looked around, her eyes wide and feeling delirious, she gasped;
"It's...bigger on the inside...It's FLIPPING BIGGER ON THE INSIDE?" her confusion became unease.
"Your powers of deduction are second to none," the Doctor sniped, a little harsher than he intended. "Give me your arm," he spoke softly and reached out. She stepped back, shielding herself.
"My arm is fine, thank you," she snapped, regardless of the fact her arm was blazing with pain, enough that the edges of her vision were black.
"Right, okay, off you go then," he didn't even look up as he dismissed her with his hand. She frowned and looked at him;
"You what?" she scowled.
"Well, I was under the impression that you know everything about everything,and you don't need my help," he smiled, but it was made up entirely of stridency. He took her arm in his gentle grasp, and proceeded to splint and bandage it. She cursed and complained, swatting at him like he was a particularly persistent wasp. When he was done, he folded his arms, and waited for her to speak, anticipating either gratitude, or an apology.
"Alright, alright. Thank you," she scowled, rubbing her injured limb as she rolled her eyes up into her head, once again. He grinned, mirth and arrogance abundant in the action, and she sighed a weight-of-the-world sigh.
"What the hell WAS that?" she looked at the man before her, and brushed her auburn tresses from her ocean eyes.
"It's called a Seriph. It feeds on human souls," he spoke of things so absurd, as if they were the mundane. Donna looked at him, horrified;
"And you're some kind of doctor/" she tried to lay her thoughts laterally in front of her, metaphorically speaking.
"Not just a doctor, but the Doctor; have a flip through a history book once in a while; and there you'll see me," he folded his arms, his face still set in the same inane grin he'd possessed earlier.
"What does that even mean? Are you a doctor or not?" she looked puzzled, her brow knitted into a frown. She tipped her head curiously to one side.
"I'm an alien," he spoke matter of factly, his tone almost bored at the concept of repeating the same information he'd had to iterate for nine-hundred years. Donna's jaw dropped, and she shook her head in exasperation.
"Yes, and I'm the Queen of Sheba," she quipped, a derisive laugh escaped her.
"I'd laugh, but I've actually met the Queen of Sheba; nice lady, wasn't a fan of me though," he shrugged his shoulders and narrowed his eyes curiously, all of a sudden, at the suttle hissing sound that pervaded the air. His sky-blue eyes flitted around the TARDIS console room, a sickening feeling clawed its way through his stomach as his eyes locked upon the far corner.
"No. No, that's...impossible," he gasped and turned to grab Donna's remaining good wrist. From the corner of the room, thick, black oil was spreading, winding into every rivet, slipping across the floor as one sentient force. The Doctor backed away, as quickly as he could with Donna.
"Don't let it touch you, whatever you do, do not let that stuff touch you," he yelled and turned, pulling her with him, through the open-mouth pentagon archway, the rippling tide behind them, slow, yet unrelenting in its pursuit.
"Why? What is it?" Donna puffed as she ran, turning to look at the tide, her heels echoing on the hard ground.
"It's the Seriph; they can morph into one being, a liquid base like this! It should never have been able to get past the shields! Something's wrong with the TARDIS!" he panted, swerving into a room to his right, and pressing a glowing yellow pad beside the door. The steel shutters slammed into place, and the Doctor sighed in relief.
"Are we safe here then?" Donna wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, and closed her eyes, as she leaned her head against the cold stone of the wall. The Doctor nodded, his eyes fixed on the shutters.
"Yes, we should be, but what do I know? I thought we were safe already," he chuckled nervously, and Donna shot him a glare. The hissing became louder again as the Seriph closed in, swarming and circling like a hungry shark.
"Now what?" Donna bellowed, waving her good arm for emphasis. "That...slime stuff's not gonna go away is it?" The Doctor shook his head.
"Nope, but that's the least of your problems," he spoke in a grey and thin-lipped manner.
"What do you mean?" she looked around desperately, in case it had somehow reached her.
"This room is air locked. Humans can survive in here for about...an hour," his gaze was unwavering, and Donna's eyes widened.
"So either I'm going to bloody melt or bloody suffocate?!" she raged, her glare fixed on the Doctor, who was now backing away slowly.
"Well..." the Doctor began, but his voice trailed away as he saw a trickle of black drip from the ceiling, and onto Donna's shoulder; they had circumvented the air vents.
"We have to get out of here," he hollered as he hammered the pressure pad. As he did, he grabbed Donna's wrist and pulled her with him, through the tide. It was too late for either of them to escape it, and as they ran, flickering images of themselves began to appear behind them, one by one.
"They've cloned us! If we don't stop them, they'll drain us dry," the Doctor wheezed, and he continued on, towards the centre of the TARDIS.
"Oh, well isn't that WIZARD?" Donna growled, her breath ragged in her chest as she ran, she felt her lungs burn, and she blinked away black spots from her eyes.
"There's a way to stop it, but it might destroy the TARDIS," he swallowed thickly, and barreled into a room with angry, foreboding steel doors, once he'd passed a retinal scan. The room was lined with computers and flashing, beeping hardware; Donna didn't know a whole lot about computers, she'd always had Stan to deal with that, back at the office. The Doctor ran over to the main hub; a large computer in the centre of the room, which had wires of many colours, cascading from the back and sides of it. His fingers lithely cascaded across the keys, the machine responding with conversational beeps.
"What are you doing?" Donna looked over his shoulder, making no sense of the open programs and binary coding that scrolled before her.
"Reprogramming the TARDIS to look for unrecognisable alien tech, and when it does, it'll destroy it," his fingers moved quicker across the keys, and red sheets of light began to sweep across the room; it was programmed to recognise the Doctor, as his imprint was stored on its biode nebuliser, and to leave all humans out of the crosshairs.
"But we're safe, it'll know us, right?" she said, a little nervous of his answer.
"Yes," he said uncertainly, never having had to do this before. Images flickered onto the monitors in the room, images of Donna, and the Doctor, filling the screens, their carbon copies, with maniacal laughter, and weeping eyes, their translucent, non-corporeal state fuzzy and grainy upon the monitors. Donna backed up against the wall, gripping the side of the counters on either side, in an attempt to ride out her panic.
The Doctor closed his eyes and held out his hand to her. She looked at it for a moment, and took it, when he opened one eye to prompt her. He squeezed it tight, and in that moment, there was darkness. There was darkness and silence. The Doctor opened his eyes, and felt around the area in front of him.
"Doctor? What's going on?" Donna hissed, and crouched down to the floor.
"It's dead," he said simply, and quietly, silently hoping he could open the doors at least.
"That's good isn't it?" she looked up at him through the gloom. The Doctor shook his head.
"I don't mean the Seriph; it's the TARDIS. They've devoured its essence," he prised at the door with his lean fingers, using all of his might to pull them apart. When this failed, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver, and adjusted the setting slightly, before aiming at the doors. There was a whining groan, and the mechanism that held the jaws of the shutters closed, snapped. Donna approached the door and was stopped by the forceful arm of the Doctor holding her back.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said, his voice in awe and growing fear. Donna opened her mouth to protest, but stopped, the colour drained from her face as she too, looked out of the doorway and into nothingness.
"Get back, Donna, you need to get back, you can't breathe out there. I can, for a while, but you can't. Here, take this," he threw her the sonic, which she caught haphazardly with her left hand. "Open that cupboard there," he pointed, and she did as she'd been asked, fear, being the ultimate driving force. She opened the cupboard under the Doctor's careful instructions, and she pulled out the loose gas cannisters.
"Put the mask on," he ordered; "And don't argue," he added before she had the chance. She did as she was told, and as she breathed in the fresh air, she sighed in relief.
"What...what is that...out there?" she rasped, as she breathed the mixture of oxygen, and slowly mingling toxic air.
"They ripped the TARDIS apart," he shook his head, almost in disbelief himself.
"It's only one side, surely you can fix it? Let's just go back out into that room with the panels, we'll sort it out," she swept her hair from her eyes and looked up at him.
"That's just it Donna," he spoke with a sigh; "I don't think we can," he took careful steps back from the burnt off, torn out wall, back towards to door they'd burst in from.
"Why not? Let's go," she pulled herself up, and as she dragged the cannister, she opened the door.
"It's...it's gone. We're just...floating...in space?" she shuddered. The Doctor nodded.
"It's gone," and as he closed the door, he felt something he hadn't felt for many, many years, not truly. The Doctor was scared, and with the greatest of bitter irony, he laughed, his eyes slightly misted;
"Fantastic..."