Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who.
A/N - I am looking forward to watching the new series with Jodie Whittaker and I hope it's better than the last ones we had where the writing was sub-par. I am writing this and another one-shot to celebrate.
Down to the DEEP end.
As the Doctor watched Ruth walk off, he had to hide the sigh of relief; not only was Hoskins watching but Ruth herself may just hear it, and she may decide to come back and try once more to get into the submersible and travel down to the DEEP with them. The problem with Ruth was she was incredibly stubborn, but it looked as though she had decided to do as he'd told her and go off back home rather than come with him down to the seabed to the Deep Sea Energy Exploration project to learn what had happened to her father.
The military had spent the past 27 years telling the public that Professor Volmer, a respected scientist researching alternative energies, was the one responsible for the radioactive fallout that had poisoned the fish stocks for miles around, costing lives and livelihoods. And for 27 years the Doctor had allowed them to believe that, but the naval probe down to the sea base had offered an opportunity for Ruth, who had been suffering along with her deceased mother, to learn what had happened to her father.
That was something the Doctor could not allow.
Not only could Ruth discover the truth of what had happened to her father, something that the Doctor had spent the past 27 years of his current self trying to prevent, but she may discover the full story of what really happened in the DEEP. The two were intrinsically linked together. The Doctor could understand her desire to come with him down to the DEEP and find out what had happened to her father, but he had no intention of letting that happen even if it caused her so much pain and grief and had sent her mother to an early grave.
He needed to get down there soon, find out how the base had survived while he and Hoskins had a narrow window of opportunity to get down to the seabed and get into the base. The Doctor had lied to Ruth, telling her that he would go in her stead as her "guardian angel" to protect her and find out the truth.
Too bad he had no intention of doing so.
The Doctor knew precisely what had happened down there in the Deep-sea Energy Exploration Project, though he had no intention of telling Ruth, besides he had promised Volmer he would not tell Ruth what had happened when Lee and Flint injected that DNA mutagen into his body and transformed him into a mutant. The Doctor had no problem with bending that promise and lying completely to Ruth for 27 years of her life by saying he had no idea what had happened to her father, and what the Doctor himself had done…
Ever since the end of the Time War which had resulted in the total destruction of the Time Lords, the Doctor had become scarred by what he had seen, of the sacrifices he had needed to make in order to end the war, and he had begun ruthlessly policing the cosmos looking for any sign that things were wrong. He had realised that the only way to ensure the universal peace was kept was to do whatever it took by any means necessary, and if he had to resort to murder then so be it. His days of being a moral crusader were long over, he had seen and experienced far too much.
It hadn't been difficult to find out about Lee. His work and his habit of taking shortcuts to achieve his ends had made him notorious in the scientific circles he was in, and he had been shunned throughout his career for his work. Lee had dropped off the map after his work had been condemned as unethical, but General Flint had decided to fund his research when he had seen the potential for military use.
Flint was much like himself; he had no problems using people to further his own agenda and had provided Lee with the facilities he had needed, but Flint had known if he had just given Lee carte blanche others would hear of it, so he'd looked around and found Professor Volmer, a scientist who had spent his career trying to find a solution to Earth's diminishing fossil fuels, and decided to use Volmer as cover.
It had worked, Volmer's research with the "black smokers" had been insightful, but as always humans were too slow or just too stupid to realise that the work was sound, though he had no intention of doing anything to make them see it; the human race's growing problems with their energy supplies were their own problem, not his. But Volmer had been perfect and Flint had funded the DEEP. Volmer had probably been delighted, though the Doctor didn't know and frankly didn't care if Volmer had even bothered just once to stop and think about why Flint even funded him.
The Doctor shrugged silently. In a few hours time, once he and Hoskins had finished loading the sub with the equipment they needed to get past the naval probes, it wouldn't matter.
After he had finished his plan to destroy all of Lee's research notes on genetic engineering, he would start looking for his TARDIS key and when he had found it he would finish his work and destroy the DEEP once and for all before the navy went down. But he would finally be free of this world he had been trapped on for the last 27 years. He had thought he would have succeeded in recovering the TARDIS a year after losing it, while keeping Ruth and the rest of the world unaware of what had happened down there when he'd managed to get into the Sunbelt project, but like as before he had dealt with Guzman and Reid in much the same manner he had dealt with Vollmer, Flint, and Lee.
The Doctor had to admire the military. He had hypnotised a number of soldiers who were high up in the US military to keep him apprised of what was going on in relation to the DEEP. The Doctor had also spent a lot of time subtly pointing them in the right direction when they began investigating for themselves what had happened down there, it hadn't taken long for them to realise that Lee's work could create an army of super-soldiers and he had manipulated them in keeping an eye on the DEEP and keep him up to date with what was going on while making sure they kept the base off limits so then individuals like Hoskins wouldn't be tempted to go down there and find anything that could tell the entire story.
It was child's play; just show off his UNIT pass and a few cases of mild hypnosis and he had the spies he needed and the best thing was they didn't even realise. They just assumed he was UNIT scientific counsellor asking questions about the DEEP. That was how he had gotten his hands on that confidential report from them. They'd just given it to him.
With the military watching the guarding the DEEP, all the Doctor needed to do was keep watch while he fed lies to Ruth.
But now those days were over. Soon he would go down to the DEEP, find the TARDIS and find the key, destroy the research notes Lee had come up with while destroying the base and give the military another mystery to try to solve, but he would be gone. He didn't care that Ruth would be hurt and upset by his loss, he had looked after her nearly her whole life but now it was time for her to go on without him.
The Doctor did feel some sympathy for her though, but he wasn't going to let that stop him. He had a mission, and he was going to leave Earth.
What do you think?