Adric set the glass down by Tegan's side, and she smiled weakly up at him as she took the small capsule the Doctor had prescribed. He then sat down next to Nyssa, and almost immediately felt her hand on his, as the three of them watched the Doctor. None of them were concentrating on the game, but by the shouts and general language, the Doctor's team was losing.
They had travelled back to Earth, to Tasmania. And while Tegan found solace in quasi-familiar surroundings, the Doctor had found his own way to unwind.
Nyssa and Adric were both still worried about Tegan, despite the Doctor's assurance that the Mara was well and truly vanquished. Their own actions in these events had been slight, but they had both done all they could to help Tegan and the Doctor.
The evening progressed, and the game eventually finished, with the Doctor's team apparently winning. He had bought them all a celebratory drink, and they had all retired, each to separate rooms.
Nyssa and Adric had discussed this, and decided it would be better if they did not share a room. Not so much that they were afraid of the Doctor or Tegan's reaction- by now they must have known something was on between them- but neither wanted to "rush into this". After ensuring that Tegan was alright and settled, Adric walked Nyssa to her own room. Kissing him goodnight, Nyssa closed the door.
Nyssa tossed and turned in her sleep, dreaming of home. Her father, Tremas- before the Master had murdered him and taken his body- had married again, and was expecting another daughter. Wanting her to be exactly like Nyssa, Tremas had arranged for the child to be raised as she herself was. An only child.
In her dream, Nyssa had secretly snuck up to the house, and was spying on her father and his new family. The baby saw her, and began crawling towards her. Suddenly, the child leapt up at the window, and Nyssa woke with a gasp, a cold chill around her. Gasping for breath, she looked around for the light, and saw the infant in the window. Slowly, she got up, careful not to frighten it as it stood precariously on the window ledge. As she slowly reached out with both arms to take up the naked infant, it lunged at her, a pair of fangs appearing from its soft pink gums. She gasped when it clamped itself to her, clutching her neck hard enough to make her numb. Nyssa teetered back, found some support at the end of the bed. She had not the strength to scream or lash out, or to fight the child as it fed off her blood, suckling her neck.
Adric couldn't sleep at all, and was reading one of the Harry Potter books from the TARDIS library. He had had to promise the Doctor that he wouldn't leave it lying around. This one hadn't been published, and wouldn't be for the better part of a decade.
Suddenly sensing something, someone behind him, he dropped the book and rolled onto his back, sitting up.
There was no-one there. Knowing that he didn't just imagine it, Adric got up and put his trousers back on. Before long, Tegan was hammering on his door, asking whether he was alright, and saying that the Doctor had "a bloody vampire in his room."
They met with Nyssa on the way to the Doctor's room. She looked unhurt. A little pale, but the light was poor.
Returning to the TARDIS, Adric was overcome with concern when Nyssa locked herself up in the lab and refused to come out, even when he offered to help. She wouldn't come out for dinner, and while the others shared his concern, only he had trouble eating.
'You needn't worry.' The Doctor was saying. 'I checked her neck earlier, and there was nothing wrong. No bites, no scratches, nothing.'
'Cheer up. She's probably annoyed she missed all the action.'
'I hope that's all she is.' Adric muttered as he pummelled his still uneaten food.
Waking in the middle of the night, Nyssa threw herself upright, and almost flew into her bathroom, where she retched into the basin, drowning it in blood. A tiny capsule lay amid the crimson mess, her attempt at a synthetic means of feeding. Staring at the mirror, she barely recognised herself, and was both horrified and intrigued at what she saw. The ambivalence was soon overtaken by hunger. A hunger so painful and terrible that she could not bear it. Fighting with herself, she lost the battle, and ripped open the door.
Adric had been to the lab and found everything cleared away with Nyssa's usual precision. He had not seen her all day, and that made him even more worried than before. Now he was wandering the corridor, fighting his instinct to go to her room.
A scream and sounds of a struggle made him wheel around and run back the way he came, toward Nyssa and Tegan's rooms. Coming round the corner, he was terrified by what he saw. Tegan was against the wall, cowering, as Nyssa stood over her, bloodlust in her eyes, and partially congealed blood down her nightshirt.
'Nyssa! No!' Adric ran for her, and suddenly found himself suspended, a clear foot in the air, Nyssa's hand around his throat. Amid the stars he was suddenly seeing, he could see the battle raging in Nyssa's eyes, the raging bloodlust, love, fear, hunger, pleading. Dropping him, Adric lost his footing and fell, smashing his head against a roundel in the wall, hard enough to draw blood.
Tegan watched as Nyssa threw herself at him, turning his head and lapping the blood from a bad gash to the side of his head. She shivered as she swallowed.
The Doctor suddenly appeared, and Tegan made her feelings known.
'Where the bloody hell have you been?!'
'Nyssa!' The Doctor yelled, and her head snapped around, snarling at him. Adric slid unconscious down onto the TARDIS' floor. The Doctor held up a small cloth bundle, holding it tightly in his hand. 'I'm so sorry.'
A wave suddenly radiated from it. Nyssa couldn't see or hear it, but she felt it like a physical blow. Unable to comprehend it, she recoiled, scrambling backwards on all fours as the Doctor advanced, the cloth bundle still in his grasp. Unable to bear it any longer, Nyssa screamed, turned away and ran, through the Console Room and beyond, into the night. The Doctor did not follow, tending to Adric. When Tegan wondered why, in her usual angry yell, the Doctor replied.
'There's nothing I can do for her right now. Help me with Adric.'
'What is that?' Tegan regarded the bundle, now stuffed in the Doctor's dressing gown.
'It was Susan's. My granddaughter. Vampires are repelled by faith, and my faith in her is unquestionable. Now come on.'
Nyssa lay, hunched and shivering, between two boulders, a snug crevice that barely held her. Her clothes were stained with blood. Hers, Adric's, and the sheep she had butchered in another raging bloodlust. The animal tasted dirty, like the junk food she had tried on a trip to London in the early 21st century.
She was cold and tired, but she could not sleep. Suddenly she felt something else, inside her. A burning in the pit of her stomach. It increased, slowly and steadily, until it was too much to bear, and Nyssa screamed into the sky.
'Now, then.'
Nyssa looked up, and saw the man standing astride the boulders, looking down at her.
'What's all this noise?'
Adric opened his eyes, and slowly the room began to take shape around him.
His head hurt.
Sitting up, he found he was in his own room. The chair had been moved, beside the bed, and it was now empty. Through the doorway came a weary and troubled Tegan, though she brightened when she saw him awake.
'That's some good news at least.'
'What happened? Please tell me what I think happened didn't.'
'I wish I could. Come on, the Doctor needs us in the console room, now you're up.'
On the way to the console room, Tegan told Adric of her misadventures with the Doctor: meeting with an evangelistic group, one of whom had been captured by a horde of vampires, with technology that the Doctor said was beyond Earth's current level. And then nightfall had suddenly hit, two hours early, and she had had a "bloody close encounter" with one of the Evangelist's friends. "Just a kid. Poor thing."
No sign had been seen of Nyssa, and they were all as worried as he was.
The Doctor was partway through destroying the wooden coat stand, fashioning stakes, as well as gathering other supplies and equipment.
Nyssa could not remember much between seeing the man above her, and standing where she was now. She was in a TARDIS console room, but it was not like the Doctor's. it was darker, furnished in wood, and seemed considerably more advanced. All she remembered were faces, and a few names. Jake and Maddie. Two vampires that had shown her kindness, while the others around them treated her like an old Trakenhundt, had taken her to their bed, until Ruath had woken her, summoned her to this place.
By the way she walked, talked and moved about the place, Nyssa knew she was a Time Lady. At least, she knew her way around a TARDIS.
'You, my dear, are an anomaly.' Ruath said, looking back at her from across the console, much like the Doctor would. 'Something in your body is like nothing I have ever seen. Someone at your stage of metamorphosis would be a half-crazed wreck by now without feeding. But you stand there now, having barely eaten for days, in total control. In fact, in better control than some of the older ones here. It bodes well.'
'I don't want anything to do with you, or your plans. I just want to go home.'
'Ah, but where exactly is home? Now that Traken is lost, to that other renegade's embolism field.' Ruath smiled at her, kindly and oddly threatening at the same time. 'Would you consider that clapped-out contraption of the Doctor's home?
'In any case, it is immaterial. I have a different destiny in mind for the Doctor, and his companions.'
Adric sprinted beneath the moat as it pulsed and waved above the ground, toward the large gothic castle that had to have been another TARDIS. Reaching the wall, the others were close behind, and he recovered considerably earlier than the others.
'Were you friends with Moses or something?'
'For a while.' The Doctor said. 'we fell out after he found me amending those stone tablets of his. This way.'
'I'm never too sure when he's joking.' Tegan muttered as she followed.
The reference was lost on Adric.
Passing through the kitchen, Adric stayed close to the Doctor and Tegan. He could sense the innate evil in the place, and was careful not to disturb any of the sleeping vampires.
His own people had similar legends, of creatures of the night, destroyed by sunlight. Like the "Universal Devil" concept Nyssa had been talking to him about some weeks before.
'So what do we do?' Tegan asked the Doctor.
'Split up.'
'Right.' Tegan said, as though it was obvious.
The Doctor handed each of them a pen-sized object 'A directional transducer. If you find Nyssa, or someone who looks important, set it off and I'll find you.'
'If we're splitting up,' Adric said, 'we had better be armed.'
'Too right.' Tegan held out her hand.
The Doctor looked down his nose at them. 'Don't go getting any ideas.'
'Call it emotional support.' Tegan smiled. The Doctor handed them each a stake and a wide wooden hammer. Tegan tested the end of her stake, 'Ow!'
'Well what did you expect?' Adric muttered, carefully pocketing the stake.
'Watch it, mate.' Tegan brandished the hammer.
As they parted company, for what he prayed would not be the final time, the Doctor wondered whether who he should be more worried about.
Adric and Tegan travelled along the same corridor until they reached a junction, and each went a different way, wishing the other good luck. Despite the Doctor's reassurance that they would be dormant for at least a few more hours, Tegan's report of the sun going down "ahead of schedule" gave Adric pause.
It would take a lot of processing power to maintain something like that. The kind only found within a living brain. He shuddered when he thought about what they could do with his.
Stepping over the sleeping forms of several young vampires, Adric decided to take a small break, and rested against a wall.
He disappeared through it, and found himself in an oak-clad TARDIS console room. Overcome with curiosity, he perused the console itself, taking note of how a fully operable TARDIS should conform.
Something caught his eye on one of the readouts, and he tapped a few neighbouring controls. The image enlarged and extrapolate itself into a complex string of numbers and symbols, which Adric recognised as Alzerian DNA. His own, specifically.
Tapping a few more controls, something suddenly grabbed his wrist. Feeling something stabbing into his hand, Adric fell to the floor, unconscious, still shackled to the TARDIS console.
Somewhere nearby, a man called Jeremy awoke, and all hell broke loose.
Nyssa sat, alone in a cell. As cells went, it was rather comfortable. Warm and relatively comfortable, she wished she had been in more dungeons and jails like this one in her travels with the Doctor. She was suddenly having serious second thoughts about travelling with him. She had almost lost Adric, and now this.
She wondered where Adric was, and how worried he was. Her question was soon answered, as the door opened, and through the energy bars of her cell, Nyssa saw Adric. He was unconscious, and being carried by a vampire she didn't recognise. He was carried to a cell opposite her own and gently lain inside. The vampire left, nodding to Ruath, as the bars on Adric's cell cracked into existence.
'Still with all our faculties, I see. Excellent.' Ruath regarded her. 'Aren't you just the tiniest bit hungry?'
Though Nyssa would never admit it, and fought to hide it behind a calm and resistant demeanour, her insides were screaming for blood, for meat, for Adric. The only sign that reached the surface was a slight tensing of her jaw. And that was enough for Ruath.
'Ah, poor child. Quite the quandary you're in. Your body screams for sustenance, but your soul clings to decency, to what makes you who you are. A civilised woman, the last daughter of Traken. I commend you.'
'What are you going to do with us?' Nyssa's hunger and anger rose the pitch of her voice ever so slightly, as she stood and stepped as close to the bars as she dared.
'With you, nothing. For the moment, you're a… what's the term they use around here… a guinea pig. You are like nothing I have ever seen. And I believe it was your first feed, on this young man here,' Ruath nodded toward Adric, who was only just starting to stir, that brought on this… mutation.
'What I have planned for you is observation, and perhaps a test or two. For him…' she smiled. 'A total examination. My original plan was to persuade the Doctor to become my concubine, and rule an eternal vampire race across the universe. Now, I think I will use your clearly greatly beloved young man to sire a new race of vampires: I have barely scratched the surface, I am sure. Once I unlock the mysteries of his body, I will share them with my vampire brethren.'
Nyssa stood and listened, understanding the brilliance in the woman, and the latent insanity. Were all Time Lords psychopaths? Had she met the only denizen of Gallifrey who was not a power-crazed megalomaniac? Or was she just very unlucky? Nyssa finally decided it was a combination of answers to all those questions.
'I would prefer to bleed him dry right now, but my Lord demands my presence at his side. I will see you both, very soon.'
Adric was getting very annoyed of waking up with a headache. Even with a retrometabolism like his, headaches could be killers, and take hours to fade.
'How are you feeling?' someone asked as he sat up.
Adric looked up, and his heart almost missed a beat. 'Nyssa!' he bolted to his feet, and stopped an inch fro the bars.
'I wouldn't recommend it.' She shook her head. She looked tired, and hungry, but the rage and lust in her eyes was gone. Adric felt his temples and groaned, stepped away from the high-pitched whine from the bars. 'What's happening?'
'The Doctor and Tegan are close by. They've been captured, and the Doctor's about to be hardwired into a machine that will cause an eternal night on Earth.'
'Is there anything we can do to help?'
'Nothing I can do. I've already tried transforming. Vampires have the power to alter their molecular makeup, become gaseous at will. It's actually quite refreshing. You just have to make sure to get everything back in the right place. But I couldn't find a way though. The bars must be backed up with a force field.'
'So it's up to the Doctor to find another miraculous escape. Business as usual.'
It came sooner than either of them expected.