I. Not So Little
Far away, her hand was burning. She felt the warmth calmly, as if through an entertainment screen, her haptic view of someone else's hand. Only when the fire reached the bones in her left palm did she wake up, screaming.
She rolled away from the fire by instinct, stiffly, for she had not moved in a very long time. She could hear the flames roaring now, and feel the heat beat her eyes, but she could also see another form of light as she turned - a cooler, yellow light that did not flicker. She staggered toward it, as the flames melted the bed she had slept in for more than ten thousand years.
"Oh my God, there are people down here," whispered the demolition worker, as the vaguely female form limped into the light. He raced to her, full of adrenaline and guilt, and kneeled by her side. He had never seen a burn victim before, and, in the crush of the moment, he thought that the green scales on her skin, and her impossible clothes, were there because the fire had melted her somehow. As gently as he could, he picked her up and carried her to safety on the surface.
There was no medic on site, and it would take hours to summon a doctor, so the workers poured cold water on her, folded a jacket and placed it under her head, and hoped her skin was not causing her too much pain. After two hours, she woke again, more fully this time.
"Where am I?" she asked.
"You're on the surface now," replied the man who found her. "We found you in the tunnel we were building. I didn't know you were there, I promise."
"Where are the others?"
The man gasped. He suddenly felt terrified, not of her, but of himself, of what he might have become. "There were no others," he whispered.
She sat up. Every muscle in her body was taut. "There were eleven others," she said.
The workers, who had come running when she showed signs of waking up, glanced at one another, then looked down at their feet. Finally the foreman said, "You were the only one. That area has been burning for hours now. I'm sorry."
"Sorry," she repeated back. You're sorry. You killed eleven of the bravest warriors this world has ever seen while they slept,. While they slept! And you're sorry." Her voice was growing softer now, and more sibilant. "I can promise you foolish apes, you will indeed be ssssssssorry."
A doctor did indeed arrive a couple hours later, but he discovered that, instead of attending to a female burn victim, he needed to notify the police and the morgue about the six dead demolition workers. He discovered one man still hanging to life, despite a broken back and neck. Before passing away, that man haltingly told a police inspector an impossible tale of a green monster who came out of the flames and killed them all. The inspector did not believe in monsters, but he did believe in murder, and he convinced his superiors to organize a manhunt for the Tunnel Killer.
For a week, she hid from them, in the small network that would become the London Underground. She ate rats, and drank whatever water she could find. Her body was starved from the long sleep, and it did not appreciate the diseased food she was giving it. She grew ill and weak, and knew she could not survive another fight.
Still, she was more skilled at hiding than the apes were at finding, and, as the hunt wore on, it gained the attention of the newspapers. The manhunt for the Tunnel Killer was now "The Search for the Tunnel Monster." One article printed an account of an unnamed eye witness, who reported a ten foot tall green lizard who breathed fire. It was this article that a traveler happened to read one London afternoon, just when he was about to leave town.
Below the surface, she knew she was about to die. The apes had brought dogs this time, and there were not enough tunnels to hide from them all. Her burned hand was now infected, and she was so very thirsty. She decided to stop running, and to kill as many apes as she could until her end came. But to her great humiliation, she found herself fighting the dogs, not the apes, and the dogs were winning.
Through the fog of her pain, she could hear the traveler shouting, "Stop stop stop!" until the police officers pulled away the dogs. Then he stood over her, as she bled onto the tunnel floor. She focused her diseased gaze on him, and said without thinking, "You are old."
The traveler smiled so boyishly she thought she must be wrong, and he replied teasingly, "Old? Me, old? You're a Silurian! How old are you, little girl?" Then he reached down, and gently stroked her head. As a last act of self-respect, she tried to kill this ape who dared to touch her, but she had lost too much blood, and passed out.
She awoke in a bed, with all her wounds tended to. After she got over the shock of being not-dead, she realized with even greater astonishment that her bed was flush with the floor of the room, and the heat of the room radiated from that same floor. It was the ideal setup for a cold-blooded reptilian body like hers, but far beyond the technology of the apes who had hunted her with weapons that propelled simple bullets. Frightened, she leapt to her feet, battle ready, but she could see no threat so she slowly relaxed. After a while, she carefuly checked under the dressing on her left hand. The infection was gone, and she might not even have a scar there soon.
More bemused than worried, she cautiously left "her" room, and explored the nearby hallway. The adjacent rooms all looked as though they were designed for humans; hers was the only one intended for her kind. This confounded her: how could a building be designed for multiple races? Almost in a trance, she opened another door, then leaped back, battle-ready again, when she saw the traveler.
He was seated, reading a book, while listening to music that she did not recognize, though it did not displease her ear. He raised his eyes to look at her, smiled and stood. "The little girl is awake! How are you feeling?"
She did not answer. Instead, she surveyed him, and the room, calculating. He was an ape, and yet, he was not. There was something different about him. The room looked like the central control of a facility, or the bridge of a ship. Very complex, but no visible weapons - either for him, or for her. Finally she said, "Why am I still alive?"
"I'm a doctor," he replied, and he started whirling around the room while he spoke. "In fact, I'm The Doctor, pleased to meet you. And who are you, little girl? You aren't actually little, and you aren't a girl, not even a lizard girl, though at one point you were a lizard girl, and little, but I don't think you like me calling you that, even though it's so much fun!" He stopped whirling right in front of her, and his impish smile was so broad now she almost smiled back. "So who are you really?"
They were now close enough to touch, but she did not feel threatened. Instead, she relaxed. Her body, which was now healed, but still dehydrated and famished, almost buckled under her, and she swayed until he caught her arm and steadied her. She pulled away, but not as hard as she could, and when he kept holding her up, she did not protest further. "Careful," he said, "you haven't used your body for a long time. Silurian sleep pod, amazing technology, but it does give you the munchies. Time stasis is so much more civilized." He turned to the control console in the center of the room. "Could we have something she can eat, put it by her bed?" He paused for a moment, as if listening to something she couldn't hear, then started guiding her back to her room.
"Doctor," she said, and he looked at her. "I am Vastra. I had a title, but the ones who gave me that title are asleep. Or perhaps they are all dead."
The Doctor shook his head. "Not all the Silurians are dead. I know thousands who are waiting until humanity is more advanced. But let's get you back in bed, Vastra. Little Vastra," he taunted, almost giggling, and scampered away from her as she glared at him.
There was a large bottle of fresh blood beside her bed, which she drank frantically, not pausing for breath. The Doctor looked away while she did this, clearly uncomfortable, but when she was done he handed her a handkerchief, which she used to wipe her lips.
"Where are we?" she asked him. He smiled and said, "Sleep first. That was probably your first real food in quite a while." Vastra realized he was right, that her body was begging for torpor, so she curled up in her floorbed and closed her eyes.
When Vastra awoke, the Doctor was gone. And he appeared to be really gone, because she started exploring the complex, and could not find him anywhere. She did, however, find a swimming pool, with water heated to a temperature ideal for Silurian comfort. This baffled her, because it was a temperature that would scald apes.
She found the control room again, though strangely, it did not seem to be in the same place it had been before. In the control room was an exterior door, which she cautiously reached for. But before she could open it, the door was flung open from the other side by the Doctor, who dove in, screaming, then slammed the door behind him.
Briefly, through the open door, Vastra had seen gigantic metal creatures chasing the Doctor. She assumed it was them banging against the door now, because the control room started to shake and the walls started to clang. Just then, she noticed the Doctor was injured. His left pant leg had been burnt off, and he was hopping around the control panel on his right foot.
The Doctor saw her looking at his leg, and waved dismissively. "Don't worry. Primitive mechanoids. Easy to heal the damage. More importantly, it's easy to disable them with a magnetic pulse." He pulled a lever on the console, there was a low hum, and the clanging and shaking stopped.
The Doctor hopped to the exterior door, and opened it enough to pop his head out but not enough to show his injuries. Vastra overheard a conversation she could not see, in which several people thanked the Doctor for saving their lives, and he gave them pointers to defend themselves against the mechanoids in the future. Then someone asked him to attend a feast they would prepare in his honor, and the Doctor replied, "A feast? I love feasts! Let me just get my feast toothbrush. It's twice the size of my regular toothbrush." Then he closed the door, hopped to the console, pulled a lever, and leaned heavily against a railing.
Vastra watched the Doctor for a moment as the room around her made a wheezing noise she had never heard before. He looked back at her, his head cocked to one side. "Yes?" he asked, his grin returning, despite the pain in his leg.
"It cannot be true," said Vastra, "but I believe that if I were to open that door, those people you were talking to would not be there anymore. How is that possible?"
This made the Doctor clap his hands and laugh. "Very good, my not-so-little Vastra! You are too wise to be little. You had a title that is long gone? How about a title that anyone can give you, anytime? Lady Vastra! Venerable Vastra! Madame Vastra!" He grinned again, though he winced this time.
Vastra helped the Doctor to a room with a recliner, and they continued talking once he had reclined and fitted himself with a boot that she realized must be some form of medical apparatus. Vastra was deep in thought, and, though she was talking to the Doctor, she was looking inside herself, or at the ceiling or the wall. "You saved the lives of those people, the way you saved my life," she said, not really a question.
"I suppose I did," said the Doctor. "Didn't have anything else to do on a Wednesday."
"You are old," said Vastra. "I thought I was wrong, but now I believe I was right about that. Have you been doing this for a long time?"
The Doctor squirmed a bit on the recliner. "Not all the time, no. And only on Wednesdays!" He changed the subject. "You're on my ship. It's the most amazing ship in the universe! It can even travel in time. Would you like me to take you to the future, when other Silurians are waking up?"
Vastra looked at the floor, and spoke very quietly. "I am deeply shamed, Doctor. There were apes - humans - who saved my life, and I slaughtered them all. They were unarmed, and trying to help me. I do not deserve to be on the ship of one who saves lives."
"I was wondering about that," said the Doctor. "Why did you kill them?"
"They had killed my brothers and sisters in the sleep pod with their explosion," replied Vastra. She was still talking quietly, but now she met his gaze, as though making eye contact was her first punishment. "But they did not know the sleep pod was there. They even apologized, and I ended their lives anyway."
"Well then," said the Doctor, also speaking very quietly, "what do you think I should do with you?"
"If you don't mind, Sir Doctor," said Vastra, "please take me back to where you found me. I must protect the humans, the way you protected me."
The Doctor looked at her for a long time, then smiled broadly. "Madame Vastra," he exclaimed, clapping his hands together, "I am very glad I saved your life!"