Chapter 2
Outside was too hot. Always too hot. The heat wormed its way into his body, into his mind and he wilted. He looked down in horror as his bare feet on hard ground were melting. There was no blood no veins, no bones, just a puddle of liquid forming beneath him, around him. Over taking him. His newborn lungs gulped in great bellows of air, but his screams died as he melted. Hands pulled him away. He felt his Flesh separate, leave droplets on the ground, on the gloves of the scientists...why couldn't he stabilize? He was Time Lord from Gallifrey. His name was Atheyr. He had two hearts. He was from the future. All of time and space was his playground. He ran away when he saw the untempered schism. He marked the passing of the Time Lords. His best friend was Amelia Pond and there were so many others who faded from his lives. His other self continued to soldier on the heavy title of the Doctor. He could remember everything and Atheyr had declared whom he was, the Doctor but not the Doctor...Why couldn't he stabilize?
The scientists managed his melting form back into the cubical. The cold cubical that kept him somewhat stable, in his own universe. He wished for the Tardis now. Its energy field could stabilize him instantly and permanently. A nice dose of Artron energy would be just nice. Atheyr watched in horror as he saw the scientists scoop up bits of him left on the floor.
"Well least he didn't entirely revert back." Said RoaneG, as Atheyr took to calling her. She was the silver eyed woman and the silver eyed man was her twin. Atheyr also discovered they were the grandchildren of the older gray haired man who seemed to be in charge of everything. They shared the last name Roane. Which left Atheyr with three Dr. Roanes in the same room. It got very confusing, very quickly. So Atheyr decided to rename them. The silver eyed woman Roane became RoaneG for Roane Girl and her brother was RoaneB for Roane Boy...And their grandfather became Roane, or Dr. Roane if Atheyr was feeling polite.
Atheyr had all sort of nicknames bubbling up for Dr. Roane. From Dr Mcevil Pants to Evil Boss Man; but Atheyr resisted such names, he didn't want to escalate his situation. Fear made him cautious. Atheyr was not in a good position, he was vulnerable. He needed to make allies if he wanted to escape. He also needed to stabilize.
He laid in the cubical, puddles of liquid Flesh squelched around him. He closed his eyes, trying to focus all of his energy on staying in one piece. He jumped and whimpered at the pain that shot through him when RoaneG spoke to him, disrupting his concentration.
"You okay in there?" she asked.
He opened his eyes. RaoneG's hand was on the glass and genuine concern painted her face. Atheyr struggled to bring his arms up, he only managed his right arm to give a weak thumbs up. He felt sick as he let his arm slip back into the liquid Flesh. He hoped his form reshaped, because at the moment he was just too tired to keep his eyelids open.
As time slowly slugged on, Atheyr's body slowly came back together. Slowly, he was reborn. Even though his eyes were closed his senses were there, laid waiting. He could hear every voice and hushed whisper. And the mutterings of calculations and miscalculations by the five top scientists of Project Chengyin XI. That was him. Chengyin meant Genesis in Chinese. Atheyr was tired of that word, Genesis. Always meant trouble and a mess he'd...or the Doctor would have to clean up.
The five top scientists consisted of Dr. Claude, Dr. Franklin, Dr. RoaneG, Dr. RoaneB and Dr. Roane. Atheyr had very little interaction with Claude, apart from the seldom glances he sometimes gave. Atheyr didn't like his eyes, he could read him too easily. Claude, however clever he was with numbers, enjoyed watching others suffer.
RoaneG was the first contestant for Atheyr's number one ally position. She really was excited about Atheyr. She was eager to get to know him, not just in the bad evil scientist way, but as a person. Her silver eyes glittered with thoughts of time and space. She was clever too. From what Atheyr recollected about his rebirth, each attempt failed until she made it onto the team. Without RoaneG, Atheyr would just be a clump of cells.
Her brother RoaneB's skills seemed to sprout up in the paper work. He liked to do the research, sit in the back seat and advise from there. Atheyr really hoped that RoaneG was buy 1 get one free sort of deal. Maybe if he could get RoaneG to help him, RoaneB would follow, they were siblings after all.
Dr. Franklin's confidence was extremely low. He never looked at anyone in the eyes, he was constantly nervous. He was a medical doctor and a surgeon and Atheyr could tell he had spent many long years fixing people. Franklin didn't want to be a threat and he wanted to help Atheyr stabilize, not just for the project; but to ease Atheyr's suffering. However, Atheyr knew Dr. Franklin would not be a good ally, he was a coward and would do anything to save his own skin. Atheyr was sure.
And as for Dr. Roane, the true villain of the Katharisei Facility, Atheyr had yet to make the Doctor's mandatory 'One chance' statement. He needed to stabilize before he could take on the dragon.
Atheyr opened his eyes when he detected gentle footsteps nearing his cubical. RoaneG came right up to the glass. Atheyr sat up with a grunt and watched her.
"You know what you need to do to stabilize, don't you?" she asked him. Atheyr's masked expression gave nothing away, "What is it? Tell me so we can help you become a person."
Atheyr opened his mouth and fought to get his vocal cords under control. His voice was still quiet and shaky, but he was getting better at forming words, "Artron...Energy," he told her simply, he winced as his throat stung. His body was too weak and frail to do anything useful. He really needed to get his vocals in order.
"Artron Energy?"
"A-" speaking was so difficult. He closed his eyes and focused on the words he wanted to say. He tried to speak clearly, but his words nearly went unheard, "A surge of...Artron energy...into the...flesh-should...help...me to...sta-bilize...per-manently."
He didn't want to be rude but he had to lay back down as the world inside and outside of his glass cage danced and warbled around him. He hated this, why couldn't he just be a Time Lord already?
He heard RoaneG turn to her grandfather and relay the message back. Without the energy Atheyr would be forced to live out his numbered days in a box, not a blue box or a nice box, a stupid glass box that left him exposed. At this point, he could barely even keep the shape of his feet; if he didn't get Artron Energy soon, well...his brain could melt and he'd have to start all over again or stay dead.
"So, where do we find Artron Energy?" RoaneG asked when she returned to him.
He couldn't even bring himself to sit back up, "There is al-ways resi-dual Artron...Energy...hanging a-bout somewhere. We just need...to pinpoint... a location,...date and time."
"What date and time?"
Atheyr opened his eyes to glare at her, "Our present...location-?"
"Katharisei Facility is located on Ragged Island."
Atheyr pulled his eyebrows together, or where his eyebrows should have been, they were the first things to drop off when he left the pale cage.
"Where's...that?"
"Along the Isles of Scilly."
"Isles of...Scilly?" His eyes widened as he realized what she was saying and his infant hearts began to speed and strengthen and he sat up, forgetting the initial pain as he realized. He ignored RoaneG's gasp of surprise at his sudden animation. "St. John's Monastery...Where the Factory...Melted down...?"
"Katharisei is built over the ruins," she confirmed.
They were still on the island, where he was born, died and reborn. Pink flushed over Atheyr's milky skin- solidifying with his fierce emotions.
"You're kidding me."
The other scientists looked up at his quickly stabilizing voice. Franklin pointed to the monitor Atheyr couldn't see, or cared to see at that moment. RoaneG shook her head at his statement.
"You're bloody kidding me. You all are stupid, ridiculous little apes. You don't know anything do you?" Atheyr didn't notice the fluidity of his insults, his mind flashed with so many thoughts and ideas. "You know nothing. Were you just looking for the damn acid? Wanted to start the acid pumps once more? Then you stumbled across the flesh, my flesh!" his disbelief, anger and excitement brought strength to his voice and his volume rose.
"For the record, we were looking for the flesh...And out of all the original flesh residual we found; yours was the only structure that was trying to come back." RoaneG told him as she stepped back from his wrath.
"So George the curious IDIOTS pick it apart and find the Triple Helix..." he sounded angry, he knew he sounded angry, but the possibilities, they were still on the island! "Oooh Time Lords! Lets try to clone it and see what kind of profit we can make off it, without knowing a single thing!"
RoaneG stepped back, just as her brother came to her side.
"You're stupid, all of you. You set up everything just barely out of range!" Atheyr's voice drifted back into calm, a faked calm, but it had the scientist unnerved.
"I'll have you know that we were looking for your remains, once we had realized that Cleaves had run into the Doct-" RoaneB defended.
Atheyr ignored him and his eyes turned to RoaneG and a hint of a smirk tugged on the corner of his lips as she picked up on what he had said.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait. Out of range of what?"
Atheyr looked between the pair and the rest of the scrambling scientists and smiled, "The range of where my box had landed, 200 years ago. You find that exact place and it'll be enough to stabilize me outside of this cubicle."
RoaneB worked with Atheyr and pulled out the ancient blueprints of the monastery. Together they worked to pinpoint the exact place where the Tardis had once stood. RoaneB wondered how finding where the Tardis had once been had anything to do with Artron Energy.
Atheyr rolled his eyes, "You really don't know anything."
"Artron Energy is necessary for Tardises and Time Lords alike. Time Lords need the energy for Regeneration, Tardises need it as an energy source. Chengyin XI is nothing but flesh without it," Dr. Roane explained. The other scientists stopped to listen to him and Atheyr stared at Dr. Roane.
"How...?" he started but stopped when Dr. Roane smiled.
"You don't want to know," he said cruelly.
"Wouldn't have dissipated by now? I mean 200 hundred years plus acid..." RoaneB asked, missing the the shared looks between test subject and head Scientist.
"Idiots the lot of you." Atheyr rambled on, taking his glance away from Dr. Roane to RoaneB. "Thought' about bringing back a Time Lord with out bloody knowing a thing about us. So I get stupid and evil."
"We're not stupid-" denied RoaneB the same time RoaneG answered, "We're not evil."
"Right," responded Atheyr quietly, he hadn't meant to say that last line out loud anyway.
Within a few more minutes of RoaneB holding up maps. Atheyr found the place and smacked the glass, startling RoaneB.
"You lot really are thick."
"What?"
"Where did you find my clump of cells?" Atheyr watched him carefully as RoaneB showed him on the map, "You know my Tardis stood only a few meters from there...after falling through the ceiling."
RoaneB's head snapped up to meet Atheyr's gaze.
"Y'know if you had left me there within range I would probably have reformed on my own."
After that the scientists set out to make his cage mobile. Atheyr laughed to himself, realizing how everything they did only prolonged his rebirth. It was rather ironic, they tried to bring him back, but if they had kept him in the same room it might have been a lot easier. Something that was not so easy, however, was the movement and shaking of his cube. It made him nauseous and he had to lean back with his eyes closed to stop himself from being sick. He pressed his hands against the wall of his cage to try and steady himself. At one point he called out in shock when he felt the gravity change, they must have taken an elevator. Despite the headache beginning to form behind his eyes he could sense it. The Artron Energy. When his cage came to a halt he forced himself back up. They were in a dank room with a high ceiling.
"Five years ago we excavated this room." RoaneG explained. Atheyr jumped at her voice, all but forgetting that he was not alone. Franklin and Claude went about reconnecting wires and monitors, they were easy to ignore.
"Is there anything we need to do, or do we just open the doors and push him out?" Claude asked RoaneG.
RoaneG looked to Atheyr and suddenly he was nervous, "Just open the doors." Atheyr acknowledged.
RoaneG nodded to Franklin while he fiddled with the controls that released one of the walls of his cage. Atheyr stiffened at the sudden change in gravity and atmosphere. But he could feel it the Artron Energy swirling around the room. Atheyr tentatively made his way out of the cage and slid his bare feet to the floor.
As he absorbed the Artron Energy he could feel the change as it began to work on him. He turned to look at the pale cage and he saw his reflection changing. His eyes immediately shifted from the ice white to forest green. His skin flushed and his milky disposition seeped into pink skin. He took a deep breath in fully grown Time Lord lungs. He felt his hearts beat in place and in rhythm. Even his telepathic links opened and flexed in perfect working order.
"It worked!" RoaneB said with obvious excitement. The other scientists cheered. "He's stabilized."
"No." Atheyr disagreed, causing the excitement to dull down. "This is temporary only. The ONLY reason my Flesh survived for two hundred years was due to the proximity of where my blue box had once sat and its Artron residual energy. It kept me going for 200 years. But that was just a clump of cells. My physiology isn't quite up to par yet. I've managed to absorb some of it, but too much of the residue energy will probably make me ill. Also it's rather thin it'll last me maybe a week. Urg a week stuck in this room. But as it runs out I'll weaken, I'm not properly a Time Lord yet, I can still revert back to Flesh. What I need is a stable Artron Energy field or possibly easier a concentrated injection of Artron energy. Which reminds me. I don't suppose you found a little metal wand thing underneath all of this gunk. It'll look coppery and silver with green at the end...?"
"Um-" RoaneG started.
"I don't think so." RoaneB answered.
"Actually, we did find such a device..." Franklin spoke up.
"Oh good...bring me that and some maps and-" Atheyr shivered suddenly in the cold and looked down and blushed, "Also some clothes would do nicely as well."