Chapter Three

Amy groaned as she began to regain consciousness. Her eyes opened ever so slowly, but her vision was still blurred. She wondered where she was. Was she still at home?

She suddenly remembered all that taken place and darted to the door of her cell. At least, she would have if it wasn't for the cuffs on her wrists. They were attached to a ring in the wall, so she quickly fell back. With a start, she realised that she had been stripped down to her underwear, so she was freezing cold.

She shivered and slowly sat up. Her wrists ached with the cuffs. She felt exposed and vulnerable. The Doctor had no knowledge of her whereabouts and probably couldn't rescue her anyway. She tugged at the ring in the wall, then put her whole weight behind her pull. It didn't move a millimetre. Suddenly, she slipped and was left dangling by her wrists. She gasped as the metal cut into her wrists with her full weight. She put her feet to the floor and scrambled painfully back onto the ledge she had for a bed.

From the cell door came a scraping sound, a click, then a squeak. A bare bulb in the ceiling illuminated the whole scene with a harsh white light. Amy squinted with the light. As they adjusted, she saw Galectus approaching with a smile on his face.

"Ah, I see Miss Amy...I'm sorry, but you never told me your last name. Anyway, I see you have woken up. That's good, because it helps if you are awake to listen to what I have to say.

"We have your friend, the Doctor, in our custody as well."

Amy's heart sank as she realised that she really had no escape whatsoever.

Galectus continued. "Listen carefully, because this will affect both of you. He is going to be put through a series of challenges, challenges which I seriously doubt he will pass. If he passes three out of the ten challenges, you will be released. For each of the challenges he fails, however..." He sighed. "There really is no nice way to put this. For each challenge he fails, you will be severely and, quite painfully I must admit, punished."

Amy swore. She spat the ugly word right in his face, followed by a quick succession of equally ugly words. His demeanour lost any element of pleasantry it had previously contained. "I don't take kindly to being cursed at, Amy. Especially from the girl who had just five hours ago completely spurned my affections. If our relationship had flourished, Amy, you could have been a Lady! As it is, you will become nothing."

He clicked his fingers and two guards carried a fifty inch plasma screen into the cell. They set it at the other end of the room and plugged in a small antenna. They switched on the screen. After a moment of static and snow, the picture cleared to show a dense jungle.

"We have a number of biomes in this facility. Each one is the home to a different enemy of the Doctor. Even though they usually wouldn't comply at all with my requests, they consented because they hate the Doctor more than complying with my wishes. This is the Jungle Zone. Each enemy was allocated one at random, and this one became the operating ground of a rather interesting enemy. This is one of many CCTV cameras dotted around the biome. They are invisible to the naked eye - mere pinpricks on the bark of trees, on walls, even on the clothing of the Doctor's attackers. You will watch his progress and, in turn, watch him fail you."

Amy felt sick inside. "Are you some sort of sicko?"

Galectus smiled. "No. I just don't enjoy being spurned."

The Doctor was sweating heavily. His tweed jacket and bow tie didn't suit this weather. The fact that he was in that clothing at all surprised him. They must have somehow teleported into the TARDIS without alerting him. He laughed as he realised that he wouldn't have known anyway because they had taken away his sonic screwdriver.

All he knew was that he had ten challenges to complete. He had no knowledge of the fact that he was controlling Amy's fate. He also knew that he would meet an adversary in each of ten different biomes.

He cried out as a vine smacked him in the face for the billionth time. He never visited jungle planets because they were too steamy, hot and riddled with things to get tangled up in, smacked in the face by and tripped up by.

If he hadn't been looking to the left for more vines, he would never have seen it.

A green, scaled creature fired a blaster gun at him. He crashed into the ground and felt the searing heat of the bolt sizzle above his body. A tree next to him disintegrated and pieces of bark fell all around him. He leapt to his feet again and ran as fast as he could. Two more bolts crackled past him, one hitting another tree and the other slamming into a small creature in front of him. Instead of toppling to the ground, it continued on its way, and because of the bolt, the Doctor saw why.

The creature was merely a robot drone designed to be as realistic as possible. It turn away from him so the Doctor saw the gaping hole left by the energy bolt. In the hole were the inner workings of the robot, still ticking away, albeit a little more laboured now.

He was snapped out of his scientific reverie by another shot. He actually felt the hairs on his head being shot. He threw himself to the left as yet another bolt flashed out of the muzzle of the gun and zip through the air where he had been standing only a moment ago.

He caught a glimpse of his pursuer and then it dawned on him.

It was a Silurian!

The Doctor groaned inwardly. He had only recently encountered Silurians, and they were here AGAIN! But, however inconvenient it might have been, one was right there, right then, and it was lining up another shot.

He scrambled deeper into the undergrowth. Two more bolts flashed through the foliage, but they were way off-target. The Doctor assumed that he had evaded the Silurian.

Until he came face-to-face with his adversary.

No, wait. This was a different one. If it were the same one, he couldn't have fired those bolts from behind the Doctor. Hence, there had to be multiple ones.

And how many more would there be? thought the Doctor as he rolled to the side to avoid the Silurian's tongue. He allowed himself a small smile when it hit painfully injected venom into a branch.

Except even that smile soon vanished as he came face-to-face with a semicircle of five other Silurians.

The Doctor grimaced. He stood up and eyed his adversaries.

"Hello, there," he said. "Can I ask – why are you chasing and shooting at me?"

One of the Silurians stepped forward. "We have information that you destroyed one of our home worlds," it rasped.

"And where did you receive this information from?" prompted the Doctor.

"Why should we tell you?" demanded the creature.

"Mainly because you have me trapped, so you might as well tell me everything because I'll never be able to tell anybody else given that you're about to kill me before I can," the Time Lord explained. The Silurian considered the logic for a moment.

"No," it said, "because there is still a chance that you will escape."

The Doctor nodded. "Okay, maybe you're slightly cleverer than I thought. Quite right too!"

For the duration of the conversation, he'd had his back to a tree branch and was slowly edging backwards, bending the tree branch away from the Silurians. Now, he leapt backwards over the tree branch. It snapped forward, swatting the Silurians out of the way. By sheer fluke, one of the blaster weapons went off, killing the second Silurian the Doctor had encountered.

"Good," he mumbled to himself, "That only leaves one."

He then suddenly remembered something he had seen on his way through the jungle. Was it this jungled he had seen it in? They all looked the same to him. Yes, it was this one, because he distinctly remembered seeing the something just before he encountered the first Silurian.

He grinned, turned and ran.

Amy was feeling slightly less terrified. The Doctor seemed to be making a pretty good job of defeating the Silurians. Perhaps she mightn't suffer at the hands of this madman after all.

But then, Galectus bent down and whispered something in her ear. "At the end of the challenges, the Doctor will have to find the way out in under two minutes. Otherwise, the biome will be filled with knock-out gas. He will have failed the challenge. And, might I add, the way out is rather difficult to find..."

His words sent a chill up Amy's spine as she realised that he had probably not included a usable exit. She turned to continue watching the Doctor.

The one remaining living Silurian was called Axtus. He had seen what had happened to his gene pool and it made him angry. All he could think about now was exacting vengeance on the man who had killed them.

A crashing sound in the undergrowth next to him made him turn and fire a concentrated energy burst. The plant life burst into flame, but he didn't worry. He'd worked out by now that this wasn't a real forest. All of the vegetation was fire-retardant, so the fire wouldn't last long.

He came to a clearing and there, on the other side, was the Doctor. The clearing was simply a roughly round area with a leafy floor and walls of ivy and trees all around. Basically, the Doctor was trapped.

The man looked like he realised his predicament. He grimaced.

"Looks like you've got me, then," said the Doctor. The Silurian grinned triumphantly.

"I've got you exactly where I want you, Doctor," it said. He pressed the trigger on his gun and the Doctor scrunched up his eyes.

Nothing happened.

The Silurian frowned, looked at his gun, then his brow cleared. "It appears you have emptied my charge pod. Not to worry." He threw the gun aside into the undergrowth. "I will have the pleasure of killing you with my bare hands."

He advanced on the Doctor. But that was when the Doctor smiled.

The Silurian stopped. "Why are you laughing?"

"I'm laughing at the thought of somebody as weak as you killing me with your bare hands. Ha!" The Silurian thought the Doctor mad as it charged.

But then something impossible happened.

It disappeared into the undergrowth with a howl.

For the Doctor had strung a net of creepers across a large pit he had spied on the way through the forest. On top of the creepers he had piled a large amount of leaves. The weight of the Silurian had brought the netting down and it had fallen into the pit.

With a shout of triumph, the Doctor punched the air. He was completely ecstatic.

Until the voice came over the PA system.

"Congratulations, Doctor," came the voice. The Doctor recognised it as Galectus. "You have defeated the first enemy. But, to complete the challenge, you must find the way out in two minutes beginning in three...two...one...NOW!"

The Doctor instinctively reached into his inside jacket pocket, but then remembered. "Ah," he thought out loud, "No sonic. Right."

He looked all around him for any signs of an exit, but found none.

"One minute forty-five!" said Galectus.

The Doctor peered into his hole, but he realised very quickly that the hole wasn't the way out. He could see the Silurian at the bottom of it, lying motionless.

"One minute thirty!"

The Doctor sprinted down the path to the far wall of the biome, wasting fifteen precious seconds. He then turned and sprinted all around the biome, wasting forty-five further seconds.

"Fifteen...fourteen...thirteen..." counted the voice. The Doctor looked all around him again. Nothing.

"Ten...nine...eight..." came the voice. The Doctor peered into the hole once again and...did he see a little pixellation? Yes! He did! The Silurian had actually exited the biome but its image and the 'floor' was projected onto it! But then, he realised he was too late.

"One...zero! Too late!" sang the voice. From all the trees surrounding the clearing hissed a white vapour. The Doctor tried to leave the clearing, but the gas hit him before he could get away. He passed out at the edge of the hole, then toppled into it, falling into the exit portal.

Amy, still chained to the wall, nearly wept in terror. She had no knowledge of what was about to happen to her. Galectus turned from the screen, delight on his face.

"Isn't this fun?" he exclaimed. "I can now do anything I want to you!" His face hardened. "But, I suppose I've got plenty of time, so I'm going to make you pay for your rejection first!"

One of the guards muscled her round to face the wall. Her feet were chained together, then to the slab. Galectus approached her from behind.

Amy's heart pounded with fright. She tried to see what Galectus was doing, but she couldn't quite make it out. He seemed to be holding something that remained anonymous until it hit her.

The fiery pain spread across her back and she screamed.

Galectus was beating her!

Twenty minutes later, the Doctor was beamed into his separate cell. The Doctor lay, exhausted, on the floor. He had failed the first challenge because of a dirty trick. And the Doctor never liked people who played dirty tricks. In future, he would look out for the exit the moment he arrived in the biome.

The door to his cell opened and he jumped up. Galectus was in the doorway.

"I thought I might mention to you what is at stake. Your companion is in another cell. When you fail a challenge, I have my way with her. If you win three challenges, I release her. Clear?"

The Doctor swallowed. "Clear."

"Good." Galectus turned and exited the cell. The door clanked shut behind him.

The Time Lord slumped to the floor again. He vowed never to cause Amy to suffer again.

In her cell, Amy cried silently. Her back was bleeding from the beating. And, to make matters worse, he had... Oh yes, she thought, he'd had his way with me. She vowed never to blame the Doctor for what had happened.