Chapter Three: The Deepest Dark

The Doctor had pondered his next move for about five minutes before deciding it couldn't hurt to try knocking on the door again. After the way Miranda (Mira, Mira, Mira, Mira! She liked to be called Mira now, apparently, so he'd do well to remember that!) had hung up on him so forcefully on the phone he'd figured trying to call the house again, via sonic screwdriver, was a pointless effort. She'd probably just disconnected the phone by now anyway. But she couldn't disconnect his arm!

Unless she could. With an axe, maybe. Or some other large, sharp object.

The Doctor paused, his knuckles inches from the door, considering this, before deciding perhaps it was best not to consider it. He promptly knocked on the door.

Nothing. No defiant shouts telling him to go away or she'd call the police.

He knocked again.

Still nothing.

He knocked one last time, just to make sure.

He supposed she could've been just ignoring him but given the emotional state she was in after seeing him he somehow doubted that she would. He supposed he couldn't blame her. He'd probably react badly too if someone he hadn't seen in years had suddenly shown up on his doorstep looking completely different.

Actually, being a centuries old Time Lord, seeing close, dear friends' faces and even personalities completely change was perfectly normal for him.

But still! He understood the principle and could empathize.

He was rambling internally. It was something he did quite often, particularly when he was nervous about something and he was quite nervous. Something didn't feel at all right about this. He'd been suspicious ever since he'd heard Mira's sister mention something about a shadow monster.

There were lots of nasty things that lurked in the universe and took the forms of shadows. Like the Vashta Nerada. But somehow, this didn't feel like Vashta Nerada. They didn't lurk in closets and frighten children. They voraciously ate children. And pretty much everything else.

There was, however, one race that not only delighted in frightening children, they gleaned sustenance from it.

"Sonic screwdriver!" The Doctor suddenly slapped his forehead. "Why am I bothering with all this knocking nonsense?"

Reaching into the folds of his coat, he withdrew the red tipped device and aimed it at the door's deadbolt. It was a bit nerve wracking. The sonic had been acting up quite a bit lately. Sparking and smoking. It was getting old, he suspected. But he'd seen what had happened when they malfunctioned.

They had a tendency to explode. And it would be a mite embarrassing if he accidently blew his arm off while trying to open a measly deadbolt.

The door opened and the Doctor jumped back.

Kylie stood on the other side.

"Erm…" The Doctor quickly replaced the sonic screwdriver in his coat. "Hello again!"

"Hi." Kylie looked very worried. "Umm… Doctor? Do you know where Mira is?"

The Doctor tilted his head. "She's not with you? In there?"

Kylie shook her head and the Doctor noticed then the tears in her eyes. "I think it got her. I think the shadow monster took her away."

The Doctor knelt down to Kylie's level and placed a hand on her shoulder. He flashed her a broad grin. "Well then. Let's go and get her back, shall we?

Mira was cold. She was surrounded by blackness and she was alone.

No. She wasn't alone. She was worse than alone.

It was with her. It had tricked her. She didn't know how it had gotten inside her head but it had. It had lured her away from her house.

She wasn't sure where she was. It had taken her somewhere but she was weak. She wasn't sure how they had gotten there. The trip had seemed instantaneous and stomach churning. She could feel the cold tile on the palms of her hands as she knelt on the floor. Her vision was foggy. She couldn't see and she could barely think. She knew only that it was dark and cold. And she was scared. She was terrified. She could feel herself growing weaker, feel it growing stronger.

It was draining the life out of her.

And she was terrified.

Kylie watched the strangely dressed Doctor run to and fro around the kitchen.

"I think it happened in here." Kylie wasn't sure if he was talking to her or muttering to himself. He stuck his finger in his mouth before feeling the air. "Yes. Some sort of transference definitely happened in here." He squinted, glancing around the room. "The air around here is rife with energy. And not an energy normally found on earth, either." He glanced over at Kylie. "How long has this shadow monster been around?"

Kylie shrugged. "My closets always been kinda scary at night. But I saw its eyes for the first time about two weeks ago. Its red glowing eyes."

The Doctor nodded. "And it looks like a shadow. Like, say, the shadow of a tall, cloaked figure? Maybe a foot taller than me?"

"Yeah!" Kylie was excited. Nobody ever really asked about the monster before. She knew most of the adults she told about it, like her dad or her sister, just dismissed everything she'd said about it. "Yeah, that's exactly what it looked like! How'd you know?"

The Doctor looked grim. "I've seen one before. They're called the Shadowkind."

Kylie's eyes widened. "They?"

"Oh yes. They're a species from the Dark Times." The Doctor withdrew a strange device from his coat and mused over it. It looked to Kylie kind of like one of those things her dad used to check the air pressure in his car's tires, only it was a bit longer and thicker, and the tip was red with a silver ring around it. "They were quite plentiful then. Used to cling to Great Vampires like sucker fish and feed off the misery they left in their wake. They can take a physical form if they've enough strength and a mind to, though generally they stay in their phased state. If they're starving, they tend to regress permanently into the phased state until they've gleaned enough sustenance to regain a physical form. I've a feeling that might be the agenda of this particular Shadowkind."

"Great Vampire?" Kylie's eyes had gone wide the moment the Doctor had mentioned that particular phrase.

The Doctor offered her a small grin. "Ah, yes. Don't worry about that, there aren't any of those left. Not anymore. The Time Lord's saw to that."

Kylie's head was spinning. The Doctor talked a lot and she was having a lot of trouble keeping up with what he was saying. "Wait… what's a Time Lord?"

The Doctor paused and looked at her. "Me. I'm a Time Lord. My people are the Time Lords."

"Your people?"

The Doctor nodded. "I'm… well, I'm not exactly from earth, Kylie."

Kylie's eyes widened. "You're a alien?"

The Doctor smiled at her. "That's right. I'm from Gallifrey. It's a planet a long ways away from here."

Kylie looked him up and down. "But you look like a person."

The Doctor shook his head. "Actually, people look like Time Lords. It's a common misconception."

"Oh." Kylie thought this over, before her mind went back to the real problem at hand. "Okay. So, lemme see if I've got all this straight. The monster in my closet is a… a Shadowkind? It's an alien too, right?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes."

"And it scared me because it… eats fear?"

The Doctor paused. "Well, in a manner of speaking. Essentially, Shadowkind are entirely composed of the same kind of negative energy humans and many other species produce when experiencing negative emotions; pain, fear, doubt, hate, confusion. Those kinds of things. Are you with me so far?"

"I think so…"

"Well, it is through these negative emotions that the Shadowkind is able to establish a link with its victims. What it actually devours is life force. But in order to get at that life force, it must establish the psychic connection through fear, doubt, etc. And the stronger the fear, the more life force it can eat."

"So…" Kylie thought about this for a moment. "It makes you scared and then it can suck the life out of you?"

The Doctor nodded enthusiastically. "Exactly! Smart girl."

Kylie's eyes went wide. "So… it's been draining the life out of me? But I feel fine."

The Doctor shrugged. "Well, that makes sense. If a Shadowkind kills its victim then it's out of a food source. Usually it only takes what it needs to survive. Its victim will build back up the little life force that was drained away. And then the process starts anew. And that's typically as far as it goes. They rarely make their presence concretely known, much less go as far as kidnapping a victim. This one must be desperate. Which might sort of be my fault."

Kylie cocked her head. "Your fault? How?"

The Doctor avoided her gaze. "Well, Shadowkind aren't exactly fond of Time Lords. You said it was frightened away after it saw that key glowing?" Kylie nodded. "Well, the key was glowing because I had arrived. And the Shadowkind must've recognized the glow of a Time Lord artifact. So, in desperation, I believe it kidnapped your sister in order to drain enough of her life force so that it could gain physical form and defend itself."

"Oh… um… how much life force does it need to do that?"

The Doctor winced. "Well… probably a lot?"

Kylie's eyes widened. "Is it gonna…?"

The Doctor knelt down in front of her, gripping her by the shoulders. "No. Absolutely not. We're going to find your sister before that happens." He stood, looking at the device he held, before finally pointing at the floor. "And I know exactly how we're going to do it. You might want to step back."

Kylie did so, and the Doctor pressed a button. The red tip began to glow and it made a strange, mechanical humming noise.

"What is that?" Kylie asked.

The Doctor kept wincing away from the device, as he scanned the floor with it. "Sonic screwdriver. It does lots of things. Among them, it scans for energy signatures." There was a pop, and sparks suddenly shot from the tip of what the Doctor said was a screwdriver. "I'm going to find the exact energy signature this Shadowkind left behind when it transported itself and your sister away. Then we're going to follow that signature to where they went!"

Kylie noticed that the screwdriver was beginning to smoke now. The tip seemed to be glowing brighter and the whirring was sounding uneven. "How're we going to do that?"

"Got it!" The Doctor held the screwdriver up to his face, but didn't switch it off. Black smoke was pouring out of it, and the tip was burning red now. "Unfortunately, the sonic's been acting up lately. I can't store the signature. Which means if I don't want to lose it, I'm going to have to keep the screwdriver running 'til we get to the TARDIS." The Doctor abruptly ran out of the kitchen. "Come along, Kylie! We're going to have to be very quick about this!"

Kylie paused before running after the Doctor. "What's a tardis?"

"Stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space." The Doctor declared as he sprinted across the backyard. The sonic screwdriver was now pouring smoke and liberally sparking but Kylie barely noticed.

She stood awestruck at the edge of the yard, staring at the large, blue box that the Doctor was sprinting toward. The words "Police Box" glowed around it's top. "What is-?"

"It's a space ship, of sorts." The Doctor quickly fumbled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door on the side of the box. He ran inside and slammed the door shut behind him. A moment went by before the door opened again. "Hurry, Kylie, we really don't have a lot of time!"

Kylie blinked before running across the yard. She could feel the wet grass against her bare feet as she went. "This is a space ship? It kinda looks like a big phone booth. And it says 'Police Box.' What's a-" She crossed the threshold and froze.

A massive, gothic chamber spread out before her. The floors were hardwood and lit candelabras stood here and there. An easy chair rested in one corner, in front of it a coffee table with a bowl containing a heap of jelly candies on it. A massive bookshelf ran the length of a wall on the other side of the room, which was several hundred feet away from the door Kylie stood in front of. In the center of the room, surrounded by six massive, iron struts, was a six sided console with a bunch of buttons, switches, levers, pumps, and a bunch of other devices littering its surface. The console itself was on a slightly raised, hexagonal dias. Coming out of the top of the console was a large cylindrical glass column, with what looked some kind of crystals inside of it bobbing up and down. Kylie was about to turn and walk out when the Doctor suddenly pulled the door shut.

"Yes, it's big on the inside small on the outside." He said quickly before dashing toward the six sided console. "I'll let you walk around the outside 'til your heart's content later but right now we have to move very quickly." He plugged the sonic screwdriver, which was now flashing red and sparking continuously into the console, before throwing a bunch of switches and pressing a bunch of buttons. The entire room began shaking, and from all around Kylie heard an unearthly mechanical, yet at the same time somehow living, groan. "You're going to want to grab ahold of something, I don't really have time to make this a smooth flight."

Before Kylie could even register what he had said, the entire room lurched to the left. The Doctor gripped the edges of the console, while Kylie fell to the floor in a heap. She managed to drag herself over to a nearby support beam and pulled herself to her feet. "Doctor? How long would it take the monster to drain the life out of Mira?"

The Doctor spun a valve on the console. "Probably only a few minutes."

Kylie's face fell. "But Doctor, it's been, like, twenty minutes since Mira disappeared!"

"Well, it's a good thing this is a time machine then, now isn't it?" The Doctor moved to another side of the console, his hands dancing across the controls. "Twenty minutes you say?"

Kylie paused. "Maybe a little longer even? What do you mean it's a time machine?"

The Doctor nodded. "We'll say twenty minutes." He threw another switch and the room suddenly lurched to the right. Kylie held on as tight as she could.

Mira's head was spinning. Everything was so cloudy and she couldn't even form thoughts. Her eyelids were so heavy, her vision so blurred with tears. She was so scared and so tired.

"I just want it to end…" she moaned, unaware that she had even spoken.

"It all will end, soon enough." The unearthly, hissing voice emanated from the darkness. She couldn't see what was speaking but she knew. It was the shadow monster. The one from Kylie's closet. "Your fear is exquisite, child. The connection with you is much deeper than that of your sibling. I worked on her for weeks when you were right there the whole time."

She didn't know what it was talking about, but it didn't matter. It was killing her. She knew that now.

Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered. Not anymore. Her future, terrifying and uncertain, no longer mattered. The imposter Doctor who had shown up, who had so infuriated her no longer mattered. Her sister, so exasperating, no longer mattered. Her parents, who probably wouldn't even miss her.

None of it mattered.

"That's right," the creature hissed. It could hear what she was thinking, she realized. "None of them matter. Nothing matters anymore. It's all just crumbling dust. You are cold and alone in the vastness of the universe. You always have been. But your pain will be ending soon."

Something cold and clammy touched the top of her head. She didn't even have the strength to look up at it. But she knew what it was.

It was a hand. The creature was becoming solid now.

And it didn't matter.

Despair had overtaken everything. She was alone, in the deepest dark.

And then there was a sound. A sound that made the clammy hand on her head tense up.

An ancient sounding groaning and churning that seemed to emanate from everywhere at once.

The Doctor dashed out of the TARDIS and almost immediately skidded to a halt so quickly Kylie nearly crashed headlong into his back.

"Hang on." He glanced around, squinting. "I think I've been here before."

Kylie looked around as well. They were in a darkened hall of some sort. Clear plastic tarpaulin draped the walls on either side of them. Lying on the tiled floor here and there were half cut two-by-fours, power tools, and saw horses. The smell of sawdust in the air tickled Kylie's nose. Wherever they were it looked heavily under construction.

The Doctor reached up with the funny looking umbrella he'd grabbed while they were aboard his spaceship or whatever it was, and brushed aside the tarp to his right. Behind it, Kylie saw glass, and beyond that what seemed to be a large, empty room. It was difficult to see in the darkness.

"Doctor, where are we?"

The Doctor's eyes were narrowed. "I believe, Kylie, we're in a hospital. The same hospital you were born in."

"What?" Kylie glanced around. "Why would we be there?"

"Not sure." The Doctor let the tarp fall back into place before glancing around himself. "There appears to be some remodeling of some sort, but I believe we're standing in the exact same spot where I first met your sister." He gestured with the umbrella to the tarpaulin he'd just allowed to fall back into place. "I believe that's the incubation room."

Kylie wrinkled her nose at the umbrella. "Why did you bring that?"

"Hmm?" The Doctor looked at her before dropping his gaze to the umbrella. "Oh, this. Might have a plan. Involves this. We'll see. Come along, we have to find your sister."

With that, the Doctor sprinted down the hallway. Kylie followed close behind. At the end of the hall was a pair of double swinging doors. The Doctor dashed through them. When Kylie followed she nearly crashed into the Doctor once again.

"Doctor, you've got to stop-" She froze mid-sentence. The doors opened up into a second hallway, similar to the first. And several yards in front of them, kneeling in the middle of the hall, was Mira. She looked pale, dazed, and sickly and didn't seem to see the two of them. But Kylie hardly noticed that.

The thing standing behind Mira had her full attention.

It was tall, taller than the Doctor. It was wearing a pitch black, hooded cloak that hid most of its features, but Kylie could see its blood red eyes glowing from within the folds of its hood. A boney, clawed, sheet-white hand rested on Mira's head.

"Oh, dear," the Doctor said softly. "It seems to have gained physical form."

The creature chortled. "You're too late, Time Lord. Very little of her life force remains." It released the hold it had on her, and Mira fell face first to the floor. "My connection with her is complete, and I am whole again." It glided past the prone girl and began moving swiftly toward the Doctor. "And now, you die!"

"I see." The Doctor handed Kylie the umbrella. "Take this. Give it to your sister."

No sooner had Kylie taken it, than the Doctor turned and dashed back through the double doors. The creature hissed and followed, gliding straight past Kylie ignoring her completely. Kylie felt a stabbing blast of frigid air as it passed.

For a moment, Kylie couldn't register what had just happened. Then she remembered her sister. Her eyes went wide and she ran to Mira's side.

Mira lay on the ground, her eyes closed.

She wasn't moving.

AN: To be concluded shortly! Reviews would be lovely!