Sensation returned to Carter as he opened his eyes to find himself staring out through a green murk. What? As feeling continued to return to his body, he dimly realized that he was floating, standing up, in some sort of radiation-green glop. This glop was contained in a sort of coffin-like cylinder, like you'd see on Star Trek or something, there were a few distracting wires stuck to the top of his head too. He was fine with all this, until he remembered that he had to breathe, then panic kicked in. Carter banged wildly against the glass, but lacked the ability to smash through it. Darn! He thought to himself, certain that he would die drowning in green matrix-sludge. Suddenly to the left of him he could make out a green-slime covered fist and accompanied by some flying glass to boot. This was followed by an entire person, a woman to be exact, one that he didn't recognize.
The woman pulled herself up and stopped to look about her in a very dramatic, slightly ridiculous manner. All Carter could see of her was a shock of short, red hair and an embarrassingly well-built body in tightly fitted white, green sludge covered, pajamas. I've got to get her attention! He thought desperately, thumping wildly against the glass to get her attention only to have her turn and give him a cold, hard stare. Wouldn't she let him out? She made some sort of a gesture with her hands that seemed to be a mad-pushing dance and that only served to confuse him, why didn't she smash the glass? She rolled her eyes, and with a well-placed, slightly upsetting kick, smashed the glass to Carters coffin-cell.
"Why didn't you move out of the way?" She inquired, looking down on him as he hacked and gasped for breath, thankful that his green-slop covered pajamas weren't quite as well fitted as hers were.
"Move- move out of the..?" He coughed, sitting himself up, "What are you talking about…?"
She shook her head and crossed her arms, "Shouldn't there be more than one of you?" she inquired, and then Carter remembered Tesla, Sylar and The Doctor.
"Oh no, no, no no…" He leapt to his feet, looking desperately left and right, would they have drowned? Why'd he take so long to get out himself? If they were dead and it was his fault- what then? When the entire 'door' to one of the coffins went flying through the air and smashed into the railing behind him.
"Man!" Carter shouted in surprise as Sylar extracted himself from his own green-slime prison, slicking his hair back with a green hand and looking up at Carter with what could be called an amused smile.
"Not scared of loud noises are you Carter?" He asked, pulling his hand away from his head with a long train of green slime. "Uck! What is this stuff?" He demanded, flicking his arms in a fruitless attempt to dislodge some of it.
"I dunno, life-preserving matrix goo?" Carter managed, finding an irritated looking Tesla in the coffin to the right of Sylars. "Help me get him out- will you?"
"Do I have to?" Sylar asked, turning away from the surprisingly not-dead Tesla.
"Yes! Now do your- do your move-stuff-with-your-mind thing, now ok?"
"It's called telekinesis," Sylar said coldly, before lifting a hand and removing the door from Tesla's green tomb.
"Finally!" Tesla exclaimed, armed crossed as he staggered out of his own personal matrix-cell, "You know it's a good thing this sludge has electro-magnetic waves running through it or else I'd be very dead right now, no thanks to any of you" he brooded.
"Electro-magnetic waves..?" Sylar inquired at a loss,
"Yes of course! Probably sent right into our brains- how else do you think we were in some mad computer game with such little hard-wiring?" Tesla exploded, "Now where's that alien idiot? And why's Scarlet Johansen here?"
"Excuse me?" The thus far, unnamed red head shot back at him, "What did you call me?"
"You heard me Miss. Scarlet"
The stare off between the two was enough to intrigue Sylar, and unnerve Carter.
"Guys! Seriously now- where's the Doctor? And who is this chick?" Carter demanded, looking desperately left and right of him, only now noticing the empty cell in between all of theirs, it'd door swung wide open.
Tesla however did not notice the empty coffin and instead answered the second, "Oh you know, just Scarlet-"
"My name is Natasha Romanoff" The red-head said coldly, staring down Tesla with far-too intense eyes.
"Well…that's nice," Carter said, now looking over the empty middle coffin, which had a trail of slimy bare green footprints leading away from it.
"Where's the Doctor?" Sylar brought up, arms crossed, no longer amused by Tesla and Romanoff's antics.
"I'm thinking he went this way…." Carter began, following the footprints cautiously, making a set of his own as he walked.
They went on for a little ways; and the complex was huge. It was cylindrical in shape, with a hollow core and a spiraling ramp floor system crawling up it. The walls were lined with an unknown number of matrix-coffin-tubes, just like the ones they had been held in and all filled with people. Some of the people were eerily familiar.
"Was that..?" Sylar began as they passed by one tube in particular which held a bald kid with some weird penchant love for blue arrows.
"I don't know, I don't know- ok?" Carter grumbled, really hoping that the footprints they were following actually lead to the Doctor. The guys an alien! He thought to himself, does he even have ten toes? How do I know he hasn't got like bear feet or something? And, seriously, how far did the guy walk? There's no way he got out THAT LONG before the rest of them, and even if he did- why didn't he help them out? Where'd he think he was going anyways? They knew that he'd stopped at some computer that was technologically beyond all of them, even Tesla, maybe he got directions from that? His thoughts were broken as a very loud Hello! interrupted them.
"Hello!" The Doctor beamed adjusting the bowtie to an outfit that was definitely not white pajamas, or covered in potentially radioactive green slime.
"Doctor?" Carter gawked, looking at the incredible cleanliness, and peculiarness of the man. He was wearing more tweed than Carter had seen at Eureka's annual garden party and croquet tournament (with real anti-matter croquet balls!). "Why aren't you green?"
"AH, yes, well- that. See-" Before the Doctor could finish his statement, he was interrupted by Romanoff.
"How did you get out of the Matrix system before all of us?"
"Ah, Natasha, Natasha- getting right to the point aren't you? Easy, I'm clever."
"That's not a real answer" Sylar remarked.
"No, it isn't" Tesla, shockingly, agreed. "Because frankly, I'm clever too"
The Doctor looked disappointed that he couldn't keep a 'I'm clever!' lingo going forever, and so thus explained.
"Right, fine- I glitched out. Time Lord brains are a wee bit more complicated than your human brains. See, we're built a bit differently- in ways that would take me ages to explain, not that you aren't brilliant- your certainly brilliant, but-"
Romanoff cut him off from his rambling monologue. "Just get to the point"
The Doctor shook his head and grinned, "Would you believe that she didn't believe me when I said she was in the matrix?"
"She didn't?" Carter said eyeing her warily.
"Nope, apparently I came off as rather well, daffy." Romanoff eyed the Doctor, "Anyways- to the point. Because I am a Time Lord, the computer system had trouble dealing with me, so, I wasn't input properly. Wound up popping out a little after they put me in" The Doctor explained.
"So then you woke up and decided to free some people..?" Sylar continued.
"Yup- at first I wanted to free all 154 people here, however- didn't work out that way. See the way this place is hard-wired, I could only spread my glitch to a few people on either side of my cell; you guys."
"That still leaves 150 people trapped in the matrix" Tesla observed cynically.
"Yea, well, there was no other way out of it- and at least some people get out right?" The Doctor explained sheepishly.
Carter looked at all of the other cells, 150 people? But why? What did they have in common? Why stick them in the matrix? None of it made any sense. And something else was bothering him, how would they get out? Where were they anyways? Obviously they weren't from well, the same places. That would be crazy… Scarlet Johansen lookalikes just didn't run around pell-mell in the real world.
"Where'd you find your clothes?" Carter finally asked, really wanting to just get out of the horrible slimy white pajamas and get into his own clothes; maybe without slime in his ears he could think this through more properly.
"Clothes? Ah yes- follow me!"
The Doctor lead them into an enormous warehouse of a room, with massive shelves covered in boxes- 154 boxes to be precise, all organized alphabetically with 'Aang, ATLA' listed first and foremost. There were also bathrooms with showers that the Doctor said were probably for either the guys who built the place, or the guards who kept them there.
"Guards? But I haven't seen a soul" Sylar said, looking through the many names, wondering to himself if he was under 'G' for Grey, or 'S' for Sylar.
"Well, they're all gone now- left from what I can see after they filled up the unit" The Doctor explained, hunched over a computer consol.
"Left?" Carter asked, stuck between a couple other 'Jack Carter' and 'John Carter' boxes. He finally found his which was labeled: Sheriff Jack Carter, big difference. Inside were his uniform, gun, phone, police radio, and a raisin bran granola bar.
"Yup, left. From what I can see they have a few of these Matrix complexes, all designed to hold 154 prisoners, and once they fill them up, they leave. See, they don't expect us to get out" The Doctor said, opening up maps and complicated looking binary files on the computer, waving his Sonic Screwdriver about wildly.
"And who are they?" Romanoff asked coolly, leaving the bathroom freshly cleansed from the green slime, black cat-suit on.
"They? They is the question I don't have an answer for" The Doctor admitted, "Whoever they are- they're smart. Really smart- they've crossed dimensional barriers, even Time Lords couldn't do that. Whenever we tried bad things happened, just ask Omega- poof! No body. No whoever 'they' are, they're of a whole 'nother league all together. And that scares me."
"Dimensional barriers?" Tesla scoffed, "That's impossible. What your suggesting there is-"
"I know, I know, but it's the only explanation" The Doctor said, "Some of the people imprisoned here simply aren't real, can't be- but there they are. Like someone reached into the tele and pulled out entire casts of heroes- and villains"
"Well, great." Carter grumbled, "How are we gonna get out of here then? And back to our own homes? Er- dimensional barrier things"
"Working on that- that's what this here computers for- and I'll figure it out with it" The Doctor said, tapping the top of the screen affirmatively with his sonic screwdriver.
Once they were all clean, dressed, and had disposed of the horrible white pajamas, they put their heads together, at a complete loss as to how to get out.
"It's no good- since they're done putting people here they've shut off everything but life support for the prisoners" The Doctor explained, pacing back and forth in frantic thought. "I mean, sure, I know where their cross-dimensional device is but to use it? Even for me that would be a toughie, it's not exactly temporal mechanics you know"
"Not really" Carter replied, looking down over the railing at the 150 other prisoners coffins.
"Even if we could get it working, there's no way we could control it- I can't even guess what the coordinate system is based on, I mean think about it!" The Doctor continued prattling. He'd been doing this for over half-an-hour; the others had given up on any real input a while ago.
"Don't you have some magic time travel box thing?" Tesla asked, exasperated, and sick of hearing the Doctor ramble on.
"Yes! My TARDIS! But it can't cross dimensional walls and it certainly won't help us here, we have no way to power the dimensional device! UG! Think Doctor think!" His pacing kicked up a notch, now at super-speed walking mode.
A thought occurred to Carter. "Doesn't your TARDIS have a battery? Like a car?"
The Doctor stopped his pacing and stared at Carter, a smile forming across his face.
"Yes! Of course! Brilliant- and if I hotwire the TARDIS's control system to the Matrix's transport module then I should be able to gage were abouts to land! Perfect! Absolutely- Carter I can't believe I'm saying this but genius! Brilliant! Whoo-hoo!" The Doctor took off running down the ramp towards the dock where it was being held, along with a few other interesting machines including a stainless-steel car and an ugly little ship with 'Gaileo' printed on the side in a tacky swirly font.
"What's happening?" Sylar asked, looking up at a loss.
"The little green man has figured out how to power his UFO" Tesla replied, getting up from his spot, he'd been leaning against one of the cells, this one containing a brunette young woman with her hair in buns on either side of her head.
With TARDIS set in place in front of what at first glance appeared to be a Stargate with a terminal attached to it, the Doctor ran about wildly, and with Tesla's help, hacked the 'Stargate' and attached the TARDIS to its main controls.
"How's that going to get us anywhere?" Carter wondered aloud, "I mean- there's nothing through this thing"
"Do you expect a trans-dimensional portal to look like a door or something?" Romanoff rolled her eyes, arms crossed, really hoping that this thing didn't land them in Asgard or something.
"No- I dunno, just more than a big tacky ring set in the ground. I mean, this looks like it fell off the set of some low-budget sci-fi show-" He cut himself off, as it had suddenly occurred to him that there was a distinct possibility that he came from such a show. "Man! This is just weird!" He groaned, "I mean- she's from a movie- you're from tv shows- and he's a historical figure who's been heavily abused by tv writers"
"I take offense at that statement" Tesla growled, looking up for half-a-second from the mess of wires he and the Doctor were dealing with.
Sylar laughed darkly, "He's right you know, and frankly what bothers me is that I have a clone running around somewhere who pretends to be me for money"
"When you put it like that..." Carter began, when the 'Stargate' lit up with a blue glowy-swirly vortex of terror.
"Excellent!" The Doctor declared, leaping up and typing rapidly into the terminal attached to it. "Now hurry- all of you hurry into the TARDIS, don't think we can keep this up for very long!"
"But where are we going?" Romanoff demanded as they hurried into the little blue box.
"Easy- to what I believe is a dimensional crossroads, you see, based on Rassilon's theory of time/space Dimensions have a point of convergence and well, it's really complicated timey-wimey stuff, but you'll see!"
"And how will that get us home?" Carter demanded, stopped in the doorway, gawking at the immense internal size of the TARDIS. This is bigger than SARAH! He thought to himself, before being shoved all the way through the door by the Doctor.
"Easy, easy, once there I'll simply blast us off to each of our desired landing areas- a bit like how tele-waves bounce off of satellites got it?"
"No, not really"
"Won't we, die?" Sylar brought up, as the Doctor closed and locked the TARDIS door. "I mean, theres no oxygen in space-"
"The TARDIS can create a nice friendly clean bubble of O2 for all of us, just don't you worry, Tesla push the green squiggly lever for me won't you?"
The spire in the middle of the TARDIS began to move up and down, and a noise both wretched and wonderful filled the room: veerrooooo verrrrooooo roooo rooo.
"That can't be good" Tesla said automatically, looking at the Doctor like he was nuts.
"Coming from you? The man with the musical lightning bolts? Please, that's just her running- it's a brilliant sound!"
At least, it was, before it started speeding up. It went from a simple, slow paced sound to a very rapid one, as though the TARDIS were hyperventilating. .
"Oh bugger! No, no! Bad! Very bad! Carter, push that red button, Tesla- green squiggly, Romanoff before they both do that, pull that dingle-whopper, Sylar- mind the ketchup and hit the thermal-vortex-defribulator!"
"The what?" Sylar shouted at a loss over the great VEROOOVEROOO noise.
"The left-right lever, pull it left- then right! Do it! NOOOOWW-"
The TARDIS hurtled through territory it was unused to, on the edge of all universes, her hull on fire as she spiraled wildly out of control, lacking the power to hold on for much longer. She needed to land, and she wasn't going to let her idiot thief man with all his silly 'dimensional crossroads' talk get in her way. She found just the place, a place with a catcher's mitt designed just for these sorts of situations, and she let herself be caught.
note: fun ride so far? next stop is Eureka itself :D
please review~!
