Serial 2 – The Deadly Virus
Episode 1 – The Virus of Doom
And now something for the Classic Who fans. Although I think the New Whovians will enjoy it, too...
"Oh no, not again," The Doctor muttered when the record player that he had just turned on started to malfunction again. The music stopped and his TARDIS gave out warning sounds. Déjà vu? The Doctor wondered and hoped that he wasn't caught in a time loop and had to repeat his last two days again. Because he would only survive the next four times…
He jumped up and ran over to his console that started throwing sparks into all directions. "I think I could do with a new console surface," he muttered, realising at the same moment that he was alone. He looked at his small computer monitor and noticed that a manual distress call was being transmitted on all short-wave frequencies. "The TARDIS must have picked up the distress signal and automatically altered curse." This time he knew that no one was around.
Five minutes later, the TARDIS arrived – somewhere, and landed. Carefully, the Doctor opened the door. He remembered what happened the last time he received a distress call from Earth and did not want any repetition. But this time he did not end up in the mid of a gang-war although these surroundings did not seem to be any safer. A shrilling alarm tone was to be heard while redly flickering light illuminated the hallway which he found himself in. Curious now, he stepped out and decided to go left, because – why not? He heard people shouting commands in the distance. He walked past heavy metal doors, one of them was open and he sneaked in. It seemed to be a chemistry lab – or had been one until very recently. Cupboard doors were torn out, test tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks were shattered and scattered all over the place and an unpleasant odour was coming from the spilled liquids. Some of the window glasses were fragmented or missing completely, responsible for it had probably been some of the gas bottles that had been thrown out.
The Doctor continued his search into the small office that was separated from the lab by huge glass windows of which one was still intact. In there, the books and folders of the shelves had been torn out and distributed on the floor and table. He sat down at the desk and tapped the computer screen. The computer came back to life and asked for a password. The Doctor had a quick look around and found the password note pinned to one of the books that lay next to the desk calendar – which showed the 34th week of the year 2027. This at least confirmed that he was on Earth and in the 21st century, as the TARDIS had predicted. He typed in the password and waited for the computer to load. Then, he was confronted with an unknown desktop – but on the other hand he hardly knew anything about computer software on Earth, especially not since he had left Earth in the late 70s.
He had barely touched the small logo to the lower left of the screen when he heard an angry voice asking, "What are you doing there?" Alarmed, he turned around in the chair. "Nothing, I just came here and–"
"Just shut up and put your hands where I can see them," the male person said and came closer.
The Doctor raised his arms and noticed that the man was human, probably in his early fifties, wearing a lab coat and pointing a gun at him. He didn't like people pointing guns at him.
"You're coming with me," the scientist decided. "Have you ravaged this lab?"
"No, I'm telling the truth if I say that I have just arrived, and this laboratory already looked like this. Would you mind telling me what's going on here?" he asked and tried to turn around.
As a response he was brutally pushed forwards and reprimanded again to put his hands behind his head or he would be shot. "I've dealt with scum like you before, Primer," the scientist muttered and nudged his back with his gun.
They were taking a staircase to a lower level of the building.
"Would you mind telling me now where I am?"
"I'm pretty sure you know what buildings you break in or did you take a bit more than just helping yourself to Dutch courage, right?"
They had arrived in a laboratory where more people were standing around, lab coats on and guns in their hands. "I found one of them," the scientist, that The Doctor had encountered, shouted.
"Put him in the monkey cage," one of the other scientists proposed. "Such a shame that all the monkeys are gone. He would have been among his friends…"
"There has obviously been a mistake," The Doctor protested but was hardly heard because of the laughter of the scientists.
"I'm not who you think I am. I have not been devastating the laboratories upstairs. I arrived shortly after that!"
But no one was listening. They were rather talking to each other.
"Where are John, Mark and Thomas?" the scientist who had brought The Doctor with him, asked.
"They've run into town. All the car tyres were slashed. They have been very thorough this time."
"We know so far that five monkeys and nine lab rats from the 5th floor have escaped. The rats had been used for the MetaTex experiments, and they're all in different states of the disease but they should be non-contagious."
"They haven't managed to penetrate the security doors to the radioactivity labs. Imagine what damage they could have done there."
Suddenly all automatic doors in this room shut down shortly after another scientist had rushed in. Her lab coat – if you could still call it that – was torn apart and she looked as if she had been running a marathon.
"Sarah, what's up?" one of the other scientists asked.
"It's the gene-enhancement virus…I went upstairs to check on the biology research in the maximum security department and all the bottles in the fridge had been scattered on the floor. And one of the monkeys nearly attacked me. I managed to lock it in the office but I accidentally triggered the security override while doing so." She was out of breath and nearly collapsing. A colleague of hers brought her a bottle of water and she drank half of it immediately. "I only had 90 seconds to get here. Now the doors won't open again. Have you phoned the city's police?"
"The telephone cables are cut and we lost internet connection. We've manually send distress calls with the devices that UNIT installed last year."
"I've received that distress call!" The Doctor shouted. They scientists looked over to his cage. "I've received such a distress signal. In my space ship!"
"Space ship?" the scientist that had brought him here laughed. "What? Are you an alien from outer space?" he mocked.
"I had no idea what was going on here. I was landing in my star ship that looks like a big blue police box."
"I've seen such a box on my way down here," the latest arrived biologist mentioned.
"I had just been discovering the lab when you found me. I have honestly no idea what is going on here. But I am familiar with UNIT. I have worked for them."
There was first silence among the scientist, and then chatter. While they were still talking whether to believe the strange man in the monkey cage, a young man in a dirty lab coat walked over to The Doctor. He was perhaps in his early 30s and looked much more unexperienced than the other scientists.
"A big blue police telephone box, you say?" he asked and cleaned his glasses. Rather a gesture he didn't much think about than an actual attempt to clean his glasses.
The Doctor nodded.
"Then are you The Doctor?"
"Yes, that's me."
"When I was a child," he explained, "there was an invasion of dustbin-like aliens on Earth. Rumours said you saved us."
"It probably were the Daleks and I probably did," The Doctor said. "Would you mind telling me where I am, when I am and what on Earth is happening?" That were probably the questions he was constantly asking himself when travelling.
The young scientist sighed and had a look at his colleagues, who had started again talking about what to do and how not to panic, and seemed to have forgotten about The Doctor.
"The date is 5th November 2027. You're in the Keel Miller Research Facility in Aberdeen, Scotland."
"Keel Miller…that name rings a bell… What exactly is it you are researching about?"
"Mainly biological advance."
"Do you have a department dealing with cybergenetics?"
"I think. Somewhere buried in the cellar. But it's rather small now. Fifty, sixty years ago, cyberengineering was the main focus of Keel Miller Industries. But it lost its charm during the Eugenic Wars in the 1990s. Since then, we have been dedicated to biological technologies in all kinds of directions, but dealing mainly with ways to prolong life."
"A longer life…isn't that what everyone wants?" The Doctor asked sarcastically.
"For me, it doesn't sound too well. More time to do what? Working?" the scientist surprisingly agreed. "In the last few years, we have extended our research onto the first human test subjects. Many people in the city of Aberdeen weren't very happy with that. But do not get me wrong, Doctor. All test subjects on whom we've applied our research had agreed voluntarily. And only very few had unfortunately passed away. And this is not our intent! We do not perform research until the patient dies and then try something else. We do have our ethics code and it is taken very serious," he defended his work. "But some unfortunate accidents could not be avoided."
He paused, then continued. "In the last few months, an extremist group calling themselves Human Prime, pretending to fight for human rights, has been formed. They say that our work is unethical and should stop immediately. What they don't consider is that we also were the ones that developed a vaccine for the latest infection, or that we are constantly helping to improve the people's life. Nevertheless, in the past few months, attacks have occurred. Firstly, they had demonstrated, then they threatened us. Some scientists were mugged or their homes were broken in. We also had burglars in here, but they had never come far…until today. It was an organised troop of twenty, thirty people.
They have come with knives and guns this time, and we, of course, were unprepared. They attacked around six p.m., when most workers had already gone home. They threatened us, they destroyed our equipment, they released test subjects – all animals, and we don't treat them badly either. I'm pretty sure our rats thrive in comparison to the rats in the sewers close to the sea. And now it seems they have also accidentally released a virus. As you've heard, we sent some people into the town to warn the inhabitants, but if we don't get immediate support from the police, UNIT or Torchwood, we might see Aberdeen going extinct in the next few days. And if the virus is really out there, it will be very hard to keep it in town…"
"I don't have a doctorate degree in Biology or Medicine, but I am a Doctor after all. I know a lot about cell biology and genetic enhancement. If you explain the details to me, I might be able to help," The Doctor offered. He read the panic in the face of the young scientist.
"It had already gone too far, Doctor. We cannot apprehend the virus anymore, it is on its way into town."
"How exactly does this virus work, Dr…?"
"My name's Chesterfield. Brian Chesterfield. I'm a Doctor in the field of Cell Apoptosis. I have also been working on the virus project so I might give you a short summary."
Before he could continue, he was interrupted by the biologist without the lab coat. The others had all kept theirs on. Perhaps as a sign of belonging, or because they loved their work, or just to tell them apart from the terrorist group.
"What are you telling him?" she asked.
"I think he is telling the truth when saying that he has nothing to do with the attack," Dr Chesterfield said. "I think he might be able to help us. He claims that he has worked for UNIT once."
"And you believe him?" she mocked him.
"I think that he doesn't look like the activists we've encountered before and with all the damage done, what is there left for him to destroy?"
The female biologist seemed to think for a while and then began to nod. "Let him out of the cage, but keep an eye on him. If he has anything useful to say, tell us. We're continuing with our damage report. The police wants to know every little detail when they come here and we need to be prepared." With that, she left again, not before giving her colleague the keys.
The young scientist freed The Doctor and they sat down on chairs far away from the others. "As I said," he began to explain, "We're also doing research on prolonging cell life. We have started with many different substances, but lately we have come up with a promising substance that we call 'Regenerator' – at least, we did so in the beginning. By now, we have renamed it as 'the virus' because its newest version fastens metabolism and cell regeneration. It enhances the cell, yes, but it also makes it die much earlier. In the beginning, improved mutation looked very promising and we started experiments with humans." He swallowed and The Doctor noticed that this was a difficult topic for him.
"It enhanced the humans, but 'the virus' attacked all cells, not only the once we wanted the affect to apply to. It resulted in the test subjects aging ten years per day. The first test person died, the second one has now reached the age of 70. We could save the second person because – after the first failure – we had programmed a self-destruction program into the virus. The virus destroys itself automatically after five days. In addition to that, the virus can only survive five minutes in the air. It can only be transmitted from human to human."
"But if this virus now gets into town – and even if it destroys itself after five days since its release from the test tubes – it kills or ages the population," The Doctor realised.
"Exactly. We had done some statistics in the case of an accident. I still can't believe that this will all come true now: But thousands of people in Aberdeen city will die! And about 80% of the survivors will be aged 70 or older." He leaned back and had a look outside the window. "I wonder if John, Mark and Thomas have made it into the city to warn the people. But with the monkeys and rats escaped, and probably being infected with the virus, we should put Aberdeenshire completely under quarantine."
Dr John Hemingway, Dr Mark Shire and Professor Thomas Johnson were at that time being still stomping through the foot-high snow masses that have covered the whole landscape. With all cars unusable, the descent from the facility to the marge of the city would take one and a half hour under perfect conditions, and at least two hours considering the snow and the occasional snowstorms.
None of them were talking. It would be a waste of energy and it was obvious how slow they progressed: They could clearly see the lights of the city which did not seem to get any nearer, independent on how long they walked.
Suddenly, Dr Shire stopped.
"What is it, Mark?" Dr Hemingway wanted to know. He, too, stared into the forest to the right of them.
"Do you see that?" Dr Shire asked and pointed to a weak light about hundred meters away from them.
"Perhaps a glow worm," Dr Hemingway suggested.
"It's too big," Professor Johnson now intervened and started walking into that direction, but was held back by his colleague Dr Shire. "We should continue our walk. We don't have time to argue about things like this."
"Look, it's moving towards us," Dr Hemingway noticed. "Is that…is that one of the fluorescing apes from our genetic department?"
The monkey was coming nearer but fell down into the snow a few meters away from the scientists who were now interested enough to move closer. "It is," Professor Johnson recognised. "That's Hunter, the oldest of our test subjects. Do you think the activists have let them free?"
"I would say they freed everything they could find," Dr Hemingway muttered and kneed besides the monkey. "Something doesn't seem to be right with him. Shouldn't he be rather coldness-resisting?" He felt his pulse. "His heartbeat is too slow."
"We can't do anything for him now. We have to keep going," the Professor urged.
Dr Hemingway nodded and stroked the monkey's fur. "We'll help you," he murmured and then followed his colleagues further down the hill and towards the city.
"Some of the test animals had been injected with deadly viruses, hadn't they?" Dr Shire, who was a chemist, and did not have much to do with virus and vaccination research, asked.
"Yes, but I think all these virus versions tested in monkeys is not contagious for humans. The only contagious ones were in the cellar where the activists had not broken in," Professor Johnson replied.
"You're forgetting about 'the virus'," Dr Hemingway reminded him.
"The genetic enhancement drug?"
"Yes, but they had been testing rats and I think even fish. Don't ask me why. There's no way this monkey could have come into contact with it."
How little did he know that the three of them were already transporting the age fastening virus straight into the town of Aberdeen…
Don't forget to leave a review.