Hello again. Let's be honest "Two more episodes before Christmas." was never going to happen, was it? Even less so when I had a run in with a cold that just didn't want to die. But anyway, I'm *hoping* to be updating a lot quicker now we're in the New Year.
On with the show:
For a moment, Ryan couldn't feel anything. It was as though the entire world had gone dark, save for a spot a few feet away from him, where smoke was floating away from someone he used to know.
However, he gradually became aware of a tugging on his arm. The Doctor was trying to pull him away.
But Ryan didn't move. He couldn't. He made no attempt to, but with his body transfixed on the burnt corpse in front of him, he somehow knew his legs wouldn't lift if he asked them to.
But the Doctor was adamant.
"Ryan." he said. "We have to go."
Ryan shook his head slightly; hoping it would convey the message his mouth could not, and inform the Doctor that his legs, and evidently his vocal cords, had stopped working.
The Doctor moved in front of him, trying to block his view of his dead friend and force his attention onto him. He put both his hands on Ryan's shoulders.
"Listen to me, we can't stay -"
But Ryan shrugged his hands off of him, angrily trying to push him out of the way. Why didn't he understand that his legs had stopped working? They'd died along with Crazy Harry.
"No, Ryan, look at me." said the Doctor, overpowering him and grabbing his shoulders again "Look at me!"
Ryan did, but only so he would see how angry he was making him, and hopefully force him to back down. A plan which failed when he saw the look of incredible pity in the Doctor's eyes. And for some reason, that, more than seeing the actual murder and the body left behind, made him realise that Crazy Harry was dead.
"Doctor." he spoke, trying to fight a sob back down his throat. "Doctor, they…"
"I know." said the Doctor. "I know, I'm sorry. But we have got to go, or we'll end up the same. Please, Ryan. Now."
The wind had stolen much of the smoke from the body now. Ryan gave one last look, and allowed the Doctor to pull him away.
He was surprised, after a moment or two of running, to find himself being pushed through a wooden door into a tiny room. It was true that he had been far too preoccupied to pay attention, but he had generally assumed they would be going back to the school. This was a place he had never been before. There was a battered chair in the centre, in front of a small television on top of a chest of drawers, and a single bed against the back wall. It was few second before Ryan realised they'd entered Crazy Harry's hut of a home.
"We can't go back to the school." said the Doctor, answering Ryan's unasked question. He pushed aside the curtains of a small window and looked out. "Now that one of us have attacked them, Barrd might decide to take us out before we do the same."
But Ryan had stopped listening. On the wall above the television were framed, black and white photos of Harry's youth. A young Harry held a beautiful woman close to him. Both smiling at the camera, both deliriously happy. In another, Harry and the same woman were surrounded by three children; two boys and a girl. People Harry would never see again. Although, Ryan thought, looking around the room, if the people in the photos were still around, then why was Harry living alone in a shack?
"I'm sorry." said the Doctor from behind him.
"You've already said." Ryan replied, unaware it would come out so angry.
But the Doctor showed no sign of offence, just nodded. "I know." he said. "But I am. Were you close?"
"Didn't even know his last name. Crazy Harry, we called him. He was the mad bloke who the kids threw stones at to get chases. Always ranting about aliens and UFOs. And no one ever believe him." He looked at the photos again. "Crazy Harry. More like Lonely Harry."
Ryan felt a sudden wave of emotion overcome him, a dizzying mix of grief and shock. He took a deep breath and sat himself down on the floor, back to the wall. A moment later, and the Doctor sat down next to him.
After a moment or two of silence, the Doctor suddenly spoke.
"That was your school we were in, I take it?"
Ryan looked at him. What did that have to do with anything?
"The school, the one we hid in." The Doctor said. "You knew your way around it, I assumed it was your school?"
"Yes." he answered, somewhat irritably, but then added, "I mean no. No, it wasn't. Not anymore. Today was my last day."
The Doctor smiled sympathetically. "Expelled?"
"What? No! It was just the last day, I've done every year. No more school. On to Uni."
"Oh." said the Doctor. "Well, good for you."
Ryan nodded unenthusiastically. "Yeah. Thanks" he mumbled.
"Ah." said the Doctor, with a knowing smirk.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"No, what?"
"Well, it's just… When you go through a big change like leaving school, you're either excited about the future, or scared of it."
"I am not scared of the future." said Ryan with disdain.
The Doctor just smirked again, in a way which Ryan was finding increasingly annoying, so Ryan shook his head and sighed.
"It's like… You spend your entire youth waiting for it to end, you know? Waiting until you don't have to get up at 9 in the morning and go to school. Waiting until you can move out so you don't have to do the dishes when your Mum tells you to, and come in of a night any time you want. And then that day comes. When everything changes. And you realise you kind of liked the way things were."
"I understand." the Doctor said. "But, you know, that's just part of life. This might be the end of a lot things, but it's also the beginning of what comes next."
"I know, I get all that 'Life is a journey' stuff. I do. And it's a good course I'm doing, at a good University. And I never wanted to stay here forever, I always wanted to get out and see the world. But… that doesn't make moving halfway across the country and leaving everyone I know behind any easier."
The Doctor nodded, and smiled sympathetically. "Probably doesn't help that your Mum and Dad couldn't be happier about the whole thing?" he said, and when Ryan sent him a perplexed look, he added, "Parents. Never change, no matter what planet your on."
"They're just proud." Ryan admitted. "And excited. Same with my mates, they can't wait to get to Uni. But me…" He sighed again, and gave the Doctor a small smile. "Moving on; it's overrated."
"Tell me about it." said the Doctor. "I mean, just recently, a couple of friends of mine, Amy and Rory, travelled with me. They moved on." He paused for a second. "Overrated indeed."
Ryan didn't know whether to say he was sorry or not; what exactly did he mean by 'moved on'?
"Anyway." the Doctor said before he could decide. "Don't worry. Every big change is scary at first, but you'll be fine. You'll be a student! Late night parties, and pot noodles, and dangerous amounts of alcohol. Or so I'm told."
Ryan laughed. "Yeah. Something like that. And yeah, I will be fine. When it actually happens. The waiting is the worst part, leaves with me with too much time to over-think things, and come up with crazy ideas of how I can escape it. I probably should have taken a gap year."
"A what?" asked the Doctor.
"A gap year. It's this thing where you take a year off in between school and university. Go travelling and stuff. Adventures and the like. That would have fun. Shame, too late now."
"Yeah." said the Doctor, thoughtfully. "Well, you know, maybe you could, I don't know, come with - "
"Besides." interrupted Ryan, his tone darkening as he looked out the window. "There might not be a planet left for me to go to University on."
"Don't be stupid." the Doctor replied sternly. "Of course there will. We've got a plan, the life preservers. Just got to find the right moment."
The was an audio crackling from the other side of the room, and a muffled voice became steadily clearer.
"This message is being broadcast on all Earth frequencies in the hope that it will find the Doctor." came Barrd's gravely voice.
"Or wait for the right moment to find us." said the Doctor. He sprang up and walked over to the chest of drawers, where the sound was emanating from.
He pulled open the top drawer and produced a battered two-way war radio; a large green box with a speaker on the front, and a communicator attached by wire. The Doctor placed the radio on the chest of drawers, and listened to Barrd's voice crawling out of it.
"We have searched the school inside out and found no trace of you, which leads me to believe and hope that you have vacated the planet. If that is not the case, then I must again warn you - "
"No trace of me?" said the Doctor, and Ryan realised he'd picked up the communicator and was speaking into it. "You want to get your eyes checked mate. All thirty of them. 'Cos I'm still here. I'm always here."
"Then I warn you again - "
But the Doctor again cut Barrd off.
"Like you warned Harry, before you killed him?"
"The human was given multiple chances to walk away, he chose to attack us and left me no choice. He had to be neutralized."
"Stop that." the Doctor snapped. "Stop using military vernacular to make yourself feel better. Let's call it was it is: Murder. You murdered him."
There was low growl from the speaker. "We are here, Doctor, to complete a mission of utmost importance. The survival of our planet rests on our shoulders. If a human tries to prevent us from completing that mission, we have been given full authorization to remove them from the equation. And that goes for yourself, and your remaining human friend. Interfere and you will die. If this planet must fall for ours to go on, so be it. But we wish for that to happen in the most humane way possible."
The Doctor laughed. "Humane genocide. Well, well. 900 years, and that's a first. You truly are deluded aren't you, Imperior?"
The speaker was silent for a moment, and when Barrd spoke again, it was with an air of finality. "You will not leave?"
"Never." the Doctor replied.
"Then you will meet your end tonight."
The audio crackled again, and went silent.
A few streets away, in the local police station, Officer Cartwright wondered if she was going round the bend. She had been directing a Police car to the site of a nearby disturbance over the station's radio, when she suddenly found herself listening in on a bizarre conversation.
She took off her headset and placed it on the desk in front of her, turning to Doug at the desk across from her, who she was relieved to see was looking just as clueless.
"Did you just get that?" she asked him.
"Humane genocide?"
"Yeah." she said, and while Doug picked up the phone on his desk and started dialling a number, she called out to her superior who was on the other side of the room. "Excuse me, Sergeant Dalton?"
Dalton put down his cup of tea and made his way over to her. "Cartwright?" he said.
"Sorry, sir, but something weird's just happened. I think we must have had been picking up BBC Radio 7 or something, but for a second there all I could hear were two men talking nonsense."
"Sir," said Doug to Dalton, momentarily taking the phone away from his ear. "I'm on the phone to emergency services, they had it too."
"Sorry, sir." said Cartwright. "But aren't we two of the most secure communication systems in the country. How could we just be completely taken over?"
Before the Sergeant could reply, the lights above their heads blinked, and suddenly the office was flooded with darkness.
Meanwhile, Karen Murphy found herself looking out of her kitchen blinds for the umpteenth time.
"I am going to kill that lad when he gets home." she said, and stormed into the living room, where her husband was staring at the television in confusion. "Nearly two hours ago I sent Ryan for that bread." she said to him. "He's probably decided to go round to Craig's again without telling me. And I'll bet you anything he leaves that loaf in their house!"
She trailed off when she saw that Jack wasn't listening to her, so she turned her attention to see what he was so focused on. The BBC One ident filled the television screen, while the continuity announcer apologised to viewers for the interruption.
"What's he apologising for?" she asked.
"Dunno," said Jack. "It was weird. Right in the middle of Eastenders, the sound went out, and then there was these two voices speaking about… planets or something."
"Planets?"
"I don't know, I think so. But…"
The TV screen flickered, and then went out completely. A few seconds later, and every light in the entire house did the same.
"Doctor." said Ryan, trying to get to his feet but struggling as the floor beneath him began to quake. "What's happening?"
They both rushed, unsteadily, to the tiny window and looked out.
Sharp, tendril-like wires had burst out of the Aniline ship and pierced into the ground. They located every power line, connected themselves to every wireless technology, locked on to every source of power on the entire planet, and began to absorb.
The lights in the Murphy home and Police Station weren't the only ones to go out. In seconds, the whole city was powerless. Seconds later, and the country went down too. And then, before anyone had a chance to react, the whole of planet Earth went dark. Every electronic device died. Anything with a power source failed. Mankind's energy became the Aniline's.
But it was worse was that. Because the manufactured energy wouldn't be enough to save Vectora. So the wires kept digging, diving down and down towards the core of the planet.
"And when they reach it." said the Doctor. "They'll steal every last bit of life it has."
Ryan turned away, unable to stand and do nothing any longer. "So what do we do?" he said.
The Doctor didn't answer. He walked back over to the chest of drawers where he'd found the radio, and opened the top drawer again. He looked down at what was inside for a few seconds, then reached in, and pulled out a handgun.
End of Chapter Six
Only 2 more Chapters left in this episode, I think. Some more reviews would be lovely, too. As I said, author/story alerts are much appreciated, but a few lines on how you think things are going would be fantastic.