"Like my life depends on it?" Demyx echoed, turning the headset over a few times in his hands. "...Doctor, what exactly is it supposed to do, besides show maps and let you type to me?"
"It also lets me know exactly where in the city you are, as long as you're wearing it," the Doctor explained, gesturing at the computer screen in front of him while still making sure Demyx could see his face at all times; signing would be too much of a hassle right now. "Those three things are...really all it can do. Oh, right; it also has a built-in camera that can zoom in on what you're currently looking at, or make it show up on this screen over here, which will probably be much more useful." A few fingerswipes and a pointed tap, and the screen was suddenly displaying mostly bare floor and Demyx's shoes. "...Well, it'll be useful later. To change your view, all you would have to do is tap the side of the, um, earpiece. The right one."
Demyx gave him a blank look, but put the headset on again and tapped the right earpiece, seemingly staring off into the middle distance. "That's handy," he said after a few minutes, his voice coming from his own mouth and the computer speakers with a slight echo. "It can also get all that shit out of the way so I have a clear view of what's actually ahead of me, which could be more important."
"Yes, yes it could. Don't want you to fall down the stairs or something because you're busy looking at a map." The Doctor tapped the computer screen a few more times, bringing up the map of the Undercity, with entrances from the Overcity marked on it in red. "Now, this is going to be important to -" He paused, and realized the map was probably interfering with Demyx's ability to read lips and he'd most likely missed everything he'd said since he put the headset on, which meant repeating everything in sign language and hoping he saw at least some of it. He had no way of knowing how much, if any, he saw, but Demyx did take off the headset to watch more carefully. How much of that did you actually follow? he added at the end, just in case.
"Most of it, I think," Demyx said, after trying to sign his answer and realizing the headset was in the way. "I gather that the Undercity is -"
"It's done. Matron Hame says it's done."
"Oh, finally," the Doctor said, standing up hastily as Novice Yin blinked earnestly at the two of them. "How much has she produced? How much can she produce on short notice? Enough for the entire city? Is it in an aerosolized form? That should be easy...well, of course, the cures they used to make were all in IV form. If that's all she's got, then we're pretty well sunk...of course, they did work in the disinfectant showers..."
"I...don't know?" Yin said hesitantly, glancing back and forth between the Doctor and the side room where Hame had been working as if afraid of getting in trouble from one source or the other. "She...she said she wanted to test it first. To make sure it was actually effective. It's just...going to be dangerous to find -"
"Wait, I actually know the perfect person to go test it on," the Doctor interrupted, starting to get his enthusiasm back. "Sister Lith. She tried to attack me - she got into the room you left me in, remember where that is? The one with the lock on the door? Anyway, I managed to get out past her and leave her locked in there, so she should still be easily found and nicely contained. Just have to be careful not to let her claw you up."
"Oh, good, somewhere I know where is," Demyx grunted, hooking the headset into a belt loop for now. "Ready when everyone else is."
"I'm ready if you are," the Doctor said, as Yin trotted back to the side room. "That is, if you're sure you're ready. I did tell you to get some -"
"I got some rest," Demyx sniffed, looking offended at the very suggestion. "Do you even know the way back there without me teleporting you there?"
The Doctor didn't waste time dignifying the question with an answer, not least because the answer was no and he didn't want to have to admit it. Besides, Yin was already coming back with Hame, and Hame was now holding a tiny spray bottle in one hand. "Oh, good, it's an aerosol this time," he said with relief, seeing that. "That will make things so much more convenient."
"It seemed the most expedient form," Hame said with some amusement. "Any method of delivery that required direct contact seemed...awkward, given the circumstances. Now, you say Sister Lith is infected and safely contained...?"
"Yes. Yes. Demyx!" The Doctor pointed to him, and Demyx obediently opened yet another dark rift (had he really had enough rest yet? The process did seem to wear on him, and he was going to need all the energy he could get in the very near future) back to the room the Doctor had found himself in hours earlier. All four of them filed through, the Doctor taking the lead mostly to get it over with.
Things in the room were not as he left them, he noticed immediately. Sister Lith was nowhere in sight, the furniture was in complete disarray, and one of the windows had been smashed into bloody shards. By the time the others joined him, he'd managed to climb through the broken window without injuring himself, and found Sister Lith in the hallway barely two meters away, in a pool of her own blood. "...I'm sorry," he said to the faces that were now staring at him blankly from the ransacked room. "I...she must have smashed the window to escape, and cut herself and bled to death in the process. I'm sorry. I..." And then he suddenly couldn't say anything else, because he'd thought he was keeping her safe by leaving her somewhere where she couldn't get out and hurt anyone else and no one else could get in and hurt her, and it turned out he'd killed her instead. Why hadn't he seen this coming? Why did deaths have to keep piling up on his head like this? Who would be next?... He could hear Hame calling to him, but he was in no mood to respond, even to look back at her. He simply walked several paces down the hallway, past another two dead bodies and enough half-dried blood for three, and stopped, pondering what a ridiculously long shot his idea was and how incredibly likely it was that all it would accomplish was killing Demyx and what an idiot he'd been to think of something so outrageous and why hadn't they ended up in New New York like he'd been trying to get to and how many people were dying horrible, violent, bloody deaths for no reason at all...
"Doctor." All of a sudden, Demyx was right there at his elbow, trying to lead him back to the others. "Come on. Unless you want to try and corral another rager, there's nothing we can do here. Let's go back to the lab."
The Doctor nodded mutely, shrugging away the arm Demyx offered him and heading back to where Yin and Hame were waiting on his own; his pride may have been taking hits right and left, but he still had too much left to walk anywhere on Demyx's arm. He was the Doctor, dammit; he was supposed to save the day, and he would, somehow...his idea was going to work, it absolutely had to, because there was no other option. "Take us back to the lab and then get some more rest," he told Demyx, a little curtly, but in his opinion he was justified by preoccupation. It wasn't like Demyx could catch his tone of voice from reading his lips, anyway, but all the Doctor cared about was that he did make another dark rift, back to the laboratory they'd left behind. "Hame...how long would it take for you to produce enough vaccine to treat the entire city?" was his next question. "Presuming we were going to introduce it directly into the municipal vapor tanks and let the vapor tanks do the work of distributing it? How much would it take? Would it be something your average man could lift, carry, and run with?"
Hame, to her credit, didn't look the least bit fazed by his questions, simply pondering them thoughtfully. "I believe that, in twelve hours, I should be able to create more than enough vaccine for the entire population of New Boston, in a much more concentrated form than this," she eventually said, holding up the spray bottle. "It would be too dangerous to use in the concentrated form, but it would be much lighter and easier to carry, and dilution in the vapor tanks would reduce it to a safe dose...presuming that it is effective. Are you willing to trust it without it having been tested first?"
"Got no choice now, do we?" the Doctor asked of the empty air as much as Hame, his gaze wandering to where Demyx was curling up on the floor with his blanket and pillow again. "It has to work. Absolutely has to. Because there's no other option now."
All right, Demyx was officially too bored to sleep anymore. The Doctor had told him to get some more rest, sure, and he was sure he had good reason for saying so, but really, a body could only get so much rest before they were officially as fully rested as they could possibly get. And the floor wasn't nearly comfortable enough to justify lying around and waiting for something else to happen. Unfortunately, all he could do now was sit up and wait for something to happen. He couldn't even talk to the Doctor; the Doctor was asleep. Demyx was slightly amused to know that he could and did sleep sometimes, but he was much more so bored, and worried. He didn't know what was going on, only that they had to be waiting for something important, or else had simply given up and were barricading themselves in here to wait for the epidemic to run its course, or the laboratory to be overrun. And he just couldn't see the Doctor simply giving up. The poor bastard looked exhausted...how often did he sleep? How often did he need to? Wasn't there a story in certain worlds about Atlas, the god who held the world on his shoulders? That was who the Doctor looked like right then. Atlas resting. All of a sudden, Demyx felt sorry for him, sorry enough to drape his blanket over him just for that much added comfort.
Apparently that slight gesture was enough to wake the Doctor, which was about the exact opposite of what Demyx had intended. On the other hand, he did look pretty well rested; maybe Time Lords just didn't need that much sleep. Good morning, he signed, looking more chipper than Demyx would have figured anyone could be in the situation; he even folded the blanket perfectly without hardly looking at it. Nothing's happened yet, I see. How are you? Well-reasted and ready for anything?
Rested, yes. Ready for anything, not so much. Demyx stretched a little himself, feeling every sore spot that had developed from sleeping on the hard floor. Mostly, I'm bored as hell and worried about what comes next and when it's coming.
...Sorry about that, the Doctor signed, looking a little awkward. There's not really much I can do about that, unfortunately.
...You have a tablet on you somewhere, don't you? We never did finish the chess game.
The Doctor's eyes lit up at the very suggestion, and he immediately pulled the tablet out from somewhere under his suit jacket where it somehow hadn't gotten crushed in his sleep. (I'm afraid we can't continue that game, but we can certainly start a new one,) he said as he fiddled with it, and Demyx couldn't help but smile - whatever else was going on, it was a relief to know the situation wasn't so dire they didn't dare take the time for a bit of pure fun.
They ended up having time for three games, two of which the Doctor won pretty handily and the last of which Demyx managed to pull out into a draw, and another meal of whatever nastiness came in those foil pouches, before the Doctor insisted he go back to sleep. We're going to need you as fully rested as possible before...whatever happens, happens, was all the explanation he would offer. Every minute you spend awake, you're one minute less rested.
Doctor, I'd need drugs to sleep right now, Demyx replied sourly, less than thrilled about being forced out of the action yet again. Besides, do you really want me doing whatever it is just woken up and still half-asleep? And while we're on the subject, would you mind telling me what the hell you're planning, since you're apparently hell-bent on involving me in it?
The Doctor scowled and looked put-upon at that request, as if Demyx had asked for...some bit of information that he was really reluctant to give up. His real name, for instance, presuming he had one and "the Doctor" wasn't it. Then, very suddenly, he brightened up for no apparent reason. Right, I was trying to explain it to you when we were interrupted, he signed, while Demyx was still trying to figure out the mood swing. And you can't possibly have overheard the conversation I had with Matron Hame...well, obviously not; you can't hear much of anything, can you.
If you expand "not much of anything" to include "nothing", then no, I can't.
Right. Anyway, like I was trying to tell you, the reason you need the headset and the maps and all that is so you can get the vaccine down to the vapor tanks in the Undercity. Once the vaccine gets into the tanks, it should spread throughout the whole city in a matter of minutes and hopefully wipe the virus out before it spreads any further and does any more damage. It's about...ten kilometers or so as the crow flies, twelve or thirteen on ground level - because a crow wouldn't be able to fly to the Undercity very easily, would it, even if there were crows - Demyx, recognizing the signs of a tangent when he saw them now, waved a hand in front of the Doctor's face, interrupting his train of thought just long enough to (hopefully) get it back on the correct track. Anyway. You're in excellent training and very good at running. Besides which, you've already been infected and should therefore be immune.
...Doctor, whose idea was this?
...Mine.
I was afraid of that. Doctor, you do realize that...the odds of me not being under attack once a minute during this ten-mile run -
Actually, it will only work out to roughly eight miles at most.
Big difference. I'm still going to have all kinds of crazy people coming after me, doing their damnedest to rip me apart for crossing their field of vision. I can't just kill them. I won't be able to stop them. And I don't know if I'll be able to outrun them all.
Demyx... The Doctor was starting to look frustrated now, and worried, as if he thought the survival of the universe was on Demyx's shoulders now and Demyx was just going to drop it. ...It is going to be dangerous. I never intended to gloss over that part. So if you don't feel safe doing it...well, you don't have to. I suppose you could go back to the TARDIS and lock yourself in whenever you please, and you'd be perfectly safe. I wouldn't stop you. I don't really think I could.
...Well, and if that wasn't calculated to make Demyx feel like a heel, it was a miraculous accident of rhetoric on the Doctor's part. ...Doctor, if I decide not to make this eight-mile run to the Undercity, what's the next plan? he had to ask. There probably wasn't one. If he thought back on it, everything the Doctor had been doing so far, minus trying to kill him with his own lightsaber, had been going towards this specific end. And it wasn't like Demyx could think of a solution that was going to work any better. He would never have thought of this solution in the first place. Thinking, especially planning, was...just not his strong point.
...Well...it's a bit late for any other ideas, the Doctor signed, forcing a look of unconcern. So if you decide you don't want to be the deliveryman tonight...someone else will have to. Probably me. After all, I am very, very good at running.
But defending yourself and teleporting, not so much, am I right? That just about counted as an agreement, didn't it? Because the Doctor damn well would run the vaccine all the way to the vapor tanks if he used up every regeneration he had left in the process. And Demyx couldn't let him, because he could just imagine the Doctor being killed over and over by the crazy ragers, no matter how fast he ran, or maybe just being killed entirely...and Demyx's life just wasn't as valuable as his. Besides, whatever monsters the Doctor was used to ducking, dodging, and outrunning, Demyx knew very well that he had experience ducking, dodging, and outrunning people. And there was nothing like a dark portal for a last-resort quick getaway, and the Doctor had nothing like a dark portal for a last-resort quick getaway. Don't give yourself a heart attack worrying about it. Or two. I'll go.
Thank you. The Doctor smiled, just a little, at that, and rested his hands on Demyx's shoulders for a moment, before his expression turned deadly serious again. You do understand that it will all be riding on you, don't you? If you don't make it, we won't have time to send someone else. That will be it.
...Well, so much for thinking himself expendable. The Doctor was right about that too. If Demyx got himself killed somewhere out in the rage-infested city, to hell with how long it would take to send someone else out there to run the race in his stead; the entire supply of vaccine would have gone with him. ...Well...it's not like I don't have a lot of experience surviving in bad situations, he eventually signed, trying to play as cool as possible and pretend he wasn't half as scared as he suddenly felt. For all the times he'd thought of himself as irrelevant, pointless, a warm body the universe could easily afford to lose...what a time to find out that today, at least, he had to be anything but. You need someone to go. I'm your man.
Good man. The Doctor's normal smile suddenly returned full force, with only a hint of buried anxiety. Now, it's going to be another four hours at least before Hame finishes the rest of the vaccine. Plenty of time for you to get some more rest.
"Oh, no thank you," the Doctor said, waving Novice Yin and her proffered foil pouch of food substitute away. "I'm not hungry. Besides, there must be other people who need that more..." Really, he just wanted to never taste that garbage again, but it seemed more tactful not to say as much out loud. It wasn't like they were feeding him such awful stuff just to be cruel, but one more taste of it and it was all likely to come back up, and that would just be a terrible waste. Besides, it wasn't like any of them had nothing better to do, especially him.
Well, wasn't that just an irresponsibly insecure password to put on the hospital security monitors? Well, password scrambler code, really, but so primitive it couldn't come up with more than a dozen different passwords, and probably only changed them once every few hours, in a downright criminally predictable pattern...any John or Jane Q. Public out there probably had a personal scrambler more secure than that, and not the one they used for the important things. And they probably kept it more updated, too; when had this scrambler code last been changed? No matter; he wasn't here to critique their digital security system, he was here to crack into it. And they had made that almost distressingly easy.
All right, there it was. He was in. There was an entire long list of video monitors he could select to view, enough to cover the entire hospital...he selected one at random, and wound up looking at some empty hallway somewhere. Well, "empty" if you ignored the blood smeared all over the place. Where exactly in the hospital was it? Where was the rage victim - or were the rage victims - responsible for this bloodshed? It looked like whoever it was had gone from room to room murdering whoever they found inside...which, he supposed, wasn't really unlikely. A few camera fields down, at the end of the trail of blood, he found a body in the hallway, too still to be unconscious, smeared with blood that may or may not have been its own. At least, he reminded himself with an effort, assuming that was the rager responsible for the massacre, they weren't going to be a threat anymore... "What about the patients in the rooms beyond?" he suddenly found himself saying out loud. "They may not be infected yet, but they're in danger. Is there possibly any room -"
"No," Sister Jerrit said curtly before he could even finish his sentence; he turned around and stared at her, but the look on her face promised not the slightest wavering on that heartless pronouncement. "There's no way to guarantee that they haven't been exposed, and if one infected person ends up down here, we'll all be bloody dead. They stay where they are."
The Doctor looked around at the other leaders in the room, in hopes of finding an ally, but in vain - they all looked vaguely regretful, to be sure, or else conscientiously deaf, but no one stepped up to say "no, we should go rescue them", and he could sense there was no use trying to shame them into it. Instead, he started looking at other cameras, to see what could be seen - that one was the cafeteria, which now had what appeared to be a handful of refugees barricading themselves in it. That was the hallway in front of the cafeteria, now the scene of some ugly fights between a handful of rage victims; hopefully they wouldn't all kill each other, but he had few hopes. That was the hallway and stairs in front of the laboratory itself - still empty and blood-free, thankfully. That was the hallway leading to the emergency department, and that was the emergency department itself, now looking like a slaughterhouse. This - this was the hallway leading to the front door of the hospital, this was the front lobby itself, somehow devoid of furniture - no, it was all piled up in front of the door, so much so that it was impossible to see outside. Were there cameras on the outside of the building as well? If there were, which ones were - oh, there, this one was - "Oh, no."
"What is it?" Sister Vela asked, and all the Doctor could do was gesture at the screen as she and everyone else within earshot crowded around to look over his shoulder. The camera view was of the outside of the hospital, from a camera positioned just over the front doors, and of a growing crowd of people gathered in front of the door, struggling to get in - ragers with a grudge? Innocents looking for shelter? It was impossible to tell...and then, one person in one remote corner of the screen punched the person next to them, and it was as if a spell had been cast. A wave of violence seemed to roll slowly through the crowd, as each person was attacked and then suddenly turned on the next person in a blinding rage. Knives began to come out, and guns, and shots were being fired, and people were dying...but through the building bloodbath, a particularly determined crowd kept attacking the hospital building itself, throwing objects at the barricaded doors below the camera, and at the unseen windows on either side. "...By the goddess Santori, they're breaking in," Vela breathed, and no one else could say a word.
"...I can't send Demyx out into that," the Doctor said, feeling more than slightly ill. "I just...can't. I'll go myself." His face set itself in a grim expression as he contemplated his own chances of survival against the crowd outside - not good - but it was one thing to talk about sending Demyx into an ephermeral cloud of potential bloodthirsty rage victims somewhere in the city and another thing to see the not-so-ephemeral crowd of bloodthirsty ragers waiting outside the door. "Novice Yin, go ask Matron Hame how long it will be before the vaccine is finished. As exactly as possible. And...find me a bag or something to carry it in. Something I can sling over my shoulder would be better. Harder to drop it that way." And Demyx would stay here and help defend the laboratory and not put himself in more danger than he was already in, or better yet, Demyx would just go back to the TARDIS and wait there, because he was not losing another companion, even if he was a Meanwhile. Besides, he hadn't heard anyone knocking four times on anything. Now, how was he going to get out of the hospital without getting killed? Because he really would rather not regenerate in the middle of a crisis and then have to spend the next several hours sorting himself out and getting used to a new body when he really wouldn't have several hours to spare... "Why are they so desperate to get into the hospital anyway?" he asked the air, thinking of how his mind had been operating when he was infected - he hadn't simply been ready to kill anyone he saw just because they were there, he'd been desperate to kill Demyx specifically, and only by extension ready to kill anyone who got in his way (which his mind construed to mean everyone). "It can't be just because it's there. That's not how it works..."
"Rage isn't the only addictive drug the pharmacists sell," Vela said, her voice oddly toneless. "When they've lost all self-control...when they've robbed the pharmacists of their stocks and can't get more...where else are they going to find their drugs?"
"Right. And, um...the pharmacists mostly set up shop in the Undercity, am I right? Same place they did in New New York?" All right, he was feeling very sick indeed now. If the Undercity had been overrun first - which only made sense, if this virus was coming from tainted drugs like the Bliss virus...no, sending Demyx to run the gauntlet from the hospital into that would be like sending him from hellfire to damnation. Completely out of the question. "Where did Novice Yin get to...?"
"Doctor." That wasn't Yin's voice, that was Hame's. "The vaccine is finished. There are six vials - diluted in the vapor tanks, five should be enough to treat the entire city."
"Oh, good. So I can break one without dooming us all. That's wonderful." The Doctor turned to look over at Hame, and saw Novice Madiv leaning over to shake Demyx awake. "No - Madiv, wait -" he protested, an instant too late; Demyx was already blinking and sitting up. "You didn't need to - he's not going to - you could have let him sleep!" Oh, but too late; Demyx and Madiv were already conversing in sign language, and now Demyx was looking expectantly over at him, and this would have been so much easier if Madiv had just let him sleep. It's nothing, Demyx, he signed at him just to reinforce the point. Go back to sleep.
I don't need any more sleep and Madiv told me the vaccine is done, Demyx signed back, giving the Doctor a suspicious look. Wasn't that the entire reason you've been making me sleep so much? So I'd be totally rested up so I could run the vaccine all the way to the Undercity? Wasn't that what this -he held up the headset to demonstrate - was supposed to be for?
The Doctor shook his head very firmly, hoping to make his new position clear enough that Demyx wouldn't even try to argue. I've changed my mind. I'm not sending you out into...a war zone. It's too dangerous. You're going to stay right here where -
"Ohhhhh, you two-faced forty-mouthed...lying..." Boy, he hadn't thought Demyx would be happy to hear that, but angry enough to forget to sign was a bit of a different level... "Cheating...deceitful, backstabbing son of a bitch!"
...All right, I've done a few dodgy things in my life, but I'm not sure I deserve that right now, the Doctor signed, backing up a step or two just in case the virus really was just being dormant for a bit in Demyx's system and not actually all the way gone, while everyone around them just stared at Demyx after that outburst. I don't want you out there right now. It's too dangerous.
"How was it any less dangerous earlier?! I could have been doing something useful, and I was...I was fucking sleeping! At your insistence! And now for no damn reason!"
Demyx... All right, he was about fifteen seconds from turning around and telling the staff gathered behind him "all right, I think we should run now". ...Look. I'm not doing this just to drive you mad. I just...I really don't want to see you hurt or worse. Look, come here. Look at this. Demyx still looked like he'd rather knock one or more of his teeth out than deal with him in a civilized manner, but he did obediently come over and look at the monitor, and the camera display of the ragers still attacking the building. That's the front door of the hospital, the Doctor signed when Demyx was looking his way again. I can't in good conscience let you go out in that. I'll go.
...All right, he wasn't really sure how to interpret the look on Demyx's face, but at a guess, he would translate it to "you're an idiot". Doctor...if that's what the front door looks like that you won't let me out that way, how are you getting out of the hospital?
I'll find a way.
I have a way.
"...Oh, now that's just not fair," the Doctor protested out loud as Demyx opened a dark rift right in front of him, and (thankfully) closed it again quickly. "You can teleport. Who let you bloody teleport?"
How about you wait until I'm looking and sign that? Or better yet, just admit I got one over on you?
Demyx... Bollocks, there had to be some viable reason why Demyx shouldn't be allowed to go despite his being willing and able to teleport, had to be, because he was not letting him go out there and get himself killed. How was he going to talk him out of it...first of all, how was he going to get out of the hospital safely? There had to be other doors besides the main entrance, and they had to have security monitors, he just had to find them, and find one that wasn't being mobbed...wait, wait. The key to Demyx's teleportation was visualization, wasn't it? He could create dark rifts to place that he either remembered having been before, and could therefore visualize from memory, or to places he could actually see...that was how the video link in the tablet had given them away earlier; he'd had them as soon as he saw the hallway behind them. So logically, if he could simply see the location of the vapor tanks - not the location on the map, but the actual inside of the room they were in - there wouldn't need to be any marathon race, would there? Unless the room itself had been overrun with rage victims, he could just pop over there, pop open an access hatch, dump the vaccine in the tanks, and in twenty minutes the vaccine would have circulated through the entire city. There had to be citywide security monitors, didn't there? Probably accessible from...where, the police department? Logical as any place. Now, to access said security monitors from this terminal...
...And, as he should have expected, the NBPD system was much, much harder to hack into than the hospital system. Not that he couldn't do it; he just had to be a lot smarter about it...was there a way to - nope, that wasn't working. Stopped him cold in his tracks. Was there a way around...no, not that way. If he tried that again he'd block the entire hospital from the entire NBPD, and that would be a bad thing...what about the so-called easy way, then? Find one of their scrambler codes and then tapping the signal to see what password was beamed to whoever had the real scrambler whose code he was using? Every officer on the force couldn't be a genius when it came to inventing and remembering complicated codes...except apparently they were all too smart to resort to ABC123 and similarly obvious codes, and eight tries later, the Doctor gave up before he was blocked completely. All he could try after that was the complicated stuff - stuff that might take longer than it would take him to run an eight-mile obstacle course.
"...Demyx, it's no use," he said aloud, staring hopelessly at the screen. "You can't simply teleport yourself there without a visual, right? I can't get you a visual. I can't access the city security monitors. And without that...dark rifts aren't much help, are they?"
There was no response. Of course there wouldn't be; he was talking to a deaf man he had his back to. Demyx probably didn't know he'd said anything. The Doctor turned around to remedy that bit of stupidity, and saw Hame carefully tucking the sixth tiny bottle into an expensive-looking handbag and handing it over to Demyx, and Demyx sliding the headset on, giving him a salute, and vanishing.
"...That...two-faced, treacherous little backstabber," the Doctor said, unable to put any force behind his words. If Demyx had just teleported to the space outside the main door, he'd be ripped to shreds...quick, what had he done with the headset programming he'd worked up? Demyx had passed out minutes after they left the TARDIS, and his mind couldn't have been any too clear before that; there was no way he'd remember much of the streets outside before they reached the hospital. Where was he now? Where was he? Where was...a few taps and fingerswipes brought back the display from the headset camera, clearly showing the inside of the TARDIS, moving at speed towards the door and out into the relatively empty street.
"You clever little bastard," the Doctor said aloud, trying to force a smile as he sat down in front of the display, but he was too anxious to really pull it off. All he could do now was pull up the map for Demyx to look at, and prepare to type messages for him - and that was literally all he could do.
AN: And now shit is really about to happen.
