Chapter Eight
I woke up, drenched in sweat, my hospital gown and bed sheets clinging to me. For a moment, I had no idea where I was: a dimly lit room, a lemony, timbery smell in my nostrils. And then it came back to me—everything.
"How are you feeling?"
I jumped as Martha appeared out of the gloom, peering at me worriedly.
"Where's Tegan?" I asked. "And where's the Doctor?"
"Dr. Hashmi? I'm not sure."
"Martha, I meant—"
She looked away. "I know what you meant. I just… truthfully, I don't know that either. You know him… keeps running off. Tegan's with him."
"We should find them," I said.
Martha glanced into the air above me, and I followed her gaze to see some sort of display screen hanging over my head, showing an augmented view of my body with numerous winking lights and flickering patches on it. "How am I?" I ventured.
Martha smiled cautiously. "He was right again. We pumped you full of every antihistamine and epinephrine analogue this place has, and it seems to have done the trick. We've damped down your body's allergic reaction to whatever's inside you."
I let out a sigh and gripped the edge of the sheets, but Martha put her hand on mine before I could throw them off. I guessed that she'd taken the restraints off me—probably without Dr. Hashmi's permission—as soon as she'd seen I was no longer dangerous.
"I want to find them too," she said, "but Dr. Hashmi and I think you should have a bit more rest. Your body's very weak—we've had to feed you intravenously."
I noticed the tube taped to the back of my wrist. "Get it off," I said.
Martha looked at me, then over her shoulder. "Dr. Hashmi will be back in ten minutes."
"So? We'll be gone in two. Just get me real clothes."
Martha pursed her lips. I smiled. And she grinned back. "All right."
Two minutes later, the IV tube out of my hand with a wince, I was out of bed, clothed, and feeling decidedly wobbly.
"If I were back at Royal Hope and my patients behaved like this, the staff would have screamed blue murder," Martha muttered.
"This is different," I protested.
Keeping her ears and eyes out for the staff, Martha had padded to the far end of the ward and found a locker containing my clothes, washed but slightly tatty. While I tore into them, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror above the hand basin: I looked tired, drawn, and had huge bags under my eyes. I'd lost some weight, and not in a good way. My hair, unfashionable at the best of times, was lank and flopping over my forehead. I half-heartedly pushed it back, but it just dropped down again.
"Time for that later," I said aloud. At least Martha had found my Converse—muddy purple instead of clean, but actually not too smelly. "The things I do…"
Checking again to make sure no one had seen us, Martha and I headed out into the night. The twilight was falling, but the air was pleasantly cool after the afternoon shower, and everything smelled of summer and holidays abroad.
We slipped out of the hospital and found ourselves in the middle of some sort of town square, paved with huge, flat sheets of what looked like shiny concrete. I was bordered by low, wooden buildings, and I remembered the view I'd had from the hospital earlier in the day. There were few people about and no one who bothered about us.
I tried to remember where the Doctor would be. And I did. Oh, crap. I really don't want to see this, do I? I realized. This is cosmic revenge that we were too late for "42"…
"Think it through," Martha told herself aloud. "Where would he be? It was something important to keep him away from us. He said he had to find out something…"
"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," I suggested.
"No way you're backing out now," Martha said.
"Look!" I said, pointing to moving shadows at the base of one of the buildings, glad for a distraction. "Otters!"
"There are dozens of them," Martha whispered. "Okay, now we really need the Doctor."
I was about to say that what we really needed to do was warn everyone. Pallister would be holding that meeting with the Council, panicking about the Doctor's adjudicator story. But I stopped to wonder if that would be too much fiddling with previously established events, and Martha was hauling me up wooden steps and straight through the double doors of a building. Standing in a small reception room, talking to a small, red-haired woman behind a curved desk, was Sam Hashmi.
We four stared at each other for awhile.
"Where is he?" Martha snapped, taking charge. Good ole Martha.
"Martha, what are you doing with Grace?" he said.
She ignored him, pushing him away from me. Another set of double doors was straight ahead of us. "Come on," she said, marching.
"You can't go in there," Sam called, and I was inclined to agree, but Martha would have ignored me too. We raced through the doors, letting them flap back in his face.
"Grace! Martha!" he called. "You can't—"
He broke off as we reached a door on our left, a circular glass porthole set in it. I almost skidded into Martha as she halted and pressed her palms against the door.
Martha swore hoarsely, shaking her head. "No, no…"
I closed my eyes briefly and pushed open the doors, stepping into the room. Almost in a trance, Martha came in behind me.
Almost immediately someone called my name and enveloped me in a hug. I held on tight, feeling tears stinging my eyes. "Tegan, it is so good to see you," I croaked. "We haven't talked since the TARDIS—"
"It's been forever! Are you okay now?"
"Yeah, I think I am. I know I am. That's a thing I have to tell you—I know—"
Martha pulled us apart. "Tegan, what's going on?" She pointed shakily toward the bed in the room, lit by a single spotlight from above. Tegan and I parted almost magically as Martha approached. The patient on the bed thrashed about, growling like an animal and grunting horribly, strapped down at the wrists and ankles.
That was the worst part, the straps. It was a million times worse in person, unbearable to see him of all people shackled.
"Oh, Doctor," Martha moaned.
At the sound of her voice, the Doctor threw his head up, his pale, sweaty face shining like a full moon in the light. His teeth were bared and his lips were wet with saliva, dripping down his chin onto his shirt.
"I take it back," I whispered to Tegan. "It's worse than '42.'"
The Doctor's eyes flashed open—they were totally dark. A green-black sheen swirled across them like oil, rainbow patterns reflecting back from the lamp.
"You," he grunted, more spittle flying from his lips. "All of you. Will… be… ME!"
"What have you done?" cried Martha, raising a hand toward the Doctor as he continued to growl and snarl. The bed rattled as he tugged at the wrist straps. He stared at us with those dead, dark eyes and something pulled his lips into a vicious parody of a smile.
"He wanted to do it," said Tegan.
"Do what?" Martha asked.
"He said it was the only way," said Tegan, clutching my hand. I squeezed back and reached out to take Martha's hand, but she pushed it away angrily, unable to tear her eyes off him. He suddenly collapsed back on the bed, moaning gently as his eyelids closed.
"The only way to what? He's let that thing touch him, hasn't he?"
No one had to clarify the "thing."
"No," said Tegan firmly, causing Martha to look at her properly. "No, he hasn't. He had us inject him with the same proteins and RNA that the 'thing' injected into Grace."
"What? You're mad!" Martha spat. She shot a glare at me, not as if she thought it was my fault, but because she wanted me to back her up.
I had known it was coming, and I didn't want to blow up in Tegan's face, but that didn't make it better. "That thing has been in me, and you saw it, saw what it did to me. Why would you just let him?"
"Do you really think I could've stopped him?" Tegan snapped. I saw in her eyes that she hated this as much as I did. "Ty already bailed on him. I wasn't about to."
Now that I look back on it, I probably should have asked who Ty was, but I was preoccupied.
The Doctor growled and hissed again, his eyes flashing darkly as if they had the power to devour them all. Martha's shoulders sagged and she stared at him pinned out on the bed like a live lab rat about to be dissected.
That was a terrible mental picture.
"His body's fighting it," Tegan said gently.
Martha rounded on her, riled by her calm and reasonable tone of voice. "And what if it doesn't?"
"Hers did," Tegan pointed out, looking at me.
"He's not like me," I said, and faltered. I couldn't remember how much he'd told us about his not being human. Had the Doctor had actually mentioned it since we had joined him, or could this piece of knowledge would get us into trouble?
Martha looked back at the Doctor, as if drawing a comparison. I looked back at the bed, too. The same thing that happened to me was happening to the Doctor. I knew that he was strong, I knew he wasn't human, I knew how it would turn out—but what if something went wrong? Tegan and I—well, mostly me—had already changed things.
"Grace, Tegan," Martha said in a very serious voice, looking at a display panel hanging above the Doctor, much like the one that had been over my own bed. "How much has he told you about himself—the Doctor? Because you're right; he's not like you."
Tegan managed a smile. "Oh, that." She gestured to the display panel Martha had been looking at. It showed the pale blue outline of a body, numerous patches of color and flashing dots around it and on it. And pulsing on the chest there were two reddish circles, one over each lung. They flashed alternately.
"I figured it out. He has two hearts," Tegan said a little too cheerfully. "Grace, isn't that awesome?"
"I was wondering about the pattern they beat in," Martha agreed, looking as if she was trying not to look as if we were frantically thinking of what to say.
Suddenly there was a scream from the reception area and a loud, indecipherable shout. The doors slammed open and the red-haired receptionist rushed in, her face pale.
"They're out there—in reception," she stammered. "Otters."
Martha and I exchanged glances. Her guilty look instructed me not to say, "I told you so!"
"Lock the door!" Tegan shouted, remarkably quick-thinking. "Block it with something!"
Martha rushed to the double doors and grabbed the handles just as they began to shake and rattle. Tegan ran to help, and I brought over a drip stand and pushed it through the handles, barring the door.
"Where else could they get in?" Martha demanded. "Quick! C'mon!"
I glanced through a door at the far side of the Doctor's bed and darted over to shut and lock it.
"That's it?" said Martha, scanning the room. There were just the two doors—and a window, with heavy wooden shutters already closed.
I gave a start as the double doors, still barred, began to rattle ominously. I suddenly wondered where Ty was, but I couldn't ask because I hadn't even met her, and had only heard her name once.
"What do they want? Why are they acting like this? They're supposed to be harmless," Martha asked.
"Remember the proteins," Tegan explained to us. "From the slime-things. They make them more aggressive."
"Like they changed Grace and the Doctor," Martha observed.
We glanced at him again. He seemed to be sleeping, although his eyes flickered and darted about under his eyelids and his hands clenched and unclenched.
"What about everyone else?" the redheaded receptionist said, her voice tiny and scared.
"If they've any sense," Martha said, "they'll have barricaded themselves in." She paused. "Do we have any weapons? Guns, anything like that?"
"We're in a biology laboratory," I said drearily.
"Drugs, then—tranquillizers."
Tegan's eyes lit up. "I remember tranquillizers back at the zoo lab."
"We'd need to get past the otters to get to them," Martha said, pressing her lips firmly together.
Props to Tegan. "Wait!" she said suddenly, rushing over to the side of the Doctor's bed where his jacket was draped over a chair. She rooted about in the pockets and finally produced the sonic screwdriver. "He used it to keep them back when we were attacked earlier."
Martha gave me a look that said, "Just because you were out cold I had to miss all of these adventures he had with another woman."
"Good," she said aloud, snatching the screwdriver from Tegan. "What setting did he have it on?"
"Well, no one's used it since then," Tegan said thoughtfully. "We can just hope it's been left on the same one."
Martha advanced toward the door, the sonic screwdriver held out gingerly in front of her.
"You can't go out there on your own," Tegan said.
"She won't be on her own," I said. "I'm going with her." I tried not to give time to protest. "You look after the Doctor."
Tegan looked as if she was going to argue, but then she said, "Yeah. I guess I'd like to stay with him."
I took one end of the drip stand. It rattled as the otters battered against the door, and I could hear scratching sounds. "On three," Martha said in a low voice. "One… two… three!"
Martha pressed the button as she reached two, and the tip of the screwdriver lit up with its reassuring blue glow. A high-pitched, teeth-irritating whine filled the room and the sound of scrabbling abruptly ceased.
On three, I slid back the stand that held the doors shut. No otters rushed in. Martha and I stepped forward, Martha holding the screwdriver out in front of her, and we pushed out the door.
"Take care of him," Martha said over her shoulder to Tegan. "I'm trusting you, yeah?"
"You can," Tegan replied as if Martha's words had been a challenge.
"Which one's the zoo lab?" I asked.
"Back to the square and then diagonally across to the right. The light'll be on and there's a sign by the door. The tranquillizers are in the white cabinet in the corner. There'll be a tranquillizer gun with them."
With tight smiles, Martha and I stepped into the corridor, the screwdriver lighting our way.
,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
The receptionist and I barricaded the door the moment Martha and Grace had gone, and I dropped heavily into the chair by the Doctor's bed. I picked up a cloth from the table and wiped his sweaty forehead. In his sleep, he gave a guttural moan and his lips formed into a toothy sneer.
"They've got guts," the receptionist said. "I'll give them that. I can see why you're… such good friends."
"Actually," I said slowly, "Grace and the Doctor aren't really good friends. Neither am I. We're new. I think we annoy him more than anything. You see, he didn't exactly invite us along… We just hopped in."
I shook my head and squeezed the Doctor's hand. "And I keep wondering why he would do this if that's true. It's for Grace, right?"
The receptionist was staring at me blankly.
"But it's what he does," I said lamely. "Even if it kills him… but it won't." There were a whole lot of episodes ahead.
"Hello," interrupted the receptionist thoughtfully, staring up at the screen above the bed. "Look at that."
I looked. "What's happening?"
"His temperature's dropping. And his…" The receptionist frowned. "Well, whatever he has in his blood that are doing the job of the white blood cells. The count's falling like crazy."
"Is that bad or go—" I cut myself off with a little yelp as the Doctor's hand suddenly gripped mine painfully, crushing my fingers. His eyes flicked open, dark like pools of tar. A cruel smile crossed his face again.
"So much need," he hissed. "So much…" He paused and stared directly into my eyes, glaring. I couldn't move. I couldn't even breathe. "So bright."
And then his eyes snapped shut and he sagged back onto the bed.
"What was that?" the receptionist asked as she checked the Doctor's readings again.
I shook my head to clear it and breathed deeply in an effort to slow my heart rate. "I don't - I don't know. So much of what's happened the last day or so is beyond me. Like, for example, what's he playing at?"
"Who's in there?" shouted someone, banging and hammering on the door.
The receptionist rushed to the door, her face pale. "Who's that?"
"Henig," came a gruff voice. "Henig Olssen."
"Where are the otters?" I asked.
"They've gone," Henig said.
The receptionist slid the pole out of the door handles. In rushed Henig with a couple of the other settlers, armed with spades. Like that's gonna do much good, I thought.
"Everyone's gathering in the square—c'mon."
"I'm not leaving him," I said, glancing at the Doctor.
"Go on," one man urged gently. "I'll keep an eye on him. He'll be fine now."
I reluctantly gave in with a sigh. "Okay. But only because Grace is out there!"
He looked blankly at me.
I sighed and followed Henig and the receptionist out into the crisp night air. The orange-lit square was filling with people—crying and shaking people.
"What's happened?" I asked, looking at Henig in fear.
The receptionist ran off and was swallowed by the crowd. Henig's eyes were large, haunted. "It's like the flood all over again."
No one seemed to know what had happened, although one thing was very quickly clear. Twenty-two people had completely and utterly vanished.
And Ty Benson, Grace Anscombe, and Martha Jones were among them.
