Chapter Nine

King's Cross

...

It was a good thing that the front door of 221B, Baker Street, was so close to the cobblestone road, because when they opened it, they found that it was pouring. It was the sort of rain that Diana sometimes referred to as a "gully-washer." The individual drops were narrow and long in their haste to get to the ground, but this was compensated by their numbers: sheer sheets of water blocked the doorway. There was no trace of the fog that had been so thickly present earlier, but it had done the streetlamps no good: they looked less visible now than they had earlier in the day.

"Someday I'm going to get enough of a glimpse of this city to see what it actually looks like," snarked Diana, bouncing her ball absent-mindedly.

There were too many of them, now, to fit into one cab; but Watson made short work of summoning a pair of them. Jake, Diana, Katie, and Owen got in one cab, while Watson, Aislynn, and Taydin got in the other.

"Other worlds, is it?" Watson said once the carriage started off, rattling down the cobblestone street.

"Well, yes," Taydin frowned thoughtfully, but nodded.

"Are you from one of these other worlds?"

Aislynn was surprised at the question, but Taydin seemed unflustered.

"Yes," he said honestly.

"And if I tell you that you are a nutter?" Watson was giving him an appraising look.

"I can prove that I am telling the truth." Taydin said.

"You are a bit of a nutter though," Aislynn teased him, her green eyes flashing with amusement.

"Behave," Taydin countered under his breath, and smiled when her hand found his.

"How will you prove you are from another world? I hope not by turning into something that will try to eat me?" Watson raised an eyebrow. He was looking skeptical.

"You don't seem to be very frightened by that possibility," Aislynn commented.

"I can take care of myself," Watson said, but his gaze was on Taydin. "So: prove it, how?"

"Does that doctor's bag of yours have a stethoscope?"

Watson looked marginally surprised but reached into his bag and pulled out an old fashioned stethoscope. It had a tube that looked as if it was made from the same substance as the rubbery ball that Diana had picked up earlier from the warehouse; the earpieces fit against the ears rather than in them, and the round chestpiece at the other end had a small gear on the stem. Watson spun this gear up, looking at Taydin expectantly.

"Well go on, then," Taydin prompted.

Watson put the earpieces over his ears and the chestpiece on Taydin's chest. A look of great surprise came over his face. In a moment, he moved the chestpiece to the other side of Taydin's chest, listening with a great intentness.

After a long moment he took the chestpiece away, the look on his face stunned, and then turned to Aislynn.

"And you?"

"If you like," she acquiesced, and he repeated his previous motions on her chest. When he took the chestpiece down he didn't speak at once, instead busying himself with carefully replacing the stethoscope in his doctor's bag.

"Are you all right?" Aislynn said, somewhat concerned.

He didn't answer immediately, but finally he looked up at them, his face pensive.

"You haven't met Holmes," he said. "You have to understand that a… an intellect like that… it only comes around once a millenia."

This seemed to Taydin a rather oblique way to respond, but Aislynn's hand tightened on his and he smiled as they both sat back to listen.

"It was Holmes that first picked up the tunnels," Watson continued. "There's a … phenomenon associated with them that I've been observing. People can't see the tunnels… it's like they don't register somehow. No one ever consciously realizes that they aren't in use. I only overcame it myself because of Holmes help."

Taydin and Aislynn looked at each other.

"Go on," prompted Taydin.

"The tunnels… circle around on themselves. If you walk into one, and go all the way through, you find yourself walking out of the same entrance you just walked into. Holmes believes… well, he believes that they're not native, not to put too fine a point on it. He believes that they predate London. He thinks that the city grew up around them and no one noticed. But he also believes that King's Cross was built in its current location because of them, that the builders were attracted to those locations without realizing it." He closed his doctor's bag with a snap and looked back up at them. "Are they your doing? Your… your people's doing?"

"No," Aislynn said. "Remember, we are looking for pieces to an artifact. We believe that those pieces are hidden here… somewhere," she finished rather awkwardly.

Watson looked at both of them.

"So, what you are telling me is you are on a…"

"Glorified scavenger hunt," Taydin joined in on the last few words, looking quite fed up with the vagaries of the world.

"However, we are familiar with the sort of psychic phenomena which you are describing," added Aislynn.

"We call it a perception filter," said Taydin.

"Oh, I don't know if we ought to class it as a true perception filter," Aislynn said thoughtfully. "Visual data is initially received, than discounted. Contrast that with a true Filter where the visual data would never be processed at all."

"Hm. Fair. Some variant, probably. Certainly in the same family."

"Just a moment," Watson interrupted. "What are you proposing to do once we arrive?"

"We can't do much of anything until we ascertain what is actually present." Aislynn pointed out. "Once we get there, we'll look around and see what's what. Then we'll determine what to do."

"Holmes ought to be there," Watson insisted.

"My dear fellow," replied Taydin, "you both ought to be there."

Watson seemed to relax a bit as the carriages came to a halt.

"Ladies first," he said, and they all stepped down from the carriage onto the curb that lead to King's Cross station.

King's Cross Station

King's Cross Station, thankfully, had permanent awnings over those portions of the cobblestone roads which it faced. This allowed cabs to drop off their fares without anyone getting wet, even in such a torrential downpour. However, the street was placed a hundred yards from the actual building, and the awnings stood only over the roadways. The sidewalks and walkways were soaked.

"Does it often rain like this?" Aislynn asked Watson as a clap of thunder punctuated her words.

"Sometimes," he said. He waved at the doors to the enormous building. The porter saw what he wanted and drew forth half a dozen umbrellas from the brass stand he had at his knee, then hurried out to them.

"Your Ladyship," said the porter, but handed an umbrella to Jake, clearly expecting that it would be Jake's job to keep the nobility dry. Jake looked highly amused, but agreeably played the role, opening the umbrella over Aislynn's head. The porter handed out other umbrellas, then looked around. "Any bags?"

"We're greeting an arrival," Taydin improvised.

"Very good, sir, this way, if you please."

221B, Baker Street, had been in an upscale area of town, and it was immediately apparent, even through the rain, that King's Cross station was similarly situated. The porter wore a clean, crisp, red uniform with black trim and polished buttons, and there were other porters at nearby stations, running about here and there. Their group certainly hadn't been the only one to need umbrellas; there was quite a bit of foot traffic with porters running out to groups with spare umbrellas, then escorting them back and replacing the umbrellas in the brass stands, once they had reached the safety of the awnings over the front doors.

The building itself was lovely. It was hard to get a clear look through the enthusiastic rainstorm, but Aislynn had the impression of crisp and efficient grounds, made appealing by the placement of decorative statues or little potted shrubs here and there. Once under the awning, there was a red carpet, well-trodden but still brightly colored.

The building itself was made of a combination of stone and glass. The large windows would let in light, and all the panes of glass made the weight of the building seem much more delicate, as if it had been designed with bits of lace, here and there. Once they had stepped inside, the big windows, which stretched across to skylights, made the building appear open and airy.

The building was full of people, rushing here and there, most of them with travelling-bags of one sort or another. In the center of the large main corridors hung signs that had been suspended from the ceiling. The signs were decorated with white wooden letters, displaying the departure and arrival times of various trains. In several spots it was possible to see porters with long poles, pulling down letters and replacing them with updated scheduling information. It was a loud place, with voices raised here and there over a constant low hum of conversation. It was cool and at the moment smelled strongly of damp wool.

Around the sides of the walkways were shops and small stands selling snacks, newspapers, flowers, and various little travelling necessities. Although they were inside, many of the carts had large canvas umbrellas, generally striped in red and white, giving the building a cheery air.

"The trains you want are over here." Watson headed down the stairs to the main floor, and they all hastened to follow him.

"This place is huge," said Diana, bouncing her ball in time with her steps, until Jake nudged her in the ribs.

"Ball!" he hissed.

"Oops." Diana put the ball in her pocket.

"It's the largest station in London," said Watson as he headed purposefully through the crowd. "One of the largest in Europe. It services both international trains and the local underground system."

"You certainly seem to know your way around," Owen joked as they followed him around twists and turns, upstairs and down. "I take it you have visited before?"

"Just a bit," Watson said, stopping suddenly. There was a large side passage in the wall, with the typical rounded-top archway, and a series of steps that led downwards. The Time Lords stopped beside Watson, studying the opening.

Jake, Diana, Owen, and Katie kept right on going past it for perhaps twenty feet. It was Diana that halted first.

"Wait," she said, tugging on Jake's hand. Katie and Owen paused as well. "We lost Watson!"

"Right here," said Watson from behind her.

Diana looked uncertain, her eyes sweeping over the area where Watson, Aislynn, and Taydin were standing, but without seeming to register their existence.

"They can't see the opening at all, can they?" Aislynn mused and Watson nodded.

"No. Neither could I at first. It took a bit before Sherlock could train me to notice it," he explained.

"Wait… what?" Diana asked, squinting at the area she could hear their voices, but still not seeing anything.

Katie rubbed her eyes as if they were hurting her. Owen and Jake were both scowling, looking back and forth in confusion.

"I've got a light in my bag," Owen said, reaching into his doctor's satchel. All four of the humans were looking back at Watson and the Time Lords, but all four of them had blank looks on their faces.

"They can't see us as long as we are standing next to the opening as well," Watson told Aislynn and Taydin in a low voice.

Aislynn shook her head, reaching for her sonic.

"It's not a perception filter… photon induction array, do you think?"

"No." Taydin was reaching for his sonic as well. "The quality of the light is wrong. Maybe something in the Beta-wave spectrolysis category..."

"Oi!" This came from Diana and was so ferocious that both Time Lords looked at her, their yet-to-be-used sonics in their hands. "We're done with this now!" She firmly took Jake's hand and closed her eyes tight. "Watson!" she called.

"Er… here," Watson called back.

Diana paced towards them, following their voices with a determined air, as Jake hastily grabbed Owen's hand, and Owen reached for Katie. She walked blindly forwards with her eyes closed and her hand out.

"Here!" Watson called again, seeing what she was doing, but looked at the Time Lords with alarm.

"Diana's patience for this sort of phenomenon has always been very limited," explained Aislynn tactfully.

"It's actually a practical workaround, though." Taydin nodded approvingly at the humans. "The field does seem to act primarily via the visual centres of the brain…"

Diana and the other humans reached the arch moments later. Aislynn reached out her hand and pulled them in.

"Well done! Quite a clever test."

Taydin began scanning with his sonic. Diana opened one eye and then hastily closed it again. By now, all of the humans had their eyes closed with expressions of mild pain on their faces.

"Would one of you do something already!" Diana scolded. "This is the suck!"

"Oh, the headaches I used to get," Watson said ruefully. "I don't envy you in the slightest." He frowned curiously at Taydin. "What is that?"

"It's a sonic screwdriver… all right, it appears to be of the forced tachyon deceleration family, and it only appears to be about seven metres wide… just enough to cover the first set of stairs. These are the stairs you were talking about, Watson?"

"Yes, these."

"I can set up a small area of distortion temporarily, it should help…" Taydin set his sonic to make an odd, low-pitched, oscillating hum. The faces of the humans relaxed at once.

"Oh!" Katie exclaimed when she opened her eyes. "Where did these stairs come from? Did you see these, Owen?"

"No." Owen shook his head.

"Me neither," said Jake.

"Is it the sound that fixes it?" Diana asked Taydin.

"I'm using the sonic to disrupt the tachyon interference in a small area. The sound is only a byproduct," replied Taydin. "Everyone stick close."

The stairs looked different from the rest of the building. They had the appearance of being much older, and cracked in places. Their polish had long since worn off, but at one time they appeared to have been so heavily trafficked that the stone had worn very smooth in the middle. The sounds from King's Cross dropped off at once, as if an invisible curtain had been drawn over the entrance to the stairs.

When they reached the first landing, all of the humans slumped in relief.

"Oh, much better!" Katie breathed. Taydin nodded and turned off his sonic.

"That's quite the trick." Jake turned and looked briefly back up the stairs the way they had come.

"Why weren't you two affected?" Watson asked, looking from Taydin to Aislynn and back again.

"We're Time Lords," explained Aislynn. "We're not immune to such effects, but we are highly resistant."

"How far do these stairs go, Watson?" Jake asked.

"Just another flight," Watson responded.

The stairs made a 180 degree turn and did indeed go down another flight.

At the bottom of the stairs was a train platform. Unlike the busy station above, the platform was entirely deserted. It's flickering gas-lamps, echoing size, and still atmosphere, gave it the air that it hadn't been used in living memory. Still, it was neat and clean; no dust hung in the air, and there were no cobwebs to be seen. In the middle of the platform was a sign, just like the signs in King's Cross proper. No departures were listed, but under the "arrival" section of the board appeared the names of several incoming trains:

RETRIEVED: CETI EMERGENCY TRANSPORT - STATUS: IN TRANSIT

IN TRANSIT: (Symbol)

IN TRANSIT: (Symbol)

IN TRANSIT: (Symbol)

IN TRANSIT: (Symbol)

IN TRANSIT: (Symbol)

The symbols were recognizable as the same symbols that had been written upon the note from the Lady Professor.

Beyond the platform itself, four tunnels led off into the brick walls, two on the left and two on the right. Train tracks ran between the tunnels but the tracks also appeared to be unused.

Jake whistled.

"No wonder Holmes was intrigued."

The others had fanned out to various edges of the platform, looking around.

"It doesn't look like it has been used in a long time," Owen peered down at the tunnels.

"It's very well preserved though," added Katie. "No dust, not really any mud to speak of…"

"Watson?" asked Diana.

Watson was staring at the sign with his mouth open and they all turned to face him.

"There are arrivals listed!" he said in shock. "That sign was blank before; it's been blank ever since the day that Holmes found this place. I've got to text him…" He reached for his clockwork tablet.

Something… happened.

The bricks all skittered sideways like broken teeth; the cement of the platform went ashen and brittle; the flickering gaslight withered and died, leaving them in the deep and implacable darkness.

It wasn't a color that flashed from deep within one of the railway tunnels.; it wasn't a light. It wasn't a sound that accompanied these phenomena. Yet the eyes and ears had no other way to process the wrongness that fell upon them; that weird flickering of un-light and un-color; that impossible vibration of the eardrums that was un-sound. The Turn of the World that turned neither left nor right, but inside-out and upside-down.

The humans shuddered. Watson dropped his pad, uselessly putting his hands over his ears. Katie made a strangled noise and Owen staggered like a drunkard trying to reach her. Jake made his own strangled noise, trying to say something, but speech was ill-fitted to un-sound. Diana managed to steady herself by putting a hand on the shivering wall.

Aislynn and Taydin reacted the most strongly. Aislynn dropped to her knees. Taydin tried to break her fall with his arm, but missed, succeeding only in toppling himself.

It might have been a few moments, or a hundred years, before the effect eased. The gaslight crept back to its spots, and flickered in a timid way, as if ashamed of itself for deserting its post. The bricks, all back in their proper places, clustered together nervously, and the cement, having retreated in terror, exhibited its thick, tough shell to the world.

Owen reached Katie's side.

"Katie!"

"No, I'm all right, I'm all right," she told him, although she looked shaky and pale.

"Angel?" said Jake, but Diana, always the quickest on the recovery, was working her way back to her feet.

"I'm fine," Diana said. She looked shaky too, but the shakiness was already leaving her. "Watson? Lady A?"

Watson's face was tinged with gray, but he had gone into full-doctor mode for Taydin, who was trying very unsteadily to get to his feet. Diana saw Aislynn also struggling, and hastened to her side. It was a sign of Taydin's uncertainty that he hadn't already gone to Aislynn.

"No, no, I am perfectly fine," Aislynn told Diana, but gratefully accepted her arm.

"The effect is passing," chimed in Taydin. Once Watson had helped him to find his feet, he did look much better "Aislynn?"

"I'm all right," Aislynn, too, looked better once Diana had helped her regain her balance. "I was only disoriented for a moment."

"What was that?" Katie gasped.

Watson frowned and knelt down. He had dropped the tablet he had used to text Holmes earlier, and it had broken. Several of the thumb-sized "sending text" gears had come off of the bottom and rolled around.

"Pinpoint palisade micro-flux?" Taydin looked at Aislynn.

"I should think so, yes." Aislynn's grim expression was matched by Taydin's own.

Owen cleared his throat.

"You know, unless Watson's educational career has taken a drastically different path than ours, they don't teach classes about pinpoint palisade micro-fluxes in med school." His voice was particularly dry, as he crossed his arms.

"We spoke earlier about barrier collapses," Aislynn began and Diana turned on Katie.

"I thought you had an alarm clock for that!"

"I do," Katie said. She produced the travelling-clock, still ticking merrily, without a sign of an alarm.

Taydin shook his head.

"A pinpoint palisade micro-flux is not an interdimensional barrier collapse," he hastened to reassure his colleagues.

"It is, however, a structural weakening, and it's a bad sign," Aislynn added. "I felt the same phenomenon earlier on Threadneedle street." She looked at Taydin significantly.

"As did I, but I was much further away at the time."

Jake frowned at them both.

"What do you mean by 'structural weakening'?"

"If you take a soft wire, and constantly bend it back and forth," Taydin said, "it will eventually snap due to metal fatigue. But before it snaps, there are definite signs that the wire is weakening. The stress point becomes brittle and may become hot. There's an obvious difference in the amount of resistance encountered for each individual bending cycle. Moving that general analogy to the level of containment barriers, pinpoint palisade fluxes are generated for the same basic reasons."

Watson had gathered the fallen gears and replaced them on their spindle. He was holding them in place with one hand and spinning them with the other.

"Come on, come on, you need to be here," he was mumbling under his breath.

"So… we think the London barrier is failing?"

"It's certainly under stress. But it's more complicated than that…" Taydin began.

"Hey!" Diana interrupted, pointing. "The sign has changed! Look at the sign!"

They turned and looked. The first entry on the sign had indeed changed. It now read:

RETRIEVED: CETI EMERGENCY TRANSPORT - STATUS: ARRIVED

"What does it mean, arrived?" Owen snarked. "There's no…" but his voice trailed away, and it was obvious what had interrupted him: the sound of a train.

Watson looked up with round eyes. The undamaged "receiving" gears on the top of his tablet began spinning clumsily, but he had forgotten all about the tablet he still held in his hands.

It was indeed the chuffing sound of a train, and it was getting closer by the moment. In the big empty platform, it seemed loud and echoing, but hollow somehow.

Diana moved to the railing with Jake.

"You two stay back until we make sure it's safe," Diana told the Time Lords.

"We can take care of ourselves, you know," Aislynn said, looking very amused.

"We know," Jake said, patting Diana's hand as Katie, Owen, and Watson all came up to the railings too.

Aislynn and Taydin looked at each other as they also moved to the railings.

"Emergency transport," said Taydin.

"Must have been in transit when the system shut down," agreed Aislynn.

The train pulled into the station.

Its basic form was that of the typical train of this age of clockwork and gears: a stout metal engine, pulling a number of cars also made of metal, but panelled in brass and mahogany. The trains above had the same basic form, crisp and polished and handsome; but this train, it was instantly clear, had not fared well. The mahogany was gray and cracked, the brass tarnished, the windows frosted with age. More worrisome, though, were signs of obvious combat; scorch marks were common, and there were places where there were holes in wood and brass. Although no window was shattered, many were cracked.

Even beyond this, there was a disturbing air about it that was impossible to pinpoint exactly. It seemed to be almost out of focus, and the grain of the wood hinted at patterns of uncolor that unsettled the eye. Its very shadow seemed to be twisted somehow, distorted into something that ought not to be attached to the cold, unfeeling wheels. It rolled into place with a hiss of steam and a sound that might have been a bell, once upon a time. As if in response, the forgotten tablet in Watson's hand spun its dials ever more frantically, its tiny clicking drowned out in clouds of steam, but Watson was too distracted to look at the incoming messages.

"Oh, God." Katie breathed.

Now completely stopped, the train lowered itself a few inches, as if it was a beast settling on its haunches after a long and wearying journey. There was a long, tension-soaked silence.

Then everyone had to jump aside, Time Lords and humans alike, as the doors creakily slid open, dumping upon the platform an avalanche of old, grayish cubes.