A/N: Hey, guys – sorry about another long update. Depression is a b$*&h, what else can I say? Hopefully I should be able to have this story finished before my birthday – March 24th! – so keep an eye on this one!
Chapter Eight
Despite his best efforts of restraint, the Doctor's bravado slipped momentarily from the news, his face visibly blanching. "The…the Braxlavax? No," he struggled down a gulp, "no, you can't be; your entire race was outlawed. You… you were all hunted down and wiped-out! You were eradicated!"
"Evidently not," sneered Isis (or whatever she was, Martha thought uneasily), "for here we stand before you."
"Doctor?"
That one word was question enough and, scowling gaze never leaving the 'gods' for a second, the Doctor answered her, "The Braxlavax, Martha, were – are – a race universally condemned for their choice in business ventures. They're black-market terrformers, illegal estate agents with the power and technology to alter entire worlds they have no claim to, all to meet their clients' needs, no matter the cost in native lives – sentient or not. Whatever their plans for Earth, I'm betting it doesn't include the preservation of the human race…"
"Of course not," the Hem netjer snorted derisively. "You can hardly expect us to present this planet to its new inhabitants when its current infestation has not been dealt with. The disgusting human plague will drown as the waters of their world rises up to claim it completely, a perfect habitat for its new inheritors."
"You're crazy!" Martha exclaimed. "You're talking about genocide – and you're actually working with these monsters!"
"It's not exactly genocide, Martha," the Doctor corrected her grimly as he inhaled deeply through his nose, "not if he's not human."
The Hem netjer smiled in cold surprise, cocking his head to one side as if regarding the Doctor in a new light. Martha turned to the Time Lord, mouth hanging open in bewilderment. The Doctor went on.
"The Braxlavax are chameleoids, shapes-shifters who can take on any form they wish for a few hours at a time. After that, their energy wanes and they have trouble controlling their abilities, turning into petrified stone – their species' version of death. To maintain their energy whilst not in their original states, they must consume…" he trailed off, a faint light clicking on behind his eyes. "Ah."
"'Ah'? 'Ah' what? Consume what, Doctor?"
"Flesh, Martha – they're ruthless carnivores. Which would explain the blood in the temple," he grimaced, "a light snack, was it?"
"Merely a bothersome priest who didn't know his place," Isis hissed, licking her lips at the memory. "But, I digress! It seems you've been building quite the list of suspicions against us."
"I'm a suspicious guy," the Doctor retorted sharply. "Comes from experience."
"I'm sure," she mused, her eyes narrowed with cold calculation. "But I wonder if it would surprise you if I were to reveal that I've had my suspicions about you from the start, also? All this talk of Daleks and Cybermen, invocation of the Shadow Proclamation and, oh, so much knowledge about my own people! Could you truly be? Are you really him?" the Doctor said nothing, simply choosing to glower coldly into her eyes. "We thought nothing of it at first, of course; an urban legend, passed from planet to planet, race to race. A legend of a man, a formidable doctor who was renown for intervening in any hostile acts against this pathetic, primitive planet. Our clients warned us to be wary of your possible arrival, in fact, of your meddlesome interference… but we simply dismissed these cautions silently, thinking them as nothing more than the worried machinations of a lesser species…
"But, here we are, poised to wipe out all life above the water from the face of this planet… and here you are, Doctor, to stop us. The determination and dedication of a Time Lord truly is remarkable."
The Doctor's jaw clenched. "Well, he growled, "that's everything out in the open… or almost everything – who exactly are your clients? I want to know who to go after once I'm done with you."
"You may well know them, Doctor," Isis smiled again, taking dark glee in the effect her words had had on her captive, and showing no signs of feeling intimidated by his threats. "Or maybe you will get to know them; my people were never given the chance to understand the fundamentals of time travel."
"Can you guess why?" he snapped back. "If given the knowledge of time travel, your race could go back to any time they desired – wipe out any race before it truly began! Just like you're trying to do here…"
"Just like we will do here, Doctor!" vowed Anubis, jagged teeth bared.
"But that is besides the point," Isis held up her hand for silence before continuing. "You asked who our clients are? Very well, although the information will do you little good. Our clients," she repeated, speaking each word with cold calculation, "are the Zygons."
Martha only had to see the look of terrified amazement in his eyes to know that this was bad news to the Doctor, that this was a terrible, unholy alliance, and that a lesser-man would have crumbled under all the successive revelations. But her Time Lord friend was the strongest man she had ever met, and he quickly composed himself once again.
"The Zygons?" he seethed in disbelief. "Why? Their homeworld is still intact now, it doesn't get destroyed for centuries. Why seek refuge now?"
"Who said anything about refuge, Doctor? The Zygons are expanding their empire – although I'm sure they'd be devastated to hear of the impending doom of their homeworld," mused Isis, reaching into the folds of her shawl. "No, they are claiming this world, a perfect hatching pool, and they will do so with our help… and with this."
With that, her hand withdrew from her shawl, clutching a small, misshapen metallic box with a single flashing violet light. Astoundingly, the Doctor responded by reaching into his own suite-jacket, quickly fishing out his sonic screwdriver before any of the five Braxlavax could move to stop him.
"Relax, it's just a simple scanner," he lied and, after an uneasy moment's silence, the other four visibly relaxed around Isis.
They fell for it, Martha felt like shouting with relieved joy. Obviously, the Braxlavax hadn't had a chance to explore or recognise sonic technology, either. Risky bluff, Doctor – I just hope you get it to pay off.
Pushing his glasses up on his nose, the Doctor pointed the sonic screwdriver at the strange little device and pressed a button. The Braxlavax tensed at the sudden high-pitched squeal and pinpoint of blue light. "Relax," he reassured them, maintaining his façade of innocence, "it's completely harmless, entirely for diagnostics… in fact, right now it's telling me that that's a compact transmutation augmenter, capable of replicating the hydrogen-hydrogen-oxygen molecule an infinitesimal number of times at any give time. Now, if memory serves me correctly, the Zygons are well-known for their patience, and that device alone would take decades to flood the Earth. Which means," he added, sweeping the screwdriver around the stone-hewn room for some sign, "that you must have an amplifier nearby, set to pump enough power into that baby to complete a century's worth of conversion and replication in a matter of seconds, but where? I'm getting faint readings from everywhere, almost as if I'm reading the energy's reverberations… oh, no."
The sonic screwdriver arced slowly upwards, the squeal instantly rising to a teeth-gritting shrillness. He held it there, shouting over the ringing. "Energy readings are off the scale! I take it that's your mothership up there?" he flicked off the sonic device so he could be better heard, "Man, you must have every unnecessary system switched off to reroute power to the amplifier! Wow," he murmured just low enough for Martha to pick-up, "could I have possibly sounded any more Star Trek just then?"
"Probably," Martha smirked, "but don't let that stop your prognosis, Mr. Spock… erm, actually, do let me stop you: what's a…a transmit… transmutation augmenter?"
The Doctor looked at her in mild surprise, almost as if he'd honestly not expect this, but Martha shrugged unashamedly; it didn't matter how long she travelled with him, she'd decided with heavy resignation early on that there would always be some things new and strange to her, and that this was one of them.
"Well," after a moment's awkward silence the Doctor pocketed the sonic screwdriver, "imagine water molecules are, ahh, like popcorn kernels. Yeah, lots and lots of un-popped popcorn kernels, all tightly packed together. Until, that is, the transmutation augmenter comes along like a microwave and zaps those popcorny molecules, which all… well, pop. An' get bigger. A lot, lot bigger… Okay, so we're not talking about enlarged water molecules, but hopefully you get the picture. When that baby gets the jolt the amplifier's set to give it, there'll be a lot more water around than is reasonably sane."
"So… it will copy and paste the Earth's water over and over again?"
He looked at her again, a lopsided grin tracing his lips. "Exactly – and a great analogy, too! Better than mine, at any rate… but no, it won't, because I won't let it."
"Oh, Doctor… confident and defiant to the last – there is nothing you can do. In a few seconds the river's inundation will begin, signalling the end of the human race and all they have struggled to create. All will be submerged, and all will drown – including you and your companion." Isis glowed with sinister glee.
"And you, too," the Doctor retorted, "or weren't you aware?" he added at the sight of the false goddess' mouth dropping an inch. "Oh, sorry, didn't I mention that? When I said every unnecessary system onboard your ship has been deactivated to divert power to the amplifier, that just happens to includes the matter-transportation system. Seems your superiors deemed you expendable, Isis… you're stuck here, and unwitting suicide-squad. But that can all change."
"You're suggesting an ultimatum?" seethed Isis, more angry at this sudden revelation of betrayal than at the Doctor himself, her looks taking an even more venomous tint as he fate dawned on her.
"A choice," he corrected softly. "You know that if you activate that device now, you're all dead. Give it up to me, and I can help you; I can take you and the Zygons to a suitable planet that has no sentient life. They're happy, you get paid, and you get to live. You turn that on," he gestured towards the innocent-looking lump of machinery, "and that chance is thrown away, and I'll stop you."
"I'd very much like to see you try."
"That's a 'no', then?" growled the Doctor.
"No, Doctor," Isis sneered, the knuckle of her thumb whitening as it pressed down hard on the augmenter's single button. "This is."
End of Chapter Eight.