10 - The Beast in the Darkness
"That's the third time this week someone's come knocking on my door. I swear I'm becoming Little Miss Popular 'round here." Lilith turned to her computer screen, pushing aside various schemata and technical papers to bring up her appointment book. "Clear for the next month at least, so what gives?" Returning to her ongoing work, she squinted at a finer point on one of the diagrams for a few long moments before sighing frustratedly and transferring it to the wall behind her for clarity in examination. The knock sounded once more, breaking the Curator's concentration, and she glared over her shoulder at the door as if her current irritation were all its fault. "Who is it?"
"It's Caretaker Marius, ma'am," came the polite reply, and Lilith made a sour face at hearing the honorific. Young one, sounds like, she thought as she enlarged the portion of the diagram that had been giving her trouble. Name doesn't ring a bell... "I'm from the Human Office, representing the Krop Tor Sanctuary Base."
Something about the name triggered a flash of recall and Lilith glanced to an auxiliary readout that had been given a permanent place on the otherwise blank wall. "Krop Tor, the Bitter Pill..." A dry smile. "Come on in, Mister Marius. I've been expecting you."
The door opened, revealing a young man who was as unremarkable and pleasant to look at as a fresh patch of cement, and there was a roughness to his gait that betrayed his unease with the form. Lilith gave him grudging marks for taste in attire, from a meticulously-kept dark suit and coordinating tie to the thin wire-framed spectacles balanced on his nose like an afterthought. He stopped a few steps away from the desk, glancing around at the rat's nest of supply crates and crumpled papers that barricaded the Curator from any unwanted visitors, then blinked when he saw the schematic projected on the wall. "My apologies, Curator. Am I interrupting something important?"
"No, not at all. I would tell you to take a seat, but it seems they're all occupied at the moment. I've gotten a bit behind in the housekeeping as of late. Welcome to the Time Lord Office, Marius – what can I do for you?"
Even as she asked this, Lilith slid a pair of industrial goggles from their temporary perch on the top of her head to cover her eyes once more, focusing again on the device in front of her while waiting for her visitor to answer. Marius blinked again, briefly wondering if this casual brush-off could be considered normal behavior before asking, "How did you know I'd be coming here?"
Lilith disengaged two sections of wiring with a delicate pair of tweezers, adding the wiring to a growing pile of discarded parts. Fully aware that she left her visitor in awkward silence while she worked, she concentrated next on properly integrating one of the newly added components. "See that screen behind me? I keep my client's location and status displayed on it to answer the first question on most visitors' minds when they walk in. Never mind how I'm doing or what I'm up to – they always want to know about the Doctor. Doctor this, Doctor that – " she frowned briefly as she nudged the last of a series of connectors into place " – but never mind me, I just answer the phones... It's a living, though, and it never gets boring. If there's an impossible situation, he's right there to raise Hell with a wink and a smile. Krop Tor is perfect for him... therefore I was able to infer that once he'd arrived you'd be here with either a list of questions or a damage report. Which is it, my young friend?"
Marius couldn't help a burst of laughter at the Curator's forthright assessment, briefly causing his spectacles to slide from their precarious perch. "This is the voice of experience, I take it." A nod from Lilith. "This might surprise you, Miss Lilith, but he hasn't done anything yet."
"He's landed among a handful of humans clinging to life in a kit-built base on a planet that theoretically shouldn't exist, and no incidents yet?" A disbelieving head-shake. "I tell you, if something hasn't happened yet, it will. Give it time."
"I'd agree with you, it's completely insane." Marius pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. "I mean, I've only been assigned to work with them recently, and even for humans... to live on a planet suspended on the edge of a black hole... bonkers. Down the pipes and out to sea, as it were..." The Human Caretaker paused in his thoughts to stare once more at the mess on Lilith's normally tidy desk. "Not to be nosy, Curator, but is that sonic?" An affirmative noise from the preoccupied Lilith as she adjusted the focus on a magnifier clamped over one eye. "Honest to god sonic weaponry?"
"Yep, that it is." Lilith glanced up for a moment, putting the tweezers aside and cleaning grime from her hands with a convenient rag. "There's a washroom off to the side there, Marius, if you need to be alone for a bit. You look... excited, if you don't mind me saying."
Marius laughed, blushing under Lilith's teasing grin. "Oh no – no, Miss Lilith, that's not it at all. It's just that I've always been fascinated with alternative technology, and sonics! I wanted to mention them in my thesis but there was never enough material to go by, especially with their creators dead and all - " The grin vanished, replaced by a flatly unreadable expression that dared the younger Caretaker to complete his thought aloud. "I'm sorry, Curator. It's just that I'd assumed by your title..."
"Jumping the gun in the name of efficiency," Lilith muttered, rummaging through the selection of tools on her desk until she found one that would work for her next task. "Trust me, Marius, that son of Gallifrey is not dead. Far from it. Be a doll and cover your eyes, will you?" She tapped the side of her goggles, adding a light filter to the lenses before igniting what appeared to be a small welding torch and applying it to an exposed segment of machinery. "Inelegant, that's for sure, but it'll have to do. What I wouldn't give for a sonic screwdriver."
"Well, if you have a rifle already, I don't think a screwdriver would be too big of an issue to acquire." The Caretaker considered the assemblage with fresh amazement, wide eyes moving from the pile of discarded parts to the modified weapon, shuddering when he realized what he was looking at. "You're removing the battery and replacing it with a bio-energy feed! You do realize that sort of thing is forbidden in at least two thousand galaxies, Miss Lilith? And just whose energy do you plan to use to power it?"
"Mine," said Lilith matter-of-factly, "and mine alone. If I've fixed it the way I think, it won't respond to anyone else." She nudged at another piece of circuitry with a probe, then tossed the metallic sliver aside with a disgusted sound. "I'll be surprised if the damn thing doesn't blow up on me the first time I fire it with the kind of hatchet job I've had to do. Then again, the man with the right equipment is a universe away on the edge of oblivion, and he'd confiscate this little beauty if he knew I had it."
"As he rightly should. Just by looking at it I can spot at least ten ways in which it's outright illegal!" Marius shook his head ruefully. "Dare I even ask how you got your hands on a sonic rifle?"
The Curator slid the last casing back into place, tamping it down with a slap from the heel of her hand. "Believe it or not, this was a gift to my dad when he first took office. The guys down in the Armory gave it to him as a kind of sick joke, telling him he'd never know when he'd need a little bit of portable artillery in this line of work. He kept it stashed away in the closet – for emergencies, you know – and I saw no reason to move it... that is, until now." Lilith removed the goggles and set them aside, fixing her younger colleague in an unnerving gaze that he found impossible to break. "I'll bet you've barely clipped the sale tags off of that suit jacket, Marius. How long have you been a Caseworker?"
"F-fifty years, Curator," Marius stammered, silently praying for her to reach her point. The light blue of her eyes belied a darker core, the substance of which he was only now beginning to see, and he could not say that he enjoyed the view. "This is my first solo assignment as a fully credentialed Caretaker."
"Good man." Lilith's eyes narrowed for the briefest fraction of a second, assessing the young Sidra on the other side of her desk. "If you've been in this business as long as I have, you'll learn that your wits alone sometimes won't be enough to keep you alive." She patted the barrel of the rifle as if to reinforce her statement, then continued. "Why don't we stick to what you know for now, hm? Tell me about this planet, Marius, and why I should be so worried that my client has landed there."
Humans never could resist a good puzzle. Lilith, feeling oddly naked in the absence of a solid body, anchored her essence momentarily to a rock and looked to the fiery vortex above. No sensible creature would want to be here, so why are they?
It's a commonly agreed-upon point that humans are hardly sensible. The slightest impression of a smile, though the Caseworker known as Marius floated nearby likewise formless in the natural state of the Sidra race. The Walker Expedition was originally sent here to find out just how such a thing could be possible. They discovered a power source beyond the scope of known technology and decided to drill down to the core of the planet to investigate. Pause, then, There was a message left behind by the last occupants – or occupant – of this planet that their archaeologist is currently working to decipher. He hasn't had much luck, though, and what's left of the expedition continues to drill.
That's just brilliant. Lilith let go of the rock, breezing across the surface of the airless planet with Marius drifting along in her wake. Sensing the puzzlement from her colleague, she elaborated. The power source is probably the only thing that's keeping this rock in place. Other than that, the planet is dead and has been that way for a while. Now your wonderful people are rooting around stirring up things that should have probably been left alone, and my Doctor is right in the middle of it... The Curator sighed. As usual.
Sensing a disturbance, Marius shot past Lilith to investigate. Something's not right, he called back to her, getting a disdainful snort in return. I mean, in addition to everything else. Though he knew both he and his fellow Caseworker were invisible, he stopped short as if afraid of being seen by the lone figure standing on the surface. Tell me what's wrong with this picture.
A human surviving unassisted in vacuum, said Lilith, likewise stopping as an eerie sensation began to creep into her core. He should be midway to asphyxiation by now, but it's almost like he's out for an afternoon stroll... She cautiously dipped lower to get a closer look at the man, shuddering when she saw that his eyes glowed luminous red from a face covered in sinuous black script-like markings. He's not human anymore, and those marks! What is he -
And more importantly, what's he doing? Marius wondered, watching the man stretch his hand out towards an unseen observer in one of the nearby sections of the base. The Caretaker let out a dismayed noise when he saw the man's hand twist, causing the glass to crack. Air rushed out from the breached habitation, sucking its inhabitant out into the void – a young woman no older than twenty human years, Lilith noted, feeling a sensation akin to nausea. Her name was Scootori Manista, and she was a maintenance trainee for the expedition. She shouldn't have died like that, that wasn't natural!
What about this place is? Lilith could sense the panic radiating from the younger Caseworker, and for the briefest moment she wished circumstances permitted flesh and bone for the comfort of physical contact. But I do see what you mean. A second look revealed that the lone man had vanished in the confusion of the breach, and the uneasy feeling increased. Lilith expanded her senses briefly, noted that yet another factor had changed. They've stopped drilling and now something's awake. That's why your people are dying, Marius, because they won't leave well enough alone.
Marius remained in place, watching the young human's body drift away towards the ravenous maw of the black hole. And there's nothing I can do?
You should know better than to ask that question, Marius. Lilith had since resumed moving, following a thin thread of wrong at the edge of her consciousness down towards a crevasse in the planet's crust, the malevolence from the awakened evil at its core seeping forth like blood from a wound. You're an advisor, not a safety net. Their lack of common sense is hardly your fault.
That sounds somewhat hypocritical coming from you, Curator, came the crisp reply. If you're not here to save your own, then what are you doing out here in the first place?
I'll answer that question when my sole surviving client isn't in immediate physical danger because of something stupid that your race has done, Lilith retorted in equally cool tones. And since your high horse is infinitely impractical in our current environment, get off of it.
"This is the darkness. This is my domain. You little things that live in the light, clinging to your feeble suns which die in the end... Only the darkness remains."
The words echoed in Lilith's mind as she descended alone into the gloom, a part of her wishing she'd remained with Marius on the surface to observe the travails of the remaining humans. But his people are up there while mine is... down here. How easy it would be to swoop in and snatch him away from danger, but that would violate so many of the rules... and that little snot Marius was right. I really am a hypocrite. As much as I hate to admit it, what am I here to accomplish? Am I here as a Caseworker, or am I trying to salve my own feelings of guilt? Hells below, I am going to need a drink when this is all said and done.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. From the moment she arrived at the center of the planet, Lilith had to fight not to be suffocated by the immense sense of evil that tugged at her core. The only thing that had given her hope was the familiar blue form of the TARDIS, although the Curator chose for once not to question how it had arrived in such a strange place as she moved on towards the source of the wrongness that had drawn her along. At least it won't be me pulling him out of harm's way, no matter what happens, she mused, pausing in front of a rock face painted with a series of pictographs, although I would certainly be able to justify giving him a nudge in the right direction should the need arise. She considered the pictures, depicting the imprisonment of a grotesque horned beast that Lilith hoped was only a metaphor instead of reality. An echoing rumble of shifting rock made her turn, and in that instant Lilith thanked providence that she lacked flesh to give her fright physical shape. And in spite of that, I'm still petrified. What the hell is that thing? The Curator then became aware of a new sound, that of footsteps belonging to a more humanoid form, and a small portion of the fear vanished when she recognized their owner.
He's here, and he's alive. That's all I'll need to be happy.
"Somehow it doesn't seem the same without all of the clutter," Marius commented from his seat on the other side of Lilith's desk. A month had transpired since his return, and Lilith was pleased to note that he seemed more comfortable in the newer body that he had adopted. She'd also noticed that he'd abandoned his earlier look of pale boyish frailty in exchange for something darker, older, more solid, enough to draw a pleased flush to her cheeks that she quickly extinguished before it could be seen. "I must say that you have quite the job, Miss Lilith."
"That I do." The inspection and maintenance of the modified rifle had become almost a matter of ritual for Lilith, one that she now clung gladly to as a pretext for her preoccupation. "What about yours, Marius? The Sanctuary Base has been closed, so that means you're out of work."
"For now, yes. Personnel's still trying to figure out where to put me, and I was thinking..." A hesitant chuckle. "You know, maybe you could use a hand here."
Lilith slid the casing closed over the bio-energy feed input, the click of finality causing her visitor to jump. "No, I think I'm fine."
"Are you sure about that? I'm sure it gets kind of lonely from time to time."
He said that if he had one thing to believe in, it was her... not me or anything I've done, but her, his precious human tagalong. That figures. The Curator laid her weapon out on the desk for a final visual check-over, gave it a friendly pat as if it were a favored pet. "Nope. I'm too busy to get lonely, Marius, and besides that, it's far too dangerous for a young buck like you to get tangled up in. Best for you to find some nice safe little planet to look after, something to ease you back into the flow of things."
"That's exactly what they said about Krop Tor. 'Bitter Pill' is right..." Marius sighed, eased himself up from the chair. "Well, I suppose I'll stop bothering you. See you around, Curator."
Lilith looked up suddenly from her examination of the rifle and flashed the younger Caseworker a bright smile. "Don't be afraid to stop by sometime if you have any questions. I'm sure I could pencil you in somewhere."
"Will do. Take care, Miss Lilith." Marius vanished from sight, and Lilith got up to return the rifle to its place in the supply closet. She put her jacket on and looked around the office to make sure that everything was in order, then dimmed the lights.
Her apartment seemed unnaturally dark and still as Lilith lay awake at the end of the day. Though months had passed in the case of some memories, they still nagged her and she soon found herself curled up on the living room sofa with a mug of warm tea and a familiar cloth-bound volume. As she sat considering how best to phrase her dilemma for written record, her gaze fell on the room's sole illumination – a simple clay pot resting in a place of honor on a topmost shelf, light pouring in steady, gentle radiance from within its thin walls. "Where do the gods go when they die, and what lies in store for them afterwards?" she murmured, then shook her head once in dismissal as she once more set pen to paper.