Cave exploring stopped being fun for Amy around the fourth or fifth time she nearly fell on her face. She and Rory had tried many walking arrangements to facilitate a successful trek, and it worked best if he was 3 meters or so in front of her, illuminating his path, and she behind him relighting it after.
She was pretty sure this was a bad idea after she nearly fell off the ledge into what was probably a bottomless pit. And then gave herself what would likely be a black eye on a hanging rock. Funny, this cave had no cool formations she had seen in pictures. Rory said he thought it was because the planet stayed frozen, and they are usually formed by dripping water. It was cold, dark and boring.
"Rory, how much further?"
"You know you asked that 5 minutes ago."
"Yeah, how much further?"
"Umm about a half mile."
"Uugh why is this taking so long?"
"Maybe because you keep tripping on rocks."
"Maybe because I nearly fell to my death an hour ago."
Rory stopped short. "Okay that's it. We are stopping to rest. Maybe you need to eat or something." He swung off his pack and placed the flashlight on the ground, facing up and reflecting white light off the ceiling of the tunnel they were following.
"You know I can handle myself perfectly well without you thinking you have to remind me of things," She stated indignantly as she snatched the protein bar Rory held out to her. She took off her small pack and sat down, unwrapped the bar and absent-mindedly began eating it.
"That's why you've lost weight since you've been traveling with him, I think. He is skinny as a rail too. My guess is the two of you go days not remembering to eat."
She looked down at herself. "You think so?"
"Yes. You know there're so many ways this travelling messes with your head. About your reality, about yourself. It's like I find myself constantly having to step back to keep in mind the bigger picture. I don't think I could do it without you here, worrying about you, how you feel, if you might get hurt. " He smiled and nodded to her, "if you're hungry. I know you hate it but I can't imagine not fussing over you. And you could unlock the secrets of the universe; take me anywhere I could imagine. But it would mean nothing to me if it weren't with you."
Amy just stared at him, her brow furrowed, her eyes watered. And she broke into a slight smile. She was pretty sure if the ground wasn't rock and her body didn't feel like it had gone through a ringer she would be jumping him right now. Instead she reached over and took his face in her hands. "I hate being fussed over," she whispered.
He pulled her the rest of the way to him and kissed her thoroughly on the mouth. They broke apart, and he whispered against her mouth, "No, you really don't mind it." He smiled and kissed her again. She kissed him more deeply this time, communicating that he was right. But also something he already knew: that attempting to reveal the secrets of Amy Pond's soul was treading in dangerous territory. They were secrets for him only to know.
Amy was brought out of their moment by a flash in the corner of her eye. She pulled away from Rory to look to her right, where the light had come from.
"What is it? Is something wrong?"
"No, I just thought I saw something. Over there." She pointed to the far wall to their right.
Rory picked up his light and got up. He took her hand and helped her up, and they both walked to where she had been pointing. He scanned the wall with his light to find nothing but rock. Then at a high crack they caught a glimmer of reflection, the shining of a liquid substance seemingly seeping from behind the rock.
"That's weird, what is that?" Rory said as he instinctively reached out to it.
"No, don't touch it Rory!" But she was too late; he already had a sample of it on his finger, working it between his thumb and forefinger underneath the light. "Rory! What are you, daft? We have no idea what that is!"
"OH." He looked down at his hand. "That was stupid. Hmm. But it's kind of oily, like it's not evaporating. It's also kind of cold to the touch. And what color does that look like? Blue? I wonder if we should bring some of this back up to the Doctor. Do you think we should tell him?"
Before Rory had even finished his short monologue Amy had the Doctor on the other end.
"Yes, Amy? Are you coming along?"
"Doctor, we found something down here. It is some sort of stuff coming from the rocks. It's blue, at least in this light."
"Huh. Well don't touch it."
Amy rolled her eyes. "Yeah tell that to Rory. He's fine though."
Rory interjected. "It feels oily and kind of cold, if that makes sense."
"Not sure if it does yet. If you touched it and it's oily, there may be some left on your hands for River to analyze. We see you're half way here. The rest should be easy. There are some large caverns up ahead of you."
They heard River in the background. "Don't forget to tell them to stay to the right…"
"Yes, yes." the Doctor said with a sigh, "There will be a large room just before you break through to the surface. Stay to the right." And obviously to River, "There, are you happy now?"
Amy grew impatient. "Fine. We'll get going, I'm getting tired of it being so dark in here. We'll let you know if we see anything else strange."
"Very well, see you soon Amy, Rory." And the transmission ended.
Amy let out a short breath. "Well I guess we should keep on. I was serious about wanting to get out of here."
"Yeah I'm starting to feel the same way," Rory replied with a wary look to the substance seeping from the wall. They both turned and gathered their things, Amy taking the remainder of her bar in one hand and her light in the other, and proceeded on with Amy now in the lead.
After about 10 minutes of eventless walking, Rory, looking down to stuff the wrapping of a finished energy bar in his pocket, brushed up against the dark rock wall of the passage. He didn't notice anything at first; he felt what he thought was the cool rock on the skin of his arm. It wasn't for a few minutes that mass quantities of the strange blue substance would enter his system, and he would begin to feel its affects.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Sulivan thought as he hastily exited the tan permanent structure that had a few hours ago become his housing unit and office. He was still buttoning his robes as he stopped a hazardous materials technician dressed in full protective gear sans helmet.
"Are you guys set up over there now?"
The young man stopped in his tracks and faced Sulivan. "Yes, sir. We have the containment area secured and personnel scanning everything we can dig up."
"Good. Carry on."
The young man paused, uncertain. "Uhh, sir?"
"Yes, spit it out, boy."
"The university people seem pretty upset about this. They keep asking questions."
"Let me handle them, thanks for the heads up, and get to your post. We need everyone right now."
"Yes sir." The young man turned and promptly continued on his way.
Sulivan shook his head and continued in the direction of the lab. Great. Now he had academic egos to deal with. If they are up in arms now, just wait until they initiate Green, he thought. He'll probably have them chasing him across the galaxy for this one, if it comes down to that.
He continued on a fairly short distance to his destination, the data lab, and opened the tent flap to a frenzy of activity. They were well set up for having just been relocated, although he was sure it contributed to the chaos. Almost immediately a supervisor approached him.
"Sir, I don't have much more for you than what I just sent you. But it seems we hit the mother lode."
"Yes, you said you got the medical files."
"Yes, and we're piecing them together as we speak. As soon as we realized the colony's lab storage area was ground zero for mass infection, we took immediate action. We're just now finding out exactly what happened. But it looks like the infection started with those who were exposed to the area where the equipment was found, or the equipment itself. We are not sure if the others who were later infected got it from the equipment itself or the infected individuals. Once we have a clear indication of incubation time, we'll know more."
"Shit." Sulivan verbalized finally what they had all been thinking. They knew an agent was out there.
"We're working as fast as we can."
Sulivan soberly patted the man's back. "I know."
"Sirs!" A young man's voice rose across the room. It was Brighton, one of his seasoned field agents. He had been pulled from his undercover post as a university student and brought over to help with the data analysis. Sulivan and the lab supervisor promptly crossed to him. "I've got something here. It looks like the ones who initially came back with the equipment were sick just a few days after initial exposure. The lab personnel who were exposed to them and the recovered equipment were then sick a few days after that. The next account of anyone getting sick was not for a little more than a week later. I think River may be OK as long as she doesn't come onto contact with whatever it is and comes right back. It seems to be communicable by direct exposure to something in or on the equipment, but not communicable from host to host for about a week. And it's also safe to assume the incubation period is shorter from direct exposure than from exposure to an infected individual. But if anything it indicates that it's definitely not airborne, at least not at the source. We've got a lot more data to go through before we can theorize about host to host transmission, but the important thing is that we should all be OK if we are not in direct contact with whatever this stuff is."
Sullivan furrowed his brow, thinking. "That's assuming a lot agent. But we've got a lot to go on now." He turned to the lab supervisor. "How is the containment team coming with the excavation?"
"Last I heard fending off angry professors. May want to go check it out."
"I will but I have to stop by my quarters to check on my agent." He clasped his hand on the young man's shoulder sitting down at the console. "Good job, Brighton."
"Thanks, sir." And without another word Sulivan quickly walked out of the tent, and failed to see the worry on the face of the young agent. Although they were not told about each other, he and River had intuitively known without introduction that they were both agents, and observed each other from afar. He hoped she made it through, he had heard about her, and saw she was a good agent. Buckling down he got back to his display, he would do his darndest to help get the beautiful young agent back okay.
The Doctor and River had a steady climb up to the mouth of what looked from below like an overhang. They knew from the maps, however, that it was the mouth of a cave that eventually led down to the passage where they would meet Amy and Rory, and hopefully find the source of their strange discoveries. With these crystals that seem to harvest energy, and this strange substance, they should be able to get somewhere after they put their samples together. Then figure out what's going on, deposit River, and be gone. Simple, the Doctor thought.
As they entered the cave and pulled out their lights, the Doctor realized that telling himself how simple the whole situation was seemed to keep making it worse. They illuminated the strange metal and electronic controls of the odd pieces of abandoned equipment left for millennia, and River let out a short gasp. "Don't touch any of it Doctor." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering what she knew that he didn't. It was then he saw her scratch behind her ear. And he figured it out. "We've found an equipment cache," she said seemingly to him, but not. He heard a slight noise, the excited report likely from Sulvan being transmitted directly to her ear.
It was one thing to lie to him, betray him, but his enemies learn quickly that there were two things he would not tolerate. First was being backed into a corner, and second was putting his friends at needless risk through thoughtless deceit. His mind raced with thoughts of how much it would hurt her to just yank it out of her ear. At one time he would have done it without a second thought, despite that it would permanently damage her hearing. What could he say, she seemed to bring out the worst in him, but he was old enough now to see this and rise above it. At least so far.
He watched her a moment, she was lost in whatever was being relayed to her, and he saw her face change. He had seen that look before. They were in real danger. No more games, River.
She looked up to see a Time Lord not to be trifled with slowly approaching her. Her jaw went slack as she took in two dangerous stimuli simultaneously; Sullivan telling her that they are standing at the source of some unknown and deadly pathogen, and the piercing dark eyes of a pissed off Doctor. She instinctively backed away from his approach with a pleading expression on her now flushed face. He backed her into the wall, and leaned down, his mouth nearly on her right ear, the one without the com patch. "River, turn off the transmission and run it through your computer. Now." His whisper was deceivingly calm, and as he pulled away he found her face close to his, she having turned her head toward him. She looked up at him, conflicted, and then to the ground, taking half her lip in her mouth. Resolved, she looked back up at him and with the pleading expression from before shook her head no.
Just as he was about to lean over to her other ear and yell 'RIVER!' as loud as he could, he realized she was offering him her left ear. She was still so foolish as to maintain this facade and protect herself from reprimand, but he would take this compromise, for now. He pressed his ear to hers, with his left hand splayed at the base of her skull holding her to him. He pretty much heard everything he needed to, about the ancient exploration party, the massive infection, about how it spread, about how the infectious material was picked up from the strange abandoned equipment. The whole time River's defined jaw under his palm, and her warm sticky breath on the side of his neck went consciously ignored.
And then Sulivan mentioned Solution Green. "River, it looks imminent. You should plant the homing chip and get yourselves out of there ASAP. I have to attend to the lab, we've more data to go through, and we may find a sample of this stuff yet. Just stay away from that equipment. I'll get back to you if I learn more. Be careful, I want you back safe. Out."
The Doctor's hand flexed on her neck before pulling away from her, but that was the only perceived indication of any frustration toward her. He had assumed the whole time it would come down to this. Well not THIS, but that River would be hiding something and he would have to deal with her. As angry as he was, it wasn't anything he hadn't come to suspect. But he was going to get the truth out of her and it may not be pretty.
She looked at him evenly as she slowly turned off her com patch with a finger behind her ear. She knew what was coming next. The Doctor asked straightforwardly, "River, what's Solution Green?"
"I can't tell you Doctor."
"What's Solution Green?" He repeated, his eyes piercing her through his dark forelock.
She looked at him almost pleading. "Please, I can't tell you." She instinctively countered around him to give herself more room.
He turned to face her. "Why? If I said I would strike you down this minute if you don't tell me, would the outstanding tendency toward self preservation you've shown outweigh your sense of duty to these people? What of your duty to us?" He started walking toward her again.
"No. Wait, what duty to you?"
"Well, you go to great lengths to withhold the truth about us knowing you, but you won't tell me what you've involved us in. Do your loyalties lie with them who you are deceiving or to us who your deceits have put in danger?"
"I…I don't know." He noticed her eye twitch.
"You don't know or you don't care?" He continued to approach her, not intimidating her, but applying slight pressure.
"I care. I really do, I care about all of you. But I can't disobey an order."
"Again, why not?" She looked at him with such conflict, he could see a battle waging inside her head. The Doctor's eyes narrowed. They really have screwed with her, he thought. "All right," he said, resigned. "Hand me your computer. I'll ask Sulivan myself." And he reached for it, still in her hand.
She held it out of the way and turned from him, "No, he'll find out you know, of course."
And then the Doctor made what was about the tenth mistake of this particular adventure. He reached out and grabbed River's arm. And seemingly out of nowhere, a fury broke loose.
One thing not many know about the Doctor is that when in physical danger his perception speeds up, making time to him slow down. This enables him to dodge even the most skilled advances. Except when he doesn't see them coming. And not yet has he really seen River coming, the subsequent attack being no exception.
Before he knew what happened, River had her handheld pistol-whipped across his face and his feet swept from beneath him. Face up on his back, the next thing he saw was she above him, astride his torso with her hand cocked back ready to administer what he assumed was a death blow to his head. He was confused just a fraction of a second, until he put it all together. As he looked up into her vacant eyes, he knew she was seeing nothing but the pressure points that existed in his head's anatomy. He had unveiled a part of her subconscious mind that was now in control, calculating exactly how to administer the blow without damaging her hand on the rock beneath him. He skillfully escaped her hold on him just as her hand began its decent into his skull. With his slowed perception, he was able to have her completely countered within seconds, with him now astride her. Using all his strength he pinned her down as she struggled beneath him. As he hovered above her, he was reminded of the rabid Ood. He tried not to think about the torture and horrors that they were submitted to that caused them to elicit such a response. What have they done to you, River, he thought as his heart bled empathy.
Then, all at once, her face relaxed and her eyes closed. Just as a seasoned animal master would, the Doctor read in her that the fight was over; that whatever was in her that caused her aggression was again tucked away. The Doctor was sure she had only vague memory of what had just happened. She opened her eyes, and he could see confusion, remorse, and a hint of apathy.
Still leaning over her, he released her wrist he had been restraining and slowly took the computer, still in her hand. He looked down at her youthful face; she could care less now about Sulivan, Solution Green, the ISSA, and this entire mission. She had just lost all control and tried to kill her new friend. She looked up into his eyes, searching for answers. She noticed the red mark on his cheek, swelling a little.
"Oh dear, you're hurt." She tentatively reached up to him with a slightly shaking hand, her fingers grazing the hot flesh where she had hit him. "I…I'm so sorry." And she turned her head to the side, away from him, again apathetic. A single tear battled a path down her flushed cheek.
The Doctor gave pitying look down at her. Unable to bring himself to respond, he released her and rose. She stayed sitting on the ground, still processing what had happened. Giving them both space and began inspecting the equipment, keeping his distance from the infected materials. But lost in thought.
Although he would have normally caught her hand as she made such an intimate gesture of touching his face, he did not. He told himself it was because he was afraid she might go nuts on him again, but he realized that every terrible turn of this trip seemed to bring him closer to this young woman. He was fighting the urge to take her face in his hands, taste the salt of her tears on his lips as he drinks them, tell her of course you are forgiven, I know it's not your fault.
He often wondered about her presumption in the Library; he chided himself in remembering that day again. He remembered his shock, with what must have been a look of wonder on his face as she gazed at him, as he felt the cool touch of her hands on his face. He shudders with the rememberance of her low sultry tones formed into his name and whispered in his ear. So strange, yet so familiar, like the interlocking pieces of a puzzle. Maybe he gives in eventually, maybe he does let her in.
She was silent a few minutes, but her voice eventually broke the cave's silence. "But what does this mean?" She continued their previous non-verbal conversation.
The Doctor pushed buttons on her handheld, having just scanned the surface of what looked like some sort or mining vehicle. "What? Oh. It means that my suspicions are correct. That there's a lot of stuff in that pretty head of yours that you don't know about, and that someone put there. I'm sure most of the agency that raised you has no idea about either. I'm sorry I did that, but I didn't expect you to, well, you know."
"What exactly are you sorry about?"
"Pressuring you like that. I guess part of me wanted you to realize what I already knew. That your undying sense of duty, and now apparently other things, has been more or less brainwashed into you. But that directly conflicts with your natural tendency toward self preservation. The River I know is quite naturally self-serving. And if you are she then I knew there was something significant interrupting that. My guess is that there are some very deep blocks put in place within your head. Do you ever think things, or make decisions you don't understand? Have reactions to things that make no sense?"
She shook her head. "Doctor, I don't like this. I think you all are in danger with me here."
"No, the only reason that happened was because I brought it out. There are likely triggers known only by those who did this to you." He bent down to her level and looked at her solemnly. "I promise I can help find out who it was and fix it, but right now I need your help, and Amy and Rory should be here soon."
A slight smile broke on her face. "Thanks, I'd appreciate that, I'm kind of at a loss right now. But yes, we need to get Amy and Rory out of here. We should tell them not to touch anything if they come across any more of this stuff."
"Good idea." And just as the Doctor was sending a transmission to the pair, he received one from them. "Yes, are you two coming?"
"Doctor, something's wrong with Rory." Amy's voice came across, clearly upset.