Saph watched the Doctor brooding in a wooden chair, his arms leaning on the surface of the table she and Brett used to have dinner together. They had just finished re-organising the flat, returning all the furniture to its original position, basically just cleaning it up, trying to find a distraction from the chaotic scenes outside. They had numbly stood there on the balcony and watched as the Krynoid started to devour the hospital. Eventually they could stand no more and retreated into the flat, the monstrosity of it all pushing them inside. It had just begun to use its long, thick arm-like vines to pick up random people staring and fearing it outside the hospital, swiftly grabbing and consuming them in one foul sweep. Since then they had not said a word, neither of them daring to break the uncomfortable silence.
As Saph sat down on the opposite of the small circular table, she looked at the Doctor sympathetically. Despite his youthful appearance, his eyes looked tired with age, aching from the amount of memories and sadness he must have experienced. It frightened her that today, to him, was just another day of woe.
All of a sudden she got a full blast from those eyes as the Doctor raised his head at her presence, no longer staring at the simplicities of tea. "I'm sorry Saph" he said mournfully.
Saph reached for his hand sympathetically. "Hey, don't worry. You did your best. Anyway I wouldn't have thought you would be someone who gives up easily."
The Doctor withdrew his hand, as he stood up and started pacing around the flat, his hand ruffling his hair. "I know!" he announced frustratingly, "Events have spiralled out of control sooner than I expected! I can't think of any way I can stop the Krynoid now!"
"But I thought you dealt with them before, why don't you just do what you did last time?" Saph asked.
"Oh no, I got U. N. I. T. to blow it up last time and I don't want to get involved with them again now" the Doctor answered dismissively. Saph lay back in the chair racking her brains for an idea, while the Doctor returned to pacing.
As Saph sat there watching the Doctor slowly go insane, an idea came into her head, which seemed obvious, but she had doubts whether the Doctor would agree to it.
"Doctor.." Saph asked. The Doctor however, was busy muttering to himself fruitless ideas. "Doctor!"
He looked up and realised she had an idea, producing a faked grin. "Go on then Ms. Blume. What's the idea?" Satisfied that she would be heard, she returned his grin with one of her own in a reassuring manner, before explaining, "Before Brett…changed, he talked about this Professor…Something or other"
"Lyn?" interrupted the Doctor, eyes widening in surprise.
"Yeah! You know him?" asked Saph, raising her eyebrow curiously.
"Well we've had words, let's leave it at that" said the Doctor offhandedly.
Saph started to wonder if the Doctor was involved somehow with the Professors murder. Death seemed to be something that tagged the Doctors heels quite fondly, whether he liked it or not. Deciding not to pursue such an uncomfortable subject, Saph decided to bring the conversation back to the subject that was most important, dealing with the Krynoid, "Anyway, Brett seemed to spend a lot of time with him and I wondered. Maybe he had something to do with all this?"
The Doctors face fell into a grim expression. He sat back down into the chair beside the table and gave Saph a sympathetic look. "I'm afraid he was." He sighed, "He possessed the original Krynoid pod, where he got it from, I have no idea. He was conducting experiments with it. From what I saw in his lab when I visited it, he seemed to be trying to combine Krynoid and human DNA and the result, well you know." The guilt was clear in the Doctors voice, as the information hit Saph. As he had explained how Professor Lyn was involved with the horrific events that had interrupted Saph's life, the Doctor realised that he was effectively telling her that Professor Lyn had murdered her boyfriend and to make his conscience ache even more, she had realised it too.
Her eyes dimmed as her mind escaped the misery of reality and into the joy that her memories brought. The day she'd met him, their first date, their first kiss, the night they gave each other something special, all the times he made her laugh, all the times he made her smile…"Saph? Can you hear me?" asked the distant voice worriedly, trying to break through the barrier that Saph's had built around her.
She blinked as she returned to reality, to see the Doctor with a worried and guilty look. She smiled. "I'm fine. Really." She said reassuringly. But the Doctor wasn't convinced and kept on looking at her concerned. Once again, Saph decided that they needed to focus on the matter at hand. "Well if Professor Lyn was so interested in plants, isn't it logical that he might have the answer to the giant green problem currently eating the hospital?"
Saph's swift recovery slightly stunned the Doctor. It had taken him a long time to recover from the death of his entire race; in fact he still struggled to cope with that fact time to time. Even though Saph's experience with death stealing a loved one was not on such a grand scale as his was, it was still a lot to cope with. To the Doctor, this showed how severe the situation was, that Saph was willing to focus on saving the planet even though she was going through a tough time. The Doctor decided if Saph could put on this stern attitude, then he should be able to too. As such, he swiftly replied, "Yes it is very logical" Realising what she had just said, the Doctor leapt up, knocking over the chair he had been sitting up and making Saph jump out of her skin, yelling, "Of course! My God, we need to get to those labs as soon as possible!" Saying this, he rushed out the door, before running back in, asking, "Well come on then!"
A dark cloud hovered above the laboratory, which had fallen into disuse since the head professor died and the finances had dried up. The Doctor and Saph watched this gloomy snapshot of the modern building, before making their way towards the entrance.
As Saph followed the Doctor down the empty corridors, she looked around at her surroundings. She had never visited Brett at work and it struck her that she didn't really know why. While she'd never been interested in science, surely it would've made sense for her to come down and visit Brett at work. Maybe the looming building had intimidated her when she had tried to see him. It gave her shivers now, even when she had only stood in its shadow. As they approached the professor's lab at the end of the corridor, Saph took a quick peek inside each of the rooms through the small windows embedded in the doors. Strange as it was, they seemed to get emptier as they went along. "God I didn't realise how badly hit these guys were. You would never have known these were laboratory before."
The Doctor turned to her and took a quick glance inside the nearest room and shrugged. "Well economy is trickier then it looks. It's all very well being able to create a new life form and doing the whole Dr. Frankenstein routine, but if you can't pay the rent, then you might as well try something simple and pointless, like the answer to life, the universe and everything. Where's 42 going to get you? Nowhere!" After this odd little speech, the Doctor swivelled back towards their destination, Saph eventually following, trying to work out where she'd heard about 42 and its point in the universe before.
The Doctor pushed the door open impatiently and immediately began searching through the laboratory. Saph swiftly followed him, but she was too busy to search. She merely stood by the door, staring at the room. It was filled with scientific equipment, papers and other such inconvenient objects in inappropriate places. The Doctor noticed this and barked at her over a table packed with test tube racks, filled with test tubes containing different concoctions that produced a smell like burnt toast, "Come on Saph! The fate of the world lies in this room!" He wrinkled his nose, looked down at the test tubes below and gave them a frown of disgust. Saph nodded to the Doctors head, buried amongst cluttered contents and promptly started to search on the other side of the room.