Title: Falls the Shadow
Author: Nemo the Everbeing
oOo oOo Chapter 11: Ex Post Facto oOo oOo
"Oh shit," Ace breathed as she stared up the dark length of stair. She wasn't as good with maths as the Doctor, but it didn't take a genius to realize that the stairway could well be impassable.
She hadn't come this far to be beaten by a few patches of darkness, though. She hissed, "Stay close." He nodded, folded up his marshmallows-on-a-stick device, and slipped it into his pocket.
There was nothing for it but to take the first step. The stairs creaked. The amorphous blobs of solid dark gave off waves of cold, and Ace could only imagine the conditions in that universe. Was heat as unknown a commodity as light there? What could beings from the other side possibly want with this universe when they were so different?
Of course, those things they lacked might be exactly what they wanted. Heat and light might be precious in their universe. Other things, too: music or superstrings or love. She glanced back at the Doctor. The Shadowmen were welcome to that last one. It was more trouble than it was worth.
Here she'd been pining over the Doctor, terrified of acting on her feelings for fear of rejection. Then, to her shock, he'd kissed her. Lying on the ground in a house full of rifts at the end of this world, and he'd given her a kiss that made every one of her nerve-endings sit up and take notice. And then, right when she was expecting everything to simply work out, Mr. Mixed Signals got cold feet. He'd backed away and given his reasons why it couldn't work, and the worst part had been that they were good reasons. But he'd also said in all but words that he did love her. Sort of.
Bloody confusing was what it had been. Something was going on, something he wasn't telling her still, but she didn't have time to dig for it. She had a job to do and a world to save. Her excitement and confusion and her hurt paled next to those poor people huddled on the beach waiting for a miracle.
Ace needed to deliver that miracle, and she wasn't going to do it by standing around mooning after the Doctor. He was giving her a curious look, and she returned it with an encouraging smile. Then she turned and continued, reassured by his presence at her back. Two steps, then three, and the rifts were already getting much closer together. Ace's slow pace became painstaking. After a second, she stopped. In the darkness, discerning rift from shadow was nearly impossible, even with the help of the light from the sonic screwdriver. What she needed was some sort of rift sensor. A divining rod for safe paths.
She held out her hand behind her. "Here, give us your brolly," she said.
"My what?"
"Brolly." She felt the plastic handle pressed into her hand. Ace hefted it, and then swung it ahead of them in a slow, careful arc. There were places it remained visible and places where it slipped into the blackness. When it emerged seconds later, its waterproof fabric was limned with frost.
Ace gauged the size of the gaps between rifts. The best route straight through was up against the right-hand wall. While there looked like there would be a few uncomfortably tight squeezes along the way, she liked that option better than trying to wind their way through possibly larger gaps where they couldn't reach a railing for support.
She nodded up the right-hand side of the stairs, letting the Doctor in on her plan. He gave a quick nod of agreement. Ace flattened herself against the wall and inched upwards, one hand gripping the railing. The first few rifts were easy enough to pass, but they were soon much closer to her side of the stairway. It got so bad that one rift was scant inches in front of her eyes as she passed, the tiny space between the darkness and her nose doing little to protect her from the chill. Even as she squinted her eyes against the cold, Ace couldn't help but study the rift. The dark seemed a uniform blackness, but she thought she caught a sense of movement within, as if unseen things pressed and wriggled against its surface.
The Doctor seemed to be having a worse time of it, especially when passing that particular rift. Though by no means a bulky man, he wasn't as slender as she. His attempts at passing the blobs of dark seemed to rely far more on agility than size, and Ace saw him dance past more than one seemingly insurmountable obstacle.
So far so good.
Step by step they continued upwards. The rifts pressed so close now that it was impossible to take even a moment to relax and breathe. The strain of constantly monitoring where feet and hands and body were in position to the dangers all around was beginning to make Ace's head ache.
At last—when it felt they'd been climbing long enough for her to go gray—they reached the top of the stairs. Ace studied the final few feet to the door with a sinking sensation. Their already tricky situation threatened to become impossible. Blocking the way to the door was darkness: solid and stretching from wall to wall. There was a small patch at floor level that seemed clear, but even if they could limbo underneath, there was no way to reach the door handle.
There were other ways to open doors, however. This was Ace's territory, and unless she was very much mistaken the situation called for a directional explosive. She glanced back at the Doctor, who frowned as though anticipating her plan. She caught his shoulder, leaned in and whispered in his ear, "I've got a directional microcharge that can take care of this door no problem, but I need you to hold onto me while I make the approach. I don't want to risk contact with the rift without some kind of anchor, right?"
"You don't want to risk contact with the rift, full stop."
"Okay, it's not the best plan ever, but we need to get through that door. You have any better ideas?" The Doctor shook his head, resigned. "Thought not. So keep a hold of me and if it looks like that rift's taken a shine to me, pull. Hard as you can."
If she waited for an answer, they'd be debating the issue until the world tore itself apart. She turned, lay down, and started scooting forward.
She felt the instant the darkness was overhead. Every hair on the back of her neck stood on end and no amount of clothing protected her from the chill. She nearly pulled back in shock, but the Doctor's arm slipped loosely around her waist and the cold seemed to recede. It was like his mere presence muted the effects of this place on her.
Grateful for whatever protection she could get, Ace wriggled forward the last few feet. The Doctor's grip tightened briefly then slipped lower around her hips. With his hand resting on the crest of her femur, Ace reached the wood of the door. It seemed hot after the chill given off by the darkness above, and Ace wasted no time in placing the charge and arming it. It was a simple bomb: no remote detonation. Only a short timer to allow Ace to get her hand clear. She pulled back just enough to avoid any side-blast, and the charge went off. The directional shockwave blew the door apart, and bits of the green stone from the walls came raining down with it.
Subtlety abandoned, she shouted, "Let go! I'm going in."
The Doctor's hand slipped away and Ace gave one hard squirm which got her to the top of the stairs, and then another to clear the wreckage of the door. She leaped to her feet and faced a room full of about twenty people in togas.
"Looks like the place," she muttered to herself.
She took in the situation as quickly as possible. Instead of the expected hallway, the stairs opened directly into a large room. Its agate walls were covered with white paint that still showed the grooves of the rock. That white was complemented by the two rows of gleaming chrome equipment along the far wall. Ace's side of the room was relatively clear save a few lone computer consoles rising out of the floor like sharply squared-off electronic mushrooms.
And the toga patrol stood in a clump between her and the computer banks. They didn't seem to be monitoring the equipment, but rather they were huddled together. Maybe this was some sort of tactical discussion. Or a powwow.
She heard the Doctor behind her struggling to get through the makeshift pass she'd created, but couldn't afford to turn and help him. Just in case they were attacked, she needed to be ready to buy him time. "Oi!" she shouted. "Don't want to break up the party or anything, but I was wondering—you lot do know you're well on the way to destroying the world, right?"
No one responded. No one even turned.
"Hey! Toga patrol!" she called, keeping squarely in front of the Doctor. "You can't just ignore this sort of thing and hope it goes away."
"Ace!" the Doctor called a warning.
Not that he needed to. Twenty heads began the incremental turn towards her. Every revealed face was ghastly pale, and every person had blank, white eyes.
Ace's own eyes widened and she pulled out a can of Nitro-Nine. "Then again, maybe you already knew that," she said. She flicked the safety cap off without thinking, arming the explosive.
With a synchronicity that went beyond rehearsal and into hive-mentality, every toga-clad zombie opened its mouth, first beyond comfort and then beyond physical possibility. Ace heard cracks echo through the room as jawbones snapped. Then—just when she thought she was as freaked out as she was going to get—a darkness which seemed almost liquid poured forth from those gaping mouths . . . and poured, and poured, filling the air around them with impenetrable blackness.
The cloud of dark began to expand, to wrap itself around the zombies. Wherever darkness touched, Ace saw skin shriveling. She winced on behalf of the white-eyed zombies, though they didn't seem to care that they were doing this to themselves. She expected to hear screams any minute, but there were no sounds of anguish or pain. The awful, ringing silence somehow seemed more wrong. They were too far-gone to even feel themselves die. If they were even alive enough to count as dying, which was debatable.
The darkness crawled up the bodies it encountered like hungry, sentient tar. The members of the toga patrol were shriveling away to husks, all moisture leached through the cloud of black, leaving only mummies. They looked just like the huddle at the hotel, Ace remembered, trying not to give in to panic. Their position and everything. All that was missing were the two leads and the production was complete. Ace was almost thankful when the darkness had closed over them and they were gone.
Her gratitude was short-lived. To her horror, she realized that the darkness was continuing to spread, now filling the entire far side of the room. Ace was sure it was advancing closer, like it was attracted—or even outraged?—by the warm bodies it now sensed beside the splintered doorway . . .
This was it, then. That was how she would die: passing through a rift in time and space and getting freeze-dried and mummified.
Well, to hell with that. She wasn't going to be turned into a corpse without a fight. Problem was, she didn't know how to fight something as ephemeral as darkness. She glanced down at the explosive in her hand. It wasn't guaranteed, but it was as good a weapon as she was going to get. She pulled back to hurl the explosive. The darkness rolled toward her like a fog bank.
And suddenly a hand wrapped around her waist and pulled her backwards against a relatively warm body. Another hand passed next to her cheek, extended in front of her as a ward. A ward with a sonic screwdriver.
Fish song filled the room, and even if it lacked the indefinable quality of the actual song that had made Ace feel so small, the darkness reacted to it as though there were no difference. The edge of the wall began to shiver, and bits of it seemed to evaporate away like smoke. Ace, still pressed back against the Doctor, hissed, "Now he tells me that the fish-song nobbles the rifts! Wasn't it worth mentioning when we were going up that stairway?"
"This is a controlled rift. The way it moves? Someone's pulling the strings from the other side, and I doubt it's the infovores."
Ace recapped the Nitro-Nine, disarming it, and then slipped it back into its pouch. "You're not attacking the rift," she realized. "You're attacking the people generating it."
"Precisely." His voice was a low growl, and she felt him begin to move. She kept step with him, an odd parody of the dance they'd shared, and they edged around the room toward a door partially shrouded in darkness. The Doctor kept his sonic screwdriver before them. "I can't move the darkness once it's established itself. I can merely form a holding pattern."
"In other words, it's going to be a tight squeeze through that door."
"Yes."
They kept edging, and Ace wondered how she'd gone from attending a ball to having a Mexican stand-off with the dark. She noted a cable on the floor and moved to step over it. Only with the Doctor . . .
Who suddenly tripped. Ace was tugged off-balance as his arm knocked her in the side of the head as he lost his balance. She couldn't turn to see what happened, but guessed that he'd not noticed the cable. She heard the shuffling of his feet as he tried to regain his balance, then a sharp crack and a cry of pain. There was a clatter of instruments, and Ace realized he'd fallen into one of the computer consoles. And from his cry, she didn't doubt it had been a bad fall. She shook her head to clear out the pain of the unexpected blow, and as she did, she heard something else: the soft tinkle of a small and metallic object hitting the floor. The Doctor had only been holding one metallic object. The sonic screwdriver skittered into view, stopping several feet in front of her. The fish song was abruptly shut off.
The silence surged back in, and so did the darkness. It was like a dam breaking, and the wall rushed toward her. Between them was the tiny glitter of metal that was the sonic screwdriver.
Ace dived. She hit the ground rolling, catching up the device as her hand slapped the floor, and when she came out of her impromptu somersault, she jabbed it forward and hit what she prayed was a play button. The darkness reached for her, and she felt the ice of it. The hairs on her arm stood up.
And then the fish song played. The darkness shivered to a stop centimeters from her hand. The Doctor caught her carry-vest collar from behind and dragged her to her feet. They staggered toward the door at the far end of the room, faster this time than the last. Ace's throat was dry, and she was glad he didn't try to talk this time around.
She heard the Doctor open the door, but didn't turn to watch his progress. She didn't take her eyes off the darkness for even an instant. Not until the Doctor had backed through the door and pulled her in after him. She kicked the door closed, but kept the fish song going. There was perfect stillness on her side of the door, but she could feel the darkness amassing against the other side. Surely something so flimsy as a door wasn't going to stop it.
But nothing came. Seconds passed, and the door remained just a door. No unexpected shadows or rolling dark. She turned off the fish song, thumb still on the play button in case it was needed again. Almost a solid minute of tensely waited-out nothing, after which the Doctor pried the screwdriver from her hand. The movement shattered her paralysis, and a shudder ran through her as she processed the fact that they had made it. They were still alive.
"I think we might need to find another way out," she muttered. She didn't get a reply, so she frowned and turned from the door to look at the Doctor.
He wasn't there. Instead Ace was nose-to-nose with her own mummified corpse. Even as she was processing the shock, its mouth fell open and began to spew blackness at her. She stumbled backwards instinctively, gasping her horror. As if that wasn't enough, there was suddenly a hand plunging through the corpse's chest—her chest—reaching to grab at her and cracking open the mummified ribcage to expose the shriveled organs within. Ace squeezed her eyes closed, reminding herself that screaming was something she just never bloody did and she wasn't going to start now. What she'd been looking at had to be an hallucination . . . it had to be . . .
She felt something grab hold of her jacket and the sound which escaped her was part shriek, part choked-off whine, but she was by now too terrified to worry about her cred. She was dragged forward, and she struggled against the force because the last thing she wanted was to come up against her dried up corpse and the darkness it was vomiting; shrivel up like the zombies next door and end up a twin to the thing that was doing this to her, even though it made a horrible kind of sense because the scene in the hotel had shown her this, it had told her how things would finish . . . so much for the Doctor's 'infinite possibilities'.
Weirdly enough, in the microseconds which preceded her inevitable death, Ace found herself thinking, 'At least I got to kiss him. And he kissed back.'
The dragging brought her into contact with something solid, but not freezing or desiccated. The surprise made her blink open her eyes. They took in a vision of uniform red question-marks. Her head snapped up and she stared into the concerned gaze of the Doctor. She looked behind her. There was no corpse, no person-shaped tower of blackness, but the door had been completely consumed by the darkness. The very door she had just been trying to back into.
"I take it the hallucinations have started again?" the Doctor asked.
"Oh yeah," she said. She pressed closer to him for a second, collecting her composure enough to look at the situation objectively. "I think they're smarter."
He scrutinized her. "How so?"
"That last one was herding me towards the dark. Trying to get me so scared I just fell into it."
He touched her cheek and Ace felt a sense of calm pervade her. The Doctor's voice was a little strained as he asked, "Any better?"
She opened her eyes and her head was clearer. The sense of dread she'd felt had lessened, and she was able to take in her surroundings. They were in another room. This one was small and almost empty, save for some filing cabinets and recording equipment. It looked like some sort of records room with two entrances. One was covered in darkness, so that left the door on the other side of the room.
Feeling much more in control now that she could focus without the terror that had so shaken her perceptions, she said, "I am, actually. What did you just do?"
"A little protection against the effects of this place."
"Don't you need to conserve your strength for yourself? This house is doing much more of a number on you than it is me."
He waved off her concern. "What's happening to me isn't something I can prevent. Strength is irrelevant. But I can help you, protect you from these hallucinations, so I will. One of us needs to keep our wits about us."
She quirked a smile. "That's me. Always on top of things." She patted his chest in what was supposed to be reassurance, but the Doctor winced and Ace felt something warm and wet on her hand.
Her attention was immediately drawn to the very obvious damage the Doctor's clothing and person had sustained in the other room. She didn't know how she'd missed it. She'd even forgotten about the cry of pain he'd given when he'd fallen over, mainly because she'd been distracted by retrieving the screwdriver and saving both their lives. She examined that damage now: his pullover was shorn clean through in a line across his chest, and the button-down underneath bore smaller perforations. Blood spattered both shirt and pullover from points where the sharp corner of the console he'd crashed into had managed to pierce the skin. Ace frowned. It looked nasty, painful, but not life-threatening.
Unfortunately it also looked like the exact same pattern of damage—right down to the blood spatter—as they'd seen on their mummified counterparts.
"Oh, God," she whispered.
He glanced down at the damage, frowned, and said, "It means nothing."
"Nothing but we're one step closer to mummies!"
His gaze was flinty. "We are not dying here, and we are certainly not getting mummified." He crossed his arms and looked away. "For one, I would regenerate. And secondly, mummification is simply . . . undignified."
Ace snorted in spite of herself. The Doctor had a knack for calming her down through a precision application of the absurd. "Yeah," she said. "When it comes to the manner of our deaths, dignity's always the key factor, right?"
"I'd like to think so."
The world shuddered. Ace staggered and the Doctor clutched at his head, hissing in pain. Time was running out. She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled. If they were lucky, the one remaining door in the room would lead them somewhere useful, and they could get to the bottom of this mess before anything worse happened. Her hand closed around a handle that was cold to the touch, and she pulled open the door.
The room beyond was large and full of electronics. Consoles and monitors were all linked up to a huge metal frame which crackled with incandescent energy. Within the circle of metal was suspended a translucent, slick membrane which occasionally picked up a stray arc of color from the super-conducted energy.
"What the hell is that thing?" she asked.
The Doctor stared at the apparatus in horrified fascination. "It's a mirror."
"A what?"
"A mirror. A membrane where the fabric between realities is stretched to breaking. Enough pressure . . ."
"And it's goodbye world as we know it."
The Doctor was on the move, bounding over toward the bank of computers and other consoles squeezed into the corner of the room. Ace was hot on his heels. They were in the center of the room when they could finally see the entire workspace. It was cramped, but surprisingly advanced. Too advanced for the state of technology she'd seen elsewhere on the planet. No. That wasn't right. The glow-balls and the hairbrush she'd used were actually technically advanced. This workspace was just . . . less discreet.
They slipped into the enclosure of computers and consoles, almost tripping over something as they did. It was a body, mummified, of a man in a crisp, navy blue suit with matching navy hair. Not a member of the toga patrol. In fact, although she couldn't be sure, she thought he was the man they'd seen on their way to the ball; the one who had either been preoccupied with her accessories or her chest. He was clearly someone who'd been at home amid the equipment in the room; he still clutched a diagnostic tool of some kind in desiccated fingers. Ace had seen too much horror in the last few hours to be disgusted by the gnarled corpse at their feet. She just sighed, looking down at this rather forlorn figure, and said, "It's like we were invited to a party but we got there too late."
The Doctor nodded and removed his hat. "So this is the mad genius behind the rifts," he murmured. "Dust and dry bones. What a waste. He must have had an amazing mind."
"Must have," Ace agreed, a touch cynically. "I'm sure that's comforting to those who've been killed or possessed or lost loved ones in the last hours." The Doctor turned sharply to her, then conceded her point with a nod. "Okay, eulogy's over. Time to clean up the mess he left us with."
The Doctor looked up at her, and his eyes were flat and cold as ice. He put his hat back on and Ace knew it was time to work. He took his place behind the largest computer console and brought it on-line. Ace, meanwhile, began inspecting the machinery for weaknesses. She still considered just blowing everything up to be a workable option. Especially if the man responsible for everything was already dead.
"I can't seem to work out . . ." the Doctor muttered, but trailed off. Then he said more loudly, "I can't tell where all the power is coming from. There's no way the city should be able to provide the necessary amount."
"But it is."
"I need you to find out where the additional power is coming from. If they have some sort of portable generator, the easiest way to power down this apparatus might be to simply disconnect it."
Ace redirected her efforts in the requested direction. "Power source," she said. "Got it." The bank of computers seemed free of anything like that, so she drifted out, nearer the mirror, and began following leads. Probably the most practical method of powering it by a portable source would be a direct linkup, after all.
Everything seemed to go to more computers, each monitoring one of apparently a thousand details which had to be precisely accurate for the mirror to function. "Hey, Professor," she called, still looking, "couldn't we just tweak a few calculations and throw off the commands from some of these computers? Wouldn't that shut down the mirror as well as anything?"
"Yes it would," he said. "It would also probably incinerate everything in a two-kilometer radius. The levels of power we're dealing with here are extremely dangerous if disturbed."
Ace frowned. She should have known that herself. This whole situation (not even thinking about the situation between the Doctor and her) must be getting to her. "That's why you want to cut the power," she muttered to herself.
She went back to the mirror and traced a new lead. This was a different make than the others, possibly signifying a different sort of current running through it. The cable led to what appeared to be a reinforced metal box.
"I think I've found something!" she shouted, examining the controls which would open it. She typed tentatively and then with growing confidence. She'd worked with something comparable before.
The box opened to reveal a power source . . . a horribly, horribly familiar power source. Ace stared in confusion. This was a jumper-cable. She knew it was a jumper-cable because she was the one who'd designed and built them as a backup supply of artron energy, an emergency means of kickstarting the TARDIS.
What the hell was this? A coincidence? A confluence of technologies that happened to occur right on the planet where the TARDIS had landed? Hardly. Not when the cylinder she was staring at had the binary number '1011' etched on its surface in silver pen, in her own handwriting.
"Oh bollocks," she breathed. Then she squared her shoulders and said, "Professor? Problem." Because there were only two people aside from them who could have had access to these jumper-cables. And one of those people had gone missing just minutes after setting foot in the TARDIS . . .
"Back away from the power-source," Meeka said.
Ace whirled around. There, inevitably, stood Meeka, looking just the same as she'd looked on the beach. Except for the bits that had fallen out, her hair was still twisted in that elaborate updo; her dress still shimmered. But her sweet, heart-shaped face was blank and chill . . . which seemed fitting, really, given that she was currently holding a blaster to the back of the Doctor's head.
Ace's focus narrowed to that. Just the gun. She wasn't good at seeing the Doctor threatened at the best of times, and under these specific circumstances, Ace had to restrain herself from doing something rash and stupid. Because the cheetah was awake. It was growling in the back of her mind, desperate to get out.
But she wouldn't be fast enough, even with the augmented physicality of the cheetah, to save the Doctor before he was shot. Not like that. She had to keep calm and wait for her chance. Ace put her hands up and stepped, not only away from the power-source, but also towards Meeka and the Doctor. "We'll cooperate," she said, forcing her voice to stay rock-steady. "You don't need that."
Meeka clicked her tongue in disapproval. "You forget: I've seen you. The yellow eyes. The sharp teeth. There's something of a monster in you, so I think I'll keep my blaster."
"And you?" the Doctor asked. He didn't flinch as Meeka pressed the gun into his hair. "I think there might be more than a little monster in you. You've seen this world, what's happening to it."
"I've seen mistakes that need to be corrected. I've seen tiny flaws in an otherwise perfect idea."
Well, whatever, Ace thought. Megalomaniacs always had their justifications. She was busy, in any case, backtracking over the events of the last day. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen this coming. First there was the way Terrin and Meeka had seemed to be the only other guests at the hotel . . . how had Meeka arranged that? Presumably tampered with the service droid to reject all other bookings. But the Doctor's had got through. Meeka had wanted access to the Doctor, access to the TARDIS. How long had this been in the planning? Ace could think of nothing else for it, so she asked.
"When your ship arrived, we heard," Meeka said. "I was one of several dispatched to find you. I was sent to the ball, and as soon as I saw you I flagged your location. You were even kind enough to take a walk outside, alone. Really, you think you'd never been in dangerous situations before."
"But you didn't figure on the Doctor not reacting to the drug, did you?" Ace asked, willing Meeka's attention to stay on her. The Doctor started to edge infinitesimally away from his captor.
"That did puzzle us, but then again, Time Lord physiology isn't well-known anywhere."
"So why not just overpower him?"
"We didn't know anything about the two of you. I heard tell that the Lords of Time were powerful telepaths; that they could destroy your mind with a glance. We couldn't attack until we knew your true strength."
"And that's where you came in. You and Terrin. What did he know about you?"
The Doctor was a good several inches away from Meeka now.
She didn't notice. "That I rescued him from a punchbowl. The wonderful thing about Terrin is that he really is as stupid as he seems. He fell in line perfectly, and the plan went off as planned. I kept track of you and followed you back to the hotel. Once we knew where you were—in one of our controlled buildings, no less—it was easy enough to reprogram the service droids to redirect all the occupants to another hotel due to a 'system breakdown'. Within the hours you spent in your rooms recovering from our drugs, we cleared the hotel, and then I had Terrin book the two of us in. All I had to do then was wait."
"How did you know that we'd be stopping by your floor?" Ace asked. The Doctor was almost a safe distance away from Meeka.
She laughed. "I didn't. I'd finally convinced that idiot Terrin to go and check on the service droid and I thought I'd see you in the lobby. Imagine my surprise when my quarry came to me! The two of you were so helpful, too." She grinned, and her voice took on a mockery of the light, syrupy tones she'd used previously. "Befriending the two helpless natives, leading them to safety on your incredible ship. And even providing me with a power source to replace the one you took away." Her smile seemed to imply that she expected to be praised, or at least congratulated for a hand well-played. "The best assistants a girl could ask for, on top of a perfectly executed plan," she said.
"But not your plan, I think," the Doctor said. Ace had the momentary fear that Meeka would realize just how far from her he'd moved, but she seemed preoccupied.
Her eyes had gone to the dead man. "No. Not mine."
"Whose, then?" Ace asked, wanting her attention back before they ran out of luck. "Who do you owe so much that you'd be willing to risk your world?"
Meeka continued to gaze at the body on the floor. Her voice was so soft that Ace took another step towards the workspace just to hear. "He was my family," she said. Then her eyes snapped up and saw Ace, who stopped moving instantly. Meeka stepped in close to the Doctor, grabbed him by the arm, jerked him close and eliminated his safety zone. She pushed the gun closer to his head. "He was my uncle. And I'm not risking the planet. Uncle Eneidro was meticulous in his calculations. The initial ripples of space/time distortion will pass once the mirror is fully engaged."
"That's not possible," the Doctor said.
"All our projected data—"
"Is useless. You're children playing with a loaded gun. You think you understand, but you couldn't possibly."
Meeka's pretty face twisted into something ugly in her anger. "You'd best hope you're wrong about that," she said. "Because the last thing I did before you walked in was to lock in the program. The mirror will open in . . ." she glanced at a readout, "a little less than one minute. There's nothing you, I, or anyone else can do about that."
As far as Ace could tell, that left them with a very small window of opportunity; small, like one last desperate shot. If the mirror activated then they'd lose the world and themselves with it. The Doctor seemed to be in accord, because she could see he was tensing for one final lunge for the computers. That made Ace's priority clear: stop him getting shot by Meeka in the process.
"So!" she called, loud and forceful; enough to make Meeka startle and look jittery. "What should we call you now? You can't tell us Meeka's your real name." Her hand stole towards a sonic grenade she'd packed. Gallifreyan hearing registered higher up the scale than a human's did, but it was also more resilient to damaging sounds. If Ace was lucky, this would hurt only Meeka. And Ace herself, of course, though she'd experienced worse. The Doctor's eyes caught the subtle movement and he started edging away what few inches he could get from Ace's target. She kept talking, giving the Doctor time, but wasn't really thinking much about what she was saying. "You seem like a proper sort of Bond villain, telling us your whole plan and all. Which, by the way, seems like terrible planning on your part. We won't be impressed and you come off as a bit daft. Still, high marks and a nice name for trying, right? So what do you want? Dr. No? Scaramanga? How about Ernst Blofeld? I was always partial to him myself."
Meeka's gun moved, pointing now towards Ace for that critical second. Even as the girl demanded to know what she was talking about, Ace's hand moved lightning-quick. The grenade was out of its pouch and armed in less than a second, and then it was airborne. Ace's fingers were in her ears, knowing that this would hurt, but not nearly as badly as it would hurt the unprepared Meeka.
To Meeka's credit, she actually got off a shot before it hit. Ace felt the impact over her heart, but her breast pocket's shielding capability worked against the outside as well as the inside, so the blast dissipated before it could detonate anything on her. Nothing left but a small, blackened patch of fabric.
Then the grenade detonated not with a bang, but with a blast of pure sound. Meeka fell as though pole-axed, but the Doctor, who had also managed to get his hands over his ears didn't respond to the sound at all. Ace felt one of her fingers encounter a warm wetness. She'd probably torn her eardrum on that side, but it was a small price to pay. Especially since Meeka's blaster was now lying flat on the ground. Ace dashed forward, knowing she had to reach the blaster before Meeka could recover her wits enough to get there first. The Doctor was running, too, but for the computer console.
Ace dived and rolled, catching up the blaster and training it on Meeka. The girl had collapsed next to the body of her uncle, moaning. Behind her, Ace heard the clicks of the Doctor's fingers punching in commands.
The hum from the mirror became louder, more of a pulse than something steady. Ace didn't turn, but she called over her shoulder, "Work fast!"
The Doctor didn't respond, but the snarl she heard from his general direction told her it wasn't going well.
Meeka's eyes were large as saucers. She wasn't even looking at Ace. Rather, she was looking at something beyond her. At the mirror. "Oh," she whispered, her vocal tonality off, as though she was speaking without being able to hear herself. Given the close-quarters detonation of a sonic grenade, that was quite likely. "Isn't it lovely? Uncle Eneidro said it would be lovely."
Ace wondered if something in Meeka hadn't snapped sometime during the night. Then again, Meeka had probably been cracked for a very long time. She was just good at covering it up.
The pulse became stronger, and Ace felt it reverberating in her chest.
"No," the Doctor said. "I refuse to accept that!"
"Accept what?" Ace shouted.
"This blasted computer! It's . . . no, that's not possible. I entered the abort commands and every override. That is categorically not possible!"
She had to see. Meeka was no threat in her present condition, and—Ace turned.
The mirror was a solid sheet of cascading color. Beyond, within the containment canister, the artron energy glowed a radiant gold. Without even realizing it, Ace moved to the Doctor's side. He worked furiously at the console, but her eyes, like Meeka's, were fixed on the mirror.
"Aha!" the Doctor said. "There's the subroutine that's been blocking me. Now, all I have to do is—"
In an instant, the color and light playing across the mirror was gone. There was nothing but darkness within the ring. And it was moving. Ace couldn't see it, but she could feel it in her bones. Not one Shadowman but thousands, millions all clustered together, standing on the other side of the membrane. They stood and watched, and their hands moved like a current. They were reaching out, stretching to touch a world that wasn't their own.
"No," the Doctor whispered. "Oh, no."
Ace's throat went dry and she understood the inescapable reality of the situation. She and the Doctor had failed. The Shadowmen were about to come through.