Yep, this is late. Two days, in fact, which means I'm doing even worse than I thought I was. The next chapter will be on schedule, I promise, for any of you that are actually invested in this story. (And yes, I'm painfully aware that I've spent over a month on a single episode. Yes, I realize my word count is abysmal. I have no excuse, and if, by some miracle, anyone is still reading, I thank you with all my heart and simultaneously apologize for my laziness.) So, this is it. The next chapter. At the moment I am typing this I have virtually no idea what it will contain, but I am fairly certain that it will involve an original child character whom I love very deeply not getting the development that she deserves. xox
Chance was retrieving supplies before the alarm went off.
"Well," She said to herself, "That sounds about right," And stole a bag full of bright green liquid from an IV stand that no one seemed to be using.
When she returned to intensive care, the first thing she noticed was that it had been swarmed. The catwalks were lined with people in hospital gowns, all crammed into the limited space and gazing deliriously around as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing. Could the patients have gotten here so quickly? Chance didn't think so. She hadn't seen anyone heading this way in the chaos of the alarm bells, and yet here they all were. Was she missing something?
Ah yes, now she saw. The rows and rows of doors had been thrown open, and now their contents were roaming free.
Lovely, she thought, but then, it was too early for the Doctor to have executed their carefully constructed plan, wasn't it? A closer look, and she could see the sickly hue of the prisoners' skin, the scars and boils that marred and obscured their faces. Someone (and she wasn't saying who – it could have been any paper-thin ego-maniac in a stolen body) had released the people, still half-dead and riddled with disease, to terrorize and infect their captors. Chance gave the room a psychic once-over before she backed away. Empty of Time Lords, it seemed, and humans, although the flesh's signature was similar enough that she could have been wrong. She felt the residual energy of something newly dead, too, and she couldn't help but wonder – before she shivered and ran back out into the hall.
You shouldn't worry, she told herself, because she could feel the tickle in the back of her mind that meant another Gallifreyan was out there, and the Doctor wasn't nearly that easy to kill.
Except when he had been, on that satellite, when the Daleks attacked. He had been awfully easy to kill then, hadn't he? But that was different. He wasn't going to let it happen again.
Chance wished that her hearts would stop thudding inside her chest.
She reached out towards that tickle, knowing fully well that it was out of her reach, and started to follow it, down, and down, and down some more until, with some trepidation, she realized that she was nearing Cassandra's lair.
She was close enough, now, that she could nudge at the Doctor's iron-clad psychic walls, and feel them relax at her touch. Some relief seeped through, and concern, that Chance appeased slightly with a promise that she knew what had happened and she was safe. They arranged a meeting place, and the Doctor chewed her out for not telling him about Cassandra, and they separated and started to head back up.
Chance looked up at the stairs she'd just run down and considered how many stories she'd have to climb. She sighed.
She hadn't made it halfway when she found her way barred by a group of patients in white hospital gowns.
"Save us," Said one, and reached an arm towards her.
Chance took a step back, both to stay well out of range of the infected, and as an instinctual reaction to the misery that radiated off of these people in waves.
"Please," Said a girl who looked upsettingly like Rose. Chance backed away again, feeling more regretful this time.
"I'm sorry," She said, and was hit by pain redoubled as the infected seemed to melt slightly from hopelessness, screaming in agony in their disease-fogged minds.
"I'm really –" Chance nearly fell backwards as the one that looked like Rose surged towards her, sobbing.
"We suffer," She insisted.
"I know," Said Chance, and wished that she could stop talking for once. Her eyes darted around, alighting on the nearest door and she made a break for it. She turned, once she had closed it, and made to shut the lock, only to realize that there wasn't a lock and that she had wasted almost two seconds of valuable escaping time. So she ran.