Silver and white scalloped walls leapt upwards from the floor, mother-of-pearl surfaces shimmering as they merging seamlessly above the old man, this Doctor, as he followed Sil into the chamber. Little did the Doctor know that he was being watched, his every move and expression monitored. In fact, he was sure the Doctor was fully aware of it, but just couldn't be bothered to take it into account.
The old man was like all the others in so many ways, and yet…
He had changed so much.
The hair was silver, the eyes beady and wet amid the wrinkles and waxen skin. It was obvious as he stared about him that he realized that this vast room had not been there only minutes before. The man peered and poked at the nearest crenulated surfaces, the jewelled ring on his knobbly fingers sparked a striking azure against the frosted white surface of the wall. His fingers tenderly caressed the surface, as if feeling its pain from when the gel had first frozen into place, trembling and cracking against the hard blows dealt by the vacuum and solar radiation outside.
Shrugging off his scientific curiosity as if it were an irritating gnat, the Doctor approached Sil once more, stopping to tower over the clutch of plush cushions that sagged and wilted under the damp, reptilian form. "I fail to see how you managed to convince your Triumverate of the profitability of this venture…"
"Profitability?" Sil waved a bit of speelsnape about in emphasis, the miniature, mucus dripping corpse only centimetres from the Doctor's face. "There's nothing unprofitable about it, Doctor!" Sil's voice lingered in the syllables 'Doc' and 'Tor', his syrupy green eyes probing the Doctor's own, as if searching for something… revulsion? Treachery? Recognition perhaps? "Low over head, cheap labour, pristine goods…"
"Yes, yes,yes…." The Doctor parried and blocked the proffered dead creature with a waggling finger, forcing Sil to eventually chomp on the snape in agitation. "All very good, this antiques smuggling, right under Their very noses… very neat trick with the soil… entangled particles I assume, instantaneously swapping one place for the other… Pedomantry indeed! Nothing could seem lower tech, and yet you'd need a very strong grasp of quantum cohesion… yet an instant matter transmitter… and no one's the wiser, with a certain amount of flair of course…"
Sil sneered, motioning for his slaves to moisten him with scented sprays of mineralized water. "That was not my idea…"
"Mmmmm?"
At that moment, the door to the council room opened and Bainswick skulked in, his normally cocky form was dishevelled, his clothes askew, appearing to be nursing a massive hangover.
"Ah… yes," the Doctor hoisted his own lapels as if bracing himself before a particularly troublesome pupil, "the rocket man…"
"Well?" Sil barked, the light on his translator sputtering will his slavering syllables.
Bainswick shook his head slowly, his eyes pressed shut, evidently wishing he were somewhere else, far, far away.
The Doctor must have sniffed something afoul in the air between them, for his eyes gleamed bright and his head spun back to Sil's. "Well? Well, what? What have you been up to? What have you done with Barbara, eh?"
Sil hissed ominously, but said nothing. His stunted, writing tail, however, spoke volumes.
Before the Doctor could press further, Bainswick's gravely voice spat out something equivalent to: "She's fine." Along with some thick, sporadic cursing.
The Doctor examined Bainswick with a quick eye and dealt him an amused snort before pressing on. "So you covertly extract merchandise from a specific era, unobtrusively, and then sell on the goods…"
Sil was typing numbers into a monitor, nodding when needed, but otherwise ignoring the Doctor who began to pace the chamber, occasionally examining the thick crystal pillars that stabbed up from the floor in irregular intervals. Their uneven, squat forms jutted to a stop just above the man's eye height, the thick crystalline walls obscured the details of the creatures trapped within, but not their number, or their writhing movement.
"That much I'd already worked out," the Doctor said in a tone that was not quite convincing, apparently ignoring the contents of the pillars for now, "but as for the seller… the seller… they'd have to be time-active, otherwise they'd have no idea of the importance of genuine era artefacts to buyers... who must also surely be in the future…but if these sellers, if they can time travel, they've certainly no need for you… unless of course, you are time active as well?" The Doctor's voice also failed to hide the horror of this thought.
Sil's claw, its slick, mottled green and brown skin textured like that of a rotting leaf, pawed at the air in disinterest. "We were commissioned, simple audit and tracking to manage and assess… we'll be returned by the client once we've completed acquisition and inventory. I must compile my expense report..."
The Doctor's eyes flashed around the room in irritation, coming to rest for a moment on my own. They held mine for a long moment, more time than he'd paid attention to me in my entire life, yet unable to grasp the context of my gaze, his darted away quickly, like a butterfly caught by a sudden breeze.
"Speaking of profitability, Doctor," said Sil at last, somehow seeming to savour the man's name for once, as if the creature finally accepted, as I just had, that this Doctor had not yet encountered us before. "You said you could help… in exchange for your lives, to protect us from the Time Lords."
At the question I noticed the Doctor's head snap sharply down, as if searching for a diversion, and finding a pillar by his feet. "Mmmm? Yes, yes of course. I can help you… of course I can. Shielding, of course, for your generators, I've got some ideas on that… and as for your little smoke and mirrors show down below… Now then, what's this?" He pressed his face closer to the surface and the smothered, squirming creatures within. "Or should I say who is this?
There was a clank, as the something within slammed against the region closest to the Doctor's face. He jerked backwards, dignity momentarily abandoned, before he adjusted himself and glowered heavily at the offensive wall.
"E-nough!" Sil's fist slammed into the cushioned armrest, sending up spurts of goo and green mist. "Enough talk! Tell me where your transport is or you will die!"
The Doctor refused to turn, refused to acknowledge the outburst, speaking quietly to the crystalline pillar instead. "Die, will I? I doubt that very much, very much indeed."
It was evident that Sil heard the words, yet silence sat and squirmed in the air between them, seeming to heat the dry, frigid air of the moon base.
Even I, standing safe by my comrades along the wall, felt a flush burning up along my skin with the tension that seemed to make the air shiver with its invisible friction.
"Doctor," Sil began slowly. "I do hope you realize that with or without you or your ship, the profit margins on this venture alone outweigh any benefits you or your possesions could provide… and the client already has transtemporal capability… so you see, you don't seem to realize that this time I-don't-care what your answer is."
I was watching closely and I saw the Doctor's back stiffen as he caught Sil's verbal slip, and for the first time I saw uncertainty seize hold of the Doctor's features and pull them tight, as realization seemed to dawn that, not only had he lost the upper hand, but that he'd never, in fact, had it.
Fear is a wonderful, terrible, thing to watch as it devours a living thing, encompassing every pore, inhabiting every muscle, every sinew, every throbbing vein, spreading instantly throughout the body like a toxin.
For me, to watch a Time Lord sweat in its invisible grip was simply exhilarating.
