Chapter 13 Partners in crime
"It's affecting the world."
A captain arrived to inform The Doctor of the current situation.
"Enemy is now accelerating their plans. We will need to fire the missiles soon." She spoke with conviction.
"What about the rest of the world? We can't take down the satellites before the other cities can get their power back." Oscar argued.
"We need to stop them; either the United Kingdom becomes the last beacon of hope or the whole world goes dark."
"It's midnight in the East and if they lose all their power, they'll be defenceless. Most countries in Europe are approaching night too."
"Rose, what do you think?"
"I don't know. If they steal the power from the rest of the world to launch an attack what chance do we have to fight back?"
"It's the only way" the captain said.
"No, it isn't." The Doctor paused from his deep thought and a fierce determined look was clear on his face. He sprung up and took his overcoat.
"Where are you going?"
"To stop them." The Doctor stormed off and out of UNIT.
"What should we do?"
"Keep analysing the water and find an antidote for it. I'll inform the scientists from UNIT and MI9. They may be able to help us develop some sort of antidote." Frank gave his instructions headed off.
"What's the use? The world's ending" Carrie was hopeless.
"If we manage to get out of this, we still need to cure the people." Rose convinced Carrie to keep her faith. "There is still The Doctor, he's our only hope. Our sole hope."
"I knew he was on our side. You lot didn't trust him!" Carrie was glad she remained faithful despite the suspicions.
"I guess I'm wrong about him. My judgement isn't the greatest especially with a family like mine." Oscar admitted. "Even then, I don't want to stand around and do nothing. What if he fails?"
"Well, I can access the UNIT files here. Maybe we can find out more about the aliens." Rose immediately stationed herself on the computer and Oscar and Carrie joined her. "There are hundreds of aliens here."
"Wow, never knew we've discovered that many aliens." Carrie commented as Rose scrolled down.
"And they've never told us" said Oscar. "I can't believe they kept so much a secret."
"Maybe it's for the right reason."
"Look at those names. Click on Racnoss, that name sounds cool." Rose hesitantly clicked on the file and displaying a huge red spider on screen who happened to be the Empress.
"That is one ugly thing. If the royal family of that planet is that ugly, God knows how ugly the rest of them are" Carrie commented.
"We need to get back to what's important." Oscar was about to snatch the mouse from Rose.
"Slitheen are calcium based life forms...Infiltrated the Downing Street, nearly succeeded in stealing all nuclear codes. They were responsible for the Earthquake in Cardiff... They were stopped by the Doctor?" Rose read.
"It seems that he is an expert alien fighter." Carrie pointed out. "Click on the Doctor." They arrived to a classified page showing only a brief sentence and a picture.
"Time Lord is actually a race. And we didn't believe him when he told us" said Rose.
"That's ridiculous, how can you just call yourself a time lord?" Carrie asked.
"What if he can time travel?" Rose asked, excited by the idea.
"Normally I would say that's impossible but given what we've seen today, anything's possible." Oscar admitted jokingly.
"Whatever he is, he's saved Earth so many times." Rose said. She eventually clicked back on the Slitheen page and everyone read the information.
"How do we tell who's a Slitheen or not? They could be anyone."
"I guess we'll have to have a load of vinegar ready." Oscar joked.
"We could always make a gadget which could help us identify a Slitheen disguised as a human." Carrie suggested.
"I'm sure Frank's going to have some gadgets ready for us" Oscar said.
"Yes, if you were a Slitheen, you'd be trying to find a way to stop us from getting our power back." Rose said.
"And you'd try to stop us from taking out the satellites and also us from developing the antidote."
"Which means, they might be in this building?"
"Did I hear someone mention gadgets?"
"Frank!" They finally acknowledged Frank's presence despite him listening for the last few minutes.
"I heard your good thinking team and you'll need these." Frank took out two gadgets. "This is a living calcium detector. You can detect any disguised Slitheen within a 50m radius. Also these, asthma pumps which sprays vinegar with very concentrated acetic acid."
"Cool" Carrie and Oscar said picked up the gadgets. Oscar pointed his detector at Frank.
"What are you doing?"
"Just checking it works" Oscar joked. "We'll look around to see if there's any Slitheen in the building"
"What about me?" Rose asked.
"Well, first I want you to get to the medical department, help them out, and see if they've come up with an antidote."
"Ok Frank"
The Doctor on the other hand, had flown his TARDIS to the Slitheen ship. He was wondering and he looked around at the buttons. After spraying himself with a perfume he gave a funny look at the bottle.
"Blimey, I can't believe I'm wearing this" He then placed the perfume away.
Sneakily, he looked around at the ship and out of the window he saw Earth. He then heard footsteps and quickly hid to the side of the room. The aliens decided to take a break by looking at Earth. The Slitheen were talking amongst themselves with no knowledge of The Doctor's presence.
"Soon, this planet will finally be ours. Every human will be our slaves and soon we will sell this barren planet."
"We'll get enough money to go back to our home world and seize power again."
The Doctor continued hiding and eventually stepped too heavily.
"Who's there?"
"What?"
"I heard something."
"I can't smell anything. It's probably just the fuel pipes in the ship."
The Slitheen walked out allowing The Doctor to come back out in the open. He continued inspecting and stopped, almost as if he's had an idea.
Meanwhile Rose got to the medical department. There were three scientists from MI9 and they seemed to be analysing some elite SKUL agents which Rose was surprised to see.
"I don't get it. He's heartbeat is so slow and he barely blinks." A scientist was analysing the agent. "It's almost as if he's been hypnotised."
Rose approached the agent with caution with analyse him and immediately agreed to the scientist.
"Have you done any tests on them?"
"Yes, he seems to be a lot healthier than the average person."
"Can I see?" Rose was handed the data. After a while she had reached a conclusion. "His water levels are high and his nervous system is so sharp yet there's barely any activity from the brain. Oh my God, what if he's being controlled from the particles in the water?"
"That could be a possibility. How about we try the antidote, if he wakes up from hypnosis then the water is the culprit." The scientist suggested as Rose got her pencil communicator out.
"Guys, I've just been analysing a SKUL agent. It looks like he's been hypnotised by the water."
"Hypnotised by water? How's that even possible?" Carrie asked.
"I don't know but that water is inside every human in the country and all around the world. It's even inside us."
"Are you sure it's the water?" Oscar was concerned.
"It's a possibility. I don't see how it could be anything else. We're about to use the antidote on him to see if it is. What about your side?"
"Nothing much, we haven't detected any Slitheen at all." Oscar replied as they entered the UNIT missile control room. The room had a huge screen with about ten workers working on the computers. They were stopped by two soldiers who were completely emotionless.
"Do you have any business here?" one asked.
"Nope, just looking around, admiring your base." Oscar came up with an excuse and the soldiers got back inside. He then looked at his detector. "No Slitheen here"
Rose was about the give the elite SKUL agent the antidote but then suddenly the two other scientists in the room halted her.
"Not yet." One shouted.
"We know it works. You don't have to prove yourself." The other tried to convince.
"I'm not proving to myself, I just want to prove that the antidote works." Rose was nevertheless about to inject the antidote on him.
"No you really don't" The scientists began opening their zips and a blue glow shone. Out came two 8 foot tall Slitheen. Rose and the scientist screamed while the elite SKUL agent stayed emotionless. In that instant, Oscar and Carrie received a transmission of Rose's scream.
"She's in trouble" Oscar declared and both agents rushed off to help her. They ran through the stairs looking at signs, desperate to get to Rose.
"Rose, hang on we're coming."
Rose and the scientist merely moved and they backed off as far as they could while the Slitheen taunted them.
"You humans are pathetic. Trying to stop us is pathetic. If your technology was better we would have purchased it but I guess you're only good for manual labour."
Suddenly Carrie and Oscar kicked down the door and Carrie sprayed vinegar at one of the Slitheen. Immediately it exploded, and the green remains of the alien flew wildly in all directions covering the room. This remaining Slitheen gave out a cry and while the explosion distracted the agents, the alien quickly swung for Carrie sending her flying towards the wall. She was knocked out and the spray was close to the alien's feet as he guarded it. Oscar immediately went to help Carrie while Rose and the human scientist circled the Slitheen like bull leapers in an arena. They targeted the spray and made attempts to retrieve it.
Back in the spaceship, The Doctor was fiddling around until he was detected. He was surrounded by a group of Slitheen.
"We've found an intruder."
"But he doesn't smell of anything."
"Are you sure you're not seeing things?"
"Who are you?"
"He's the Doctor."
"That's me" The Doctor grinned waving his hand at his enemies. "So, another one of those plans to invade Earth. I must say this one's going more successful than the last one." His manner of confrontation was arrogant yet cool.
"And you won't be able to stop us this time. We will take over Earth and..."
"Sell the humans as slaves, yeah, yeah, yeah, the usual. But just one thing, the humans who aren't drugged by your water will fight back. They're not having any of this. Don't expect it to be easy."
"We know but we have a perfect solution for this."
"Really? Because the humans already have worked out how to stop you and that was without me telling them how."
"They're going to destroy our energy receiving satellites, we know. But not without the missiles, we've still got Slitheen infiltrated in the bases ready to kill them all before they could even think about striking back."
"Well, I wouldn't be so sure if I were you." The Doctor sounded confident and he took out his sonic screwdriver. "Because I've got control of your teleport." He aimed his sonic at the buttons he was fiddling with earlier.
Every Slitheen on Earth was teleported back to the ship. At that moment one of the Slitheen was about to strike the defenceless scientist and Rose. He teleported leaving a trail of blue light.
"I've teleported every Slitheen back here." He used his sonic to cause a small electrical explosion.
"You've broken the teleport. We can't get back to Earth"
"Oh yes" he said with immense energy. "And the satellites too, so no more power theft from you."
"That wasn't very wise. Our plans still continue and when our partners get here, Earth will be finished. Now you've made it harder for yourself to escape."
"Kill him, avenge our family!"
"You guys really do hold a grudge. Whoa, before I die, I just want know who your partners are. And tell me why you still need power because I've looking at the power integrated in your ship's system and there's nothing. Surely your ship would be overloaded by now, but where's it all gone? I mean you've got enough power to make a wormhole..." The Doctor delayed his words towards the end of sentence as he was horrified of the possibility of what he had suggested was true.
"You can meet one our partners if you like."
"Yeah, all this talk about your partners, who are they?"
The Doctor turns his head around and he saw a short yet bulky armoured figure stepping into the room out of the shadows. His helmet was circular; he was a Sontaran.