Chapter 14: Plan A

The Doctor squirmed, fidgeting in his place. He could feel a presence, something shifting in the area. But it wasn't like when the fellow prisoner had entered, no – it was much more comfortable, used to the experience.

'Is the mission accomplished?' came the voice, presumably asking the presence.

'Negative,' the presence replied. 'Psychic attack left weakened state.'

'Perhaps a cup of tea will help?' the Doctor chortled, grinning as much as possible.

'Silence.'

'Sorry. Do carry on.'

'Who remains?'

'Target third.'

'Target third? What sort of grammar is that?!' the Doctor tried to shout. A supposed jolt of pain was fired at him, having as little an effect as he had planned. By this point, the X almost definitely knew how useless it was – most likely just pent-up irritation.

'Heal energy components,' the voice decided 'then retry mission.'

'Oh, I see!' the Doctor said 'This is your Pitbull, then? Attack dog? You choose a target and this acts for you?'

'Silence.'

'Make me.'

The voice didn't reply. The Doctor waited for a couple of seconds, taking slow, precise breaths. The silence cloaked the area completely.

'Ah! Can't, can you?' the Doctor asked, more amused than curious at this point. 'Human minds may be simple enough for you to decipher, but a Gallifreyan, especially one as finely-tuned as mine? It's a game of psychic chess, and I've got all the pieces!'

'What's happening?' the other man said, lost in the fog of the debate.

'Human minds…' the voice repeated, almost matching the Doctor tone-for-tone and beat-for-beat.

'Doctor?'

'Simple enough…'

Most likely too late, the Doctor finally released what was happening.

'No, no, don't!' he shouted, trying desperately to resist, move, anything. 'I'll stop!'

'Decipher…'

The man started to shout, discordant, erratic, staccato stabs of sound in the silence.

'Every creature has a weakness, Doctor. Some physical, some…otherwise. Even you. Empathy. It is your base desire to protect all living things, is it not?'

'Yes, yes, yes! You win! Leave him alone!'

The shouts grew louder, with each scream becoming longer and longer. Soon, they developed into a single howl, burning through the Doctor's ears.

'You can be impervious, Doctor, but that does not mean that you cannot be wounded. As long as your…co-prisoner is within our grasps, we have a hold on you.'

The screams stopped. The Doctor, with baited breath, waited for the response from the man. Seconds passed…more and more…then it finally came.

'What…what was that?' the man whimpered, shivering from the strain. 'I…I tried to imagine it wasn't there, forget it…but it didn't work. It didn't disappear, or fade, or anything!'

'The pain before was stimulation, just…playing with the nerve endings.' the Doctor explained slowly, making sure that he fully understood it himself. 'But this, it was…'

'Psychic destruction.' the voice finished proudly. 'Instead of the manipulation of a temporal presence in the mind, it simply removes it.'

'What does it mean?'

'It was destroying your mind. The effects may still be felt.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Where did you go to school?'

'I…I can't remember.' A beat. 'Why can't I remember?!'

'The creature, it removed the memories from your mind. They should return in due course.'

'If you rebel again, then the few memories remaining will perish into dust and time.' the voice warned, like a slave-driver chiding its herd. 'It will be swift and soon, but it won't be painless. Is this understood?'

'…Yes.' the Doctor sighed wearily in defeat. 'I understand.'

'Good. Proceed with the plan. Heal.'

The entity started to bubble and churn, mixing and mashing with the area around it. Energy shifted up, down, around and through the Doctor, as if he was a buoy in the middle of a tsunami. The whole time, he could feel a nagging sense of worry, that elsewhere across the board, the game wasn't go quite according to plan.

Naomi rang the phone for the fifth time in a row. Naturally, she wasn't any more optimistic than she was the last four times, but she didn't have much else to do.

Well, that wasn't quite true. There was still that matter of the book to finish…and the doctor's appointment to book…and the shopping to put away…

She shook her head, clearing the thoughts for a second. Raising the phone, she tapped in 1-4-7-1 one last time, and heard the dial tone hum through the speaker.

There was a thought, just at the back of her head, that she'd forgotten something. Something very big, and very important, but it wasn't there. The last hour or so of her life was foggy, the details all blurred and blended and swapped around. A man called Smith had entered her flat, wanting to talk to her about the book. A few minutes later, he walked over to the balcony and jumped off. Frankly, it was all rather mystifying.

After waiting with the dial tone for 30 seconds, she gave up and hung up the phone. If they weren't answering by now, they were probably out. Give it a few hours then try again.

All she wanted to do was ask about the last conversation they'd had, possibly clear up a few details. She had the vague recollection of calling someone, or someone calling her, but the actual words were still eluding her. Like it was really a dream she'd just woken up from.

Perhaps it was a dream, after all. There was no sign of this Smith on the pavement outside her building, no evidence of him every being here inside the apartment. And she was rather prone to nodding off in the middle of the day – a side effect of working to the small hours then waking up at seven regardless.

Absent-mindedly, she started to put the shopping away. She preferred to make frequent, light trips to the shop, partially because it was less to haul up the stairs and partly because it gave her a distraction from the writing every couple of days.

As she grabbed the bottle of milk and slotted it into the fridge, she started to run through the events of the last hour mentally for the umpteenth time. He had come in, discussed the book, and then jumped off of the balcony. Pausing for a second, Naomi frowned. Surely her book wasn't that bad, was it?

What exactly had they discussed, then? The plot, the characters, the reception, what? Naomi racked her brains, as she put the tin of salmon in the cupboard. It was pretty much par for the course for her to forget a conversation; it just so happened that most people she talked to possessed that uncanny ability to speak for ages in a monotonous, uninterrupted drone, without a single one of the words being remembered afterwards.

Naomi crumpled up the plastic bag, the shopping completely away now. She tucked the bag inside the cupboard under the sink, before stopping to think. There was a nagging sense in her mind, eating away at the doubts, as if her memory was shouting at her – no! It wasn't a dream! Come on, remember! Remember!

It was no good. She couldn't force herself to remember, no matter how much she wanted. It was like trying to shove a brick through a sieve within either one breaking. The sides of her head were starting to throb, the early symptoms of a killer headache.

All she'd do know is give herself a migraine.

In defeat, she looked up and down the kitchen, inspecting the stock. She needed sugar, and teabags. Grabbing the notepad from the counter, she started to make a list – or rather, continue the one she already had. Milk, she already had that; she put a cross next to it.

She paused, staring at the list, or more accurately, the cross she'd just written. X. And like a punctured dam, it started to rush back into her mind, like an unstoppable flow of water. Furiously, she started to scrawl onto the paper, with frantic joy: X. Green. Door. Mist. Round. Memory.

It was a crude, jagged list of facts, but it served its purpose well enough. Not only could she remember, she now had a list, something to remind her constantly.

A white-hot pain stabbed in her head, prompting her to grimace and clutch it, letting the notepad drop to the floor. A flash of green filled her eyes, before fading after a few seconds.

She stood up. The pain had vanished, any effect of it absent. What had brought it on?

Confused, she padded back into the living room, her foot knocking against the notebook. It slid underneath the fridge, knocking against the wall. Lost.

In a trance, Naomi picked up the two lukewarm mugs of tea, carrying them back into the kitchen. Maybe she just needed a lie-down…

'Do you know what a firewall is?' the Doctor asked, biting into the words. 'An earth term, but it's a common enough concept. It's something used in computers, programming, to be precise. Something my friend Mel was telling me about. When you want to protect the software of a computer, you put up a firewall, and it acts as a shield. Keeps out any nasty little viruses.'

'Irrelevant.'

'If you so say. Because you act like a virus, don't you?' the Doctor continued regardless 'Hacking into people's memories, changing what they think, or feel, or remember. A nasty little procedure, if you ask me. But you seem to be forgetting; just before you interrupted me, I was able to psychically link with Miss Redfern. Give her just a little bit of an advantage over you.'

'Irrelevant.'

'So when you left, you would've tried to wipe her memory, correct? What if the memories had already been backed up? The potential remained for the whole, the potential for remembrance.'

'Irrelevant.'

'But you've left her alone. You've only got one attack mode, and you can only use that one at a time…not so omnipotent. And what if she remembers? Writes it down, tells a friend about it? The word could spread faster than a wildfire, and you'll have no way of stopping it, will you? Are you going to devour the entire human race? Or just the side that's listening?'

'Irrelevant.'

'Irrelevant?! This could just about be the single most important factor to your entire plan, and you're calling it irrelevant?!'

'Irrelevant.'

'Oh, I see. It's part of your plan, isn't it? You already know all of this, don't you? That's why it's irrelevant; there's nothing new. You've planned ahead…'

'Irrelevant.'

'…which means that there's nothing I can do. You knew I was going to put up the firewall. She can't remember, can she?' The Doctor groaned. 'At least that means that she's safe. You won't go for her.'

'The risk is still present,' the voice answered, almost bored in its tone. 'No matter how small. In time, she will be destroyed.'

'No…' the Doctor murmured, as a thought sprang into his head. 'No…she's too small. She's a risk, but a small one. If you were to take the time out to stop every individual threat, you'd never get anything done.'

'Irrelevant.'

'I can hardly think of anything more relevant at the moment! In a game of chess, the pawns can count more than the queen! Any player worth their salt knows that. She matters, and you've realised that. One fell swoop?'

'You shall cease talking.'

'Shall I?' Another futile jolt of pain. 'I'm not getting out of here anytime soon…might as well pass the time.'

The area shifted another time, contracting and releasing a couple of times.

'Making a move, are we?' the Doctor asked, trying to ignore the energy swarming. 'Going for the kill?'

'Silence.'

'That's a yes, then. But who are you going for? The rook? The knight? The bishop?'

The voice shouted back, joining in the game: 'The king!'

In the middle of the English countryside, there was a field. It had stood there since the planet's dawn, uninterrupted, slowly growing its kingdom of plants and life. Until now.

It started to churn, the ground sinking into itself like sink-water being sucked down the grain. However, it stopped before it disappeared, a dip in the unbroken landscape. A black void materialized in the centre of the field, completely devoid of shape, light, anything.

The grass surrounding it remained immaculate, perfectly still, as if not even a breeze was in the air. The tree curved in the air, the arched wood unaware of the strange events happening around it.

As the field started to slowly right itself, the black circle vanished, the foliage healing over the wound. Moments later, it was normal again, as if the bizarre spectacle had never even occurred.

A green mist had formed over what remained of the black hole, and it grew more translucent as the hole shrank into nothingness. A large green circle hovering above the field, before the internal red orb and forest of legs formed, completing the appearance.

It held a solitary red orb in its belly, the others having been emptied into the consciousness during the healing cycle. The essences of the victims would become a part of the entity, like a prey becomes the food in the stomach of the predator.

It fluttered its limbs, gliding across the field towards its new target. It had failed once. It was imperative that it didn't fail again.

'Leave them alone!' the man shouted, although he wasn't quite sure in which direction. 'Just shut up!'

The Doctor laughed in response, attempting to put up a veneer of softness.

'They can hurt me, you know!' the man added, letting loose his anger. 'Not you, no, you're alright! I'm the one who's going to suffer!'

'If my plan works…' the Doctor whispered 'then no-one will have suffered at all.' If either of them had a corporeal form at that moment, he would've winked conspiratorially. But alas, he had to make do with the warm tone of voice.

'Has your pet left, then?' the Doctor asked the voice. 'Been sent after its next prey?'

'The plan will proceed.'

'That's good to hear…' muttered the Doctor in response. 'The black moves are just as important as the whites.'

'What?!'

'Have you ever heard the saying 'playing chess against a pigeon'?'

'No?'

'Ah. Neither have I. I was rather hoping you could explain it to me…Perhaps I will, soon enough…'

As the sun set over London, 6.5 million people went to sleep. Some ventured out into the urban jungle; others awoke, ready for the various night shifts; some lay awake in bed, crying out for the grasp of sleep to consume them.

Naomi stood on her balcony, watching the amber horizon fade into deep cobalt and azure. Shivering slightly, she wrapped her dressing gown around her a little tighter, before taking another medicinal sip of the cocoa.

She'd spent the last few hours racking her brain, trying to remember whatever it was that she had to remember. After finally surrendering the battle, she'd left a notepad by her bed, and decided to rather literally sleep on it. After a few years of writing, she'd learned that her best ideas come at the most inconvenient of times.

Draining the last of the cocoa from the mug, she stepped back inside, sliding the balcony door shut. Rinsing the mug out in the kitchen sink, she walked through the bedroom.

She slept a dreamless sleep.