'The Deadly Tower'
3. Shion
"Great," Sophie said as she and the Doctor were frogmarched down a corridor that wouldn't have looked out of place in any office building she'd ever seen, either on television or in real life, by the dark-uniformed goons. "My first alien planet, and I'm under arrest."
"It happens a lot," the Doctor told her. "I'd get used to it, if I were you."
"No talking," one of the guards barked.
Sophie noticed that the name stitched into his uniform read "Saito". His compatriot, equally beefy but much more sullen-looking was named Hoshi. The woman, Shion, had bid them farewell at the conference room in which they'd landed, if glaring at them as they'd been led away could be considered a farewell.
The corridor was carpeted, lit by what looked like fluorescent tubes mounted on the ceiling, and every now and then the wood-panelled was broken by an office door, the nameplates of which Sophie never had time to read. There were plants every now and then against the wall, but other than that, the only notable features were the blue electronic eyes staring down at them as they passed.
Finally, they reached an elevator, and one of their guards, Hoshi, announced that they wanted to go to security.
With a brief sensation of being under pressure as the lift car accelerated, they were off, and it took only a few seconds for them to arrive at their destination. The car halted, and slowed, and then the Doctor and Sophie were escorted from it, into a large, dark room, lit primarily by the glow of computer monitors. Images from the electronic eyes were projected onto the walls, occasionally cycling through different angles.
"Where are we?" Sophie asked.
"My guess?" the Doctor answered, "The police station."
"No talking!" Saito reminded them.
There were several other men and women dressed like Saito and Hoshi at the terminals, though none of them even bothered to look up at either Sophie or the Doctor. Hoshi was talking to someone, a small, balding man, who glanced at the guards' prisoners.
"Process them," the man said simply.
"This way," Saito said, grabbing Sophie roughly and moving her to a door off to the side.
"Get off me!" she growled, but the Doctor killed further protests with a sharp glare.
"Look, miss, you've been found snooping around in restricted areas," Saito said, as threateningly as he can manage. "You're in trouble, and the only thing you can do right now to lessen that trouble is doing exactly as you're told."
The Doctor nodded in support of this statement, as Hoshi guided him after Sophie and Saito.
The door led to a smaller room, floor, ceiling and walls cold metal. The only furnishing was a bare metal table, and the only light source a naked glow panel inset in the ceiling. There was another door, on the wall perpendicular to the door through which they'd entered, and one glowing electronic eye watching them.
"Empty your pockets," Saito ordered, and when Sophie hesitated the Doctor nudged her.
"Do it," he said, and he offered her a small grin. "We'll be fine."
Sophie patted down her pockets, but she realised that she'd left everything in her bag, which was still in her room on the TARDIS. The Doctor, meanwhile, was turning out every pocket in his coat, and there seemed to be a lot of them. A small pile was rapidly growing on the table.
"Mints, dog biscuits, half a spool of copper wire," the Doctor was saying, listing every item he pulled from his coat, one by one. "Sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, mobile phone."
Sophie, herself captivated by this display, was hustled out of the room by Saito, and left alone in a stark white chamber. There wasn't even a glowing blue electronic eye, and when the door shut behind her it seemed to disappear into the wall, leaving nothing but stark, sterile expanses of white.
Then, like the flash of a camera, light overwhelmed her senses for a split second.
"Damn it!" she said, blinking away the purple blotches that now filled her vision, as she felt one of their guards drag her back out of the room. "What the hell was that?"
"Biological scanner," the guard, whom she could now see was Saito, told her. He was looking at a data tablet. "She's clean. No microorganisms we couldn't identify, no bacteria the building can't handle."
"Well, gee, thanks," she said, as Saito read this information to Hoshi.
"He's next," Hoshi said, nodding towards the Doctor. Saito grabbed him, now denuded of all the stuff that had been crammed into the pockets of his coat, and hustled him into the scanner. As the door shut behind the Doctor, Sophie suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable; she realised that without him, she was very much alone on an alien world, surrounded by hostile people, with no way to get home. A few seconds later, Saito announced that he had the data from the Doctor's scan.
"Wow," he muttered, under his breath, as he opened the door and pulled the Doctor out. "You have a lot of explaining to do, mister."
"What?" Sophie piped up. "Why?"
The Doctor looked at her somewhat sheepishly. "Ah, well, you see…"
"He's an alien," Saito interjected.
Sophie felt like the ground had fallen away beneath her feet. An alien? But he looked so human; two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears. The news shocked her, though on an intellectual level she knew it shouldn't; a time machine that looked like a blue box, was bigger on the inside, and was apparently incredibly temperamental… his being an alien wasn't that much of a stretch. Still, she hadn't been expecting it.
"An alien?" Hoshi repeated, his tone echoing Sophie's own disbelief. "He looks human."
"Are you all right?" the Doctor asked Sophie, ignoring the two men.
"I…" she began, shaking her head. "I don't know. You're an alien?"
He nodded.
"We've got to get them to the boss," Saito said, before Sophie could ask any more questions. Hoshi nodded, and moved towards the door.
The Doctor resolutely refused to move, instead putting his hands on Sophie's shoulders. She found herself unable to even look him in the eye; after everything he'd told her, everything they'd been through, how could he have left that vital piece of information out?
"I'll explain everything, I promise," he said, and when she didn't respond he nudged her chin with his hand. "Sophie. I promise."
She nodded.
"Touching," Saito said, sarcasm dripping from each syllable.
Sophie shot the man a glare. "Bugger off."
The Doctor couldn't help laughing, and released Sophie as he stepped over to the table where he'd deposited all of the stuff he'd had in his coat. "We'll be with you in a minute," he said, as he quickly put his possessions away.
"Um, excuse me," Hoshi said, as Sophie joined the Doctor. "You two don't seem to understand how much trouble you're in."
"Oh, no," the Doctor said, quite jovially. "We know exactly how much trouble we're in, don't we Sophie?"
Despite the shock of learning that the Doctor wasn't, in fact, human, Sophie was surprised by how easily she fell in beside him, how easy it was for him to bring a smile to her lips. Chronovorious leeches and living skyscrapers aside, she truly liked the Doctor, and she had no doubt he would, eventually, explain everything to her.
"Yes," she said, even though she knew that she was far out of her depth. "Yes, we do."
The last two weeks had been two of the worst weeks of Shion Yoshioka's life. She'd been born in the hospital on level three hundred of Tower 402. She'd gone to school on level two nineteen. She'd joined the Security Division, and, without or even despite the influence of her mother, she'd risen through the ranks to the head the division.
Her usual work was nothing too intense; occasional thefts, children who wandered onto the lower levels, occasional acts of trespass and vandalism, some assaults, once even a murder. But there'd been nothing like this.
"There's no sign of the missing workers," her assistant Chihiro said.
Shion stood in her office, not far from the security centre. A wide, faux-wooden desk dominated the room, facing a pair of high-backed leather chairs for her guests. A large ceramic Buddha dominated the wall facing the desk, behind which was a floor-to-ceiling window offering an unimpeded view of New Tokyo. Despite the preponderance among her fellow colonists for rice paper panelled walls, she kept her walls plain, the Buddha the only sign of decoration in the otherwise Spartan chamber.
Shaking her head, she took her seat behind her desk. Chihiro was a petite young woman, a fellow lifelong denizen of Tower 402, whose mother and father had both been agricultural specialists. Chihiro herself was a recent graduate, here position as Shion's assistant her first job out of school.
"Twelve people," Shion said through clenched teeth. "Twelve!"
Chihiro bowed her head.
"It's unacceptable," Shion continued. "Do we have any idea where they're going? Or why the computers are failing to register the disappearances?"
Chihiro shook her head. "Chief Nakamura has had no success parsing the software coding." The communicator bracelet on Chihiro's wrist buzzed, interrupting her. Apologising to Shion, she answered the call. A second later, she turned back to her boss. "Officers Saito and Hoshi have finished processing the intruders, ma'am."
Shion sighed. "Bring them in."
Chihiro headed for the door to the office, giving Shion a moment to compose herself. She prided herself on being tough, no-nonsense, but these last two weeks, the twelve missing people, had started to truly wear her down. She glanced into the corner of her office, up to the roof; the glowing blue electronic eye watched her, as it watched every inhabitant of the Tower, every moment of every day. The AI kept track of every person's vital signs, warned the Medical Division if someone, say, went into anaphylactic shock or cardiac arrest… and yet, somehow, one dozen people had simply vanished.
She was brought out of her reverie when Chihiro returned, followed by an extraordinarily tall man wearing a long dark coat, and a much shorter, far more willowy woman. These two were flanked by the familiar figures of Saito and Hoshi, two of her less experienced officers.
It was rare that intruders were hauled into her office for interrogation, but the obviously Caucasian nature of their features made these particular intruders priority one. It was a simple fact that the vast majority of New Tokyo's inhabitants were of east Asian descent; these two were more than likely off-worlders, and given the disappearances, Shion couldn't let anything so suspicious proceed outside of her direct supervision.
"You're dismissed, gentlemen," she said to Hoshi and Saito.
The two officers looked reluctant to leave Chihiro and Shion alone with the intruders, but Shion reached into her desk drawer, and withdrew a compact hold-out blaster, which she placed on the desk before her.
The tall man's eyes narrowed as soon as he saw the weapon, and the woman drew in a quick breath. Shion barely suppressed a smile. She liked it when she managed to properly pull off her opening gambits in interrogations. "I can handle anything our intruders can throw at me," she assured them.
"Yes, ma'am," Hoshi nodded, and he and Saito slipped from the office.
Shion waved the Doctor and Sophie over to her desk. "Sit down, please," she said, offering them a bland smile.
"I'd rather stand," the man answered.
Shion frowned. "This will be a long conversation, sir. It will be much more comfortable for you if you sit down."
The man reached into his coat. Shion's muscles tensed, and she shifted her hand towards the pistol on her desk. Finally, he withdrew something, and tossed it over to Shion.
"Actually, Ms. Yoshioka," he said, and she noticed a slight smirk turning up the corners of his lips, "I think you'll find that our presence in this facility is perfectly authorised, our unannounced arrival part of a scheduled test of your security response and all your questions easily answered."
As Shion picked up the item, what looked to Sophie like a small, battered leather wallet, she leaned over to the Doctor. "What's that?" she whispered.
"Psychic paper," the Doctor answered. At Sophie's confused expression, he waved her off. "I'll explain later."
Sophie rolled her eyes, as Shion finished examining the paper. "You're from Earth Command?"
Chihiro sucked in a shocked breath.
The Doctor smiled. "Indeed we are. As I told you before we were so rudely, um, arrested, I'm the Doctor, and this is Sophie."
"You're a Senior Investigator," Shion said, ignoring the repeated introduction.
Sophie cocked an eyebrow at the Doctor as he said "Yes, I suppose we are."
Shion's apparently passive facial expression was betrayed by the sudden widening of her eyes. "What have you heard?"
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"Everything's under control here," Shion said, standing. "We thank Earth Command for its interest in Tower 402 and the colony of New Tokyo in general, but everything here is fine."
"Well, that's a lie," Sophie said, before she could stop herself. She had always been a pretty good judge of character, and she'd had enough experience dealing with Centrelink employees and university administrators to pick a standard bureaucratic lie.
Shion's attention shifted to the willowy woman. "Excuse me?"
"What my associate means to say," the Doctor said quickly, "is that our remit allows us to examine security and administrative protocols somewhat more closely than we have thus far."
Shion sighed. "We've had trouble with our AI systems. That's all."
"What kind of trouble?" the Doctor pressed.
"We've been losing rack of some of our inhabitants, the subsystems have suffered some power fluctuations, a few elevator troubles," Shion said, though Sophie detected the woman's unease, and she was the sure the Doctor had, too. "The latest software updates have caused a few bugs, but I'm afraid Earth Command is wasting its time sending you out here."
"But ma'am," Chihiro spoke up, only to be silenced by a withering glare from her boss.
"Everything's fine," Shion insisted.
"I'd like to hear what she has to say, if you don't mind," the Doctor said, and turned to the younger woman. "Go on."
Chihiro looked from Shion to the Doctor and back again. Finally, she choked out "We haven't just lost track of the inhabitants. They've disappeared."
The Doctor's eyebrow rose. "Disappeared?"
Chihiro shook her head, apparently refusing to continue. Sophie and the Doctor looked at Shion, who was glaring daggers at the poor girl.
"Ms. Yoshioka!" the Doctor chided. "I presume I don't need to remind you that Earth Command protocols require all colonial staff to tell investigators everything they know; any attempt to withhold information is considered to be perjury."
Shion shook her head. "Fine. My apologies. I'm sure you'll understand, Doctor, when I tell you that my family have lived in and served Tower 402 for three generations now. My own mother is the Administrator, my father, before his death, was chief of the Medical Division. My people are more than capable of handling the problems we are currently facing."
"Apparently not," Sophie said, under her breath.
Luckily, Shion didn't hear her, and she continued. "Twelve employees, ten from the Maintenance Division and two of my own Security Division personnel, have gone missing over the past two weeks."
The Doctor's eyes widened. "Twelve people?"
"More than sixty thousand people live in this tower, Doctor," Shion said, glaring at him. "There is absolutely no evidence that these people have been killed, or even harmed. They are simply not showing up in the AI's systems."
"But the AI should be keeping track of every single inhabitant," the Doctor countered.
"Yes," Shion agreed, "it should. But the AI has been experiencing troubles ever since we got the latest software upgrades, as I just explained. Upgrades, which by the way were not only approved by Earth Command, but mandated for every Lifetime-class Habitation Tower in the galaxy."
"Yes, yes," the Doctor said, waving away her argument, "that's not the point. The point is that twelve people have gone missing, in a tower that run by an artificial intelligence literally designed to never allow a single inhabitant to disappear."
Shion glared once more at Chihiro.
"Don't blame her!" the Doctor snapped. "She did the right thing. You were the one giving me the run around. Now, look. I can help you. Just let me."
Shion stepped out from behind her desk, and made her way over to the Doctor. Though she was much shorter than him, her presence was just as, if not more, intimidating than his; pressing her face close to his, she growled "Now you listen to me. My family was one of the first to settle on New Tokyo. This tower, every single person who lives here… they're important to me. They matter to me. I do not need Earth Command poking around, disrupting their lives. You people have shut down five colonies this year alone."
The Doctor sighed, his stern countenance fading. "I'm not going to shut down your colony. I just want to help you find those people."
Shion blinked. "Why?"
"I'm the Doctor," she said simply, and Sophie felt something in the pit of her stomach. "It's what I do."
Shion was about to say something, when once again Chihiro's wrist communicator buzzed. "What is it?" Shion barked at her, still not entirely over the young woman's inability to contain herself.
"Sorry, ma'am," Chihiro said, still sounding chastised. "Another person has just gone missing from the AI's scanners. It's Chief Nakamura, sir, down on level eighty-seven. He was in hydroponics bay twelve."
Shion's head snapped up, and immediately she flew into action. She turned to Chihiro, and said "Have Hoshi and Saito meet me on level eighty-seven as soon as possible. Shut down the entire level, and have everyone on that deck stand by for a debrief."
With that, she headed for her office door, apparently having forgotten Sophie and the Doctor. He was not, however, about to stand for that. "I'm coming with you," he announced, scooping his psychic paper from Shion's desk and going to join her.
"Excuse me?" she growled, unimpressed.
"I can help, Shion," the Doctor said, using her first name to get the point across. "Please, please, let me."
Seconds passed, before Shion broke down. "Fine. You can come. Just you."
"Polite," Sophie said, sarcastically. "And what am I supposed to do?"
The Doctor turned to her, shrugging apologetically. "Just hold on, Sophie. As soon as I see what's going on down there, I'll explain everything."
"Give her the nickel tour," Shion ordered Chihiro. "She may as well complete the rest of the inspection." She reached for the Doctor, grabbing the sleeve of his coat. "Now come on!"
The Doctor and Shion departed the woman's office, leaving Sophie and Chihiro alone. Chihiro offered Shion a shy smile. "I'm sorry about my outburst before," she said.
Sophie couldn't help but smile, the anxiety and confusion of her time on New Tokyo thus far vanishing, even if she'd been abandoned by the Doctor for the time being. "It's… it's fine. If it helps, I'm very new to all this."
Chihiro grinned. "It does help, actually. Now, come on. We'll start with lunch."