Chapter 20
Staring up at a black hole that shouldn't exist with Rose in his arms, the Doctor finally understood what, "Better with two," really meant. He could feel how afraid she was, but instead of overwhelming him, sharing it made it easier for him to deal with his own apprehension and guilt.
She wrapped her arms more tightly around him. "And he finally gets it," she murmured, pulling a weak chuckle from him. They stood like that for another moment, and then she pulled back, a wan smile on her face. "If we're gonna be here for a while, maybe we should get settled," she suggested.
He scratched the back of his head. "I thought I'd have a look at the writing back in Habitation Three," he said. "Might be the key to getting us out of here."
"All right then." Rose held out her hand, and he took it with a grateful smile and they walked through the corridor together.
Ravel's Bolero played in the background, and the Doctor smiled slightly at the habits of humans. "Must be night shift," he murmured. "Sanctuary bases tend to play classical over the PA during the evening, to help people shift into nighttime."
To his surprise, Habitation Three was full when they arrived. Most of the crew, including several they hadn't met, were sitting at the tables, eating what looked like it might be food. The Doctor nodded to a few in greeting, but didn't stop on his way to the wall.
Five minutes later, Rose tapped him on the shoulder. "They've got food," she said, pointing to the line and to her tray on the table. "Scooti said not to eat the blue, or the green."
"What other colour is there then?" he asked, getting up.
She grinned. "None. It's blue or green. Choose your poison I guess."
He wrinkled his nose. "Think I'll pass then. I've got a banana in my pockets somewhere."
They sat down at one of the tables, and Rose was halfway through her blue dinner when the overhead lights flickered. The Doctor glanced at the expedition members and noticed most of them seemed unalarmed, though Ida, as the ranking officer in the room, raised her comm to contact the captain. "Zach? Have we got a problem?"
"No more than usual. Got the Scarlet System burning up. Might be worth a look."
"You might want to see this." She opened the shutters above them, revealing the black hole again. "Moment in history. There. On the edge." A bright red stream flowed into the black hole, looking like a comet on fire. "That red cloud. That used to be the Scarlet System. Home to the Peluchi, a mighty civilisation spanning a billion years, disappearing forever. Their planets and suns consumed." The awe in her voice added a touch of solemnity to the moment. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have witnessed its passing."
Once the Scarlet System had been devoured, she moved to close the shutters again. "Er, no, could you leave it open?" the Doctor requested. "Just for a bit. I won't go mad, I promise."
Ida raised an eyebrow. "How would you know?" The Doctor smiled at her, and after a moment, she nodded in concession before turning to her crew.
"Scooti, check the lockdown. Jefferson, sign off the airlock seals for me." One by one, the crew left through different doors, again leaving the Doctor alone with Rose and a handful of Ood.
"I've seen films and things, yeah," Rose said quietly as they stared up at the black hole. "They say black holes are like gateways to another universe."
The Doctor knew where that legend had come from. The Eye of Harmony hadn't been a gateway to another universe, but it had stabilised this one and made time travel possible. He shook his head. "Not that one. It just eats."
"Long way from home."
Another apology was on the tip of his tongue, but it wouldn't change the situation, and he knew it wasn't what she wanted to hear anyway. Constantly claiming blame for what had happened wouldn't make her feel better at all. He thought for a minute, then pointed up. "Go that way, turn right, keep going for, oh, about five hundred years, and you'll reach the Earth."
She pulled her new phone out of her pocket and slid it open. "No signal. That's the first time we've gone out of range. Mind you, even if I could… what would I tell her? S'not like we could grow another TARDIS, not here."
He splayed his fingers out across the table, trying to fight down the panicked feeling from losing the TARDIS. "No, they didn't grow anywhere but on my planet. We're kinda stuck."
She nodded gamely. "Well, it could be worse. This lot said they'd give us a lift."
But he wasn't ready to be cheered up. The TARDIS was gone, the only permanent home he'd had for most of his life. "And then what?"
The ring of light surrounding the event horizon cast a halo around Rose's hair. "I don't know. Find a planet, get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe."
She said it, but he knew it appealed as little to her as it did to him. Life on the slow path was torment after traveling through time and space. Things always seemed to happen so slowly, and in the right order.
"I'd have to settle down," he said, purposely adding drama to make Rose laugh. "Get a house or something. A proper house with, with doors and carpets. Me, living in a house. Now that, that, that is terrifying."
He got the laughter he was looking for. Rose smiled at him, some of the sparkle back in her eyes. "We'd have to get a mortgage," she said in a sing-song voice.
Her simple pronoun cheered him up more than anything else, so he teasingly said, "I'm dying. That's it. I'm dying. It is all over."
They laughed for a minute, but the full weight of the situation was impossible to ignore, and it settled back on them. "I promised Jackie I'd always take you back home," he said.
Rose tapped her fingers on the table, and he could tell she was debating her next words. Finally, she looked at him. "Mum doesn't get it yet. With you, in the TARDIS, that's home." The Doctor stared at her for a long moment, and finally she dropped her gaze to the table and mumbled, "Everyone leaves home in the end."
He was torn between guilt and gladness that she felt that way. Guilt won out. "Not to end up stuck here."
"Yeah, but stuck with you, that's not so bad," she told him firmly, taking his hand and lacing their fingers together.
"Yeah?" he asked, squeezing her hand.
"Yes."
Something in her eyes made him think this was the moment, millions of light years and thousands of years from her home, sitting underneath a black hole that shouldn't exist. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Rose's phone rang.
She answered, a little hesitantly since she'd just said she had no signal. When her fear spiked and she threw the phone across the room, the Doctor tightened his hold on her other hand, trying to ground her. "What is it? What did it say?"
"It said… 'He is awake.' And… and the Ood earlier told me that the Beast would arise."
The Doctor jumped up. "The Ood are telepathic," he said. "That's the little buzzing you've been feeling in the back of your head since we arrived."
"I wondered what that was," she muttered.
He led the way to the Ood Habitation, following the direction Danny had taken earlier. "And if something can connect to your phone when it shouldn't have a signal, then maybe the Ood are picking up on that same message."
They reached Ood Habitation, and he jogged down the stairs. "Evening!" he called to Danny.
"Only us," Rose said.
Danny looked up from his terminal with a furrow between his eyes that made the Doctor feel they weren't entirely welcome. "The mysterious couple. How are you, then? Settling in?"
"Yeah. Sorry, straight to business," the Doctor said impatiently, looking down at the Ood lined up on benches below them. "The Ood, how do they communicate? I mean, with each other."
"Oh, just empaths. There's a low level telepathic field connecting them. Not that that does them much good. They're basically a herd race. Like cattle."
The Doctor bit back his impatience. And how exactly does a psi-null species like humans decide how much impact another species' telepathic field carries? He shoved the question aside and focused on the current issue. "This telepathic field. Can it pick up messages?"
"Because I was having dinner," Rose explained, "and one of the Ood said something, well, odd."
"Hmm, an odd Ood."
The way he just dismissed everything Rose said incited the Doctor's ire, but before he could say anything to him, Rose shot him a look that asked him to let her handle it.
She followed the young officer, looking him in the eye again. "And then I got something else on my, ah, communicator thing."
"Oh, be fair," Danny whined. He picked up a clipboard and turned around, shaking his head. "We've got whole star systems burning up around us. There's all sorts of stray transmissions. Probably nothing."
The Doctor and Rose looked at him in disbelief, and Danny sighed. "Look, if there was something wrong, it would show. We monitor the telepathic field. It's the only way to look after them. They're so stupid, they don't even tell us when they're ill."
"Monitor the field," the Doctor said, nodding to the terminal. "That's this thing?"
"Yeah. But like I said, it's low level telepathy. They only register basic five."
As the Doctor watched the screen, the level started to rise. "Well, that's not basic five. Ten, twenty. They've gone up to basic thirty." The buzzing in his head grew into the constant hum of other minds.
"But they can't!" Danny said in disbelief.
"Doctor, the Ood."
He joined Rose at the railing; the Ood, previously sitting in a relaxed posture, where now at attention, looking at them. "What does basic thirty mean?" she asked.
Danny answered for him. "Well, it means they're shouting, screaming inside their heads."
"Or something's shouting at them," the Doctor countered. He'd had someone inside his mind, using his own voice before. He knew how it felt. It was part of the reason it had taken him so long to accept this forced connection with Rose.
"But where is it coming from?" Danny asked. "What is it saying? What did it say to you?"
"Something about the beast in the pit," Rose told him.
"What about your communicator?" he pressed. "What did that say?"
"He is awake."
Below them, every Ood spoke as one. "And you will worship him."
"What the hell?" Danny said.
Well now that is unique! The Doctor straightened up, staring down at the Ood. "He is awake," the Doctor repeated.
"And you will worship him," they said again.
"Worship who?" he demanded. "Who's talking to you? Who is it?"
The Ood didn't say anything else, but they stayed at attention. Danny mumbled to himself and turned back to his computer, and the Doctor pulled Rose over into a corner.
"How are you holding up?" he asked quietly.
"How do you expect—"
He brushed his fingers lightly through the hair over her temple and she understood what he meant. "Oh. It's… ah, it's fine."
He ran his fingers through her hair and then rested his hand on her shoulder. "Are you sure?" he asked, checking her expression for any sign she might be holding back her own unease. "Because I can't hear it, my barriers are too strong. But if it can get into your mind, Rose…"
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find the words to explain what it felt like to be invaded like that. He knew she could tell how afraid he was, specifically afraid for her. If he could, he would make sure she never had a negative telepathic experience.
She reached up and placed her hand over his. "No, it's okay." His uncertainty must have broadcasted across all frequencies, because she smiled reassuringly. "I promise, I'll tell you if anything happens."
A violent tremor rocked through the base. "Emergency hull breach," the computer announced.
"Which section?" Danny asked.
"Everyone, evacuate eleven to thirteen," Zach said over the comms. "We've got a breach. The base is open. Repeat, the base is open!" Danny was already at the door, and the Doctor and Rose ran along behind him, hand in hand.
"I can't contain the oxygen field," Zach said. "We're going to lose it."
The absolute vacuum of space pulled at the Doctor, but he pressed on through the doors, keeping a firm grip on Rose's hand. I will not lose her to the void.
As they ran through junctions, several other crew members joined them, including Jefferson and Ida. Jefferson manned the last door open, and in just the nick of time, he grabbed Toby by the scruff of the neck and yanked him inside, closing the door behind him.
"Breach sealed. Breach sealed," the computer announced in the same matter-of-fact voice it had told them their lives were in peril.
"Everyone all right? What happened? What was it?" the Doctor called out
Jefferson was leaning against the door, trying to catch his breath. "Hull breach. We were open to the elements. Another couple of minutes and we'd have been inspecting that black hole at close quarters."
"That wasn't a quake. What caused it?" The Doctor had a feeling he wasn't going to like the answer.
Zach's voice interrupted them. "We've lost sections eleven to thirteen. Everyone all right?"
"We've got everyone here except Scooti. Scooti, report," Jefferson called out over the comms. The lack of response made everyone edgy, and he tried again. "Scooti Manista? That's an order. Report."
"She's all right," Zach said. "I've picked up her biochip. She's in Habitation Three. Better go and check if she's not responding. She might be unconscious." Some of the tension left his voice. "How about that, eh? We survived." The Doctor had a sinking feeling that might be a premature statement.
Jefferson pushed off the wall and led the way down the corridor. "Habitation Three. Come on. I don't often say this, but I think we could all do with a drink. Come on."
Toby was still on the floor, looking shaken. The Doctor hadn't liked the man earlier, but he was the one who'd been closest to the accident. He crouched down to meet his eye, hoping to learn something about what had caused the hull breach. "What happened?"
"I don't—I don't know," Toby stammered. "I was working and then I can't remember. All that noise. The room was falling apart. There was no air."
"Come on. Up you get," Rose said, pulling the man to his feet. "Come and have some protein one."
The Doctor blinked. "Oh, you've gone native."
"Oi, don't knock it. It's nice. Protein one with just a dash of three." The cheeky way she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth lightened his mood, the way her humour always did.
They were the last to arrive in Habitation Three. Most of the crew were there, but not Scooti. Everyone was in the middle of the room, talking over each other.
"Nowhere here," Jefferson finally said, bringing the group to order. "Zach? We've got a problem. Scooti's still missing."
"It says Habitation Three."
The Doctor's eyes drifted up to the still open shutters.
"Yeah, well, that's where I am," Jefferson said, "and I'm telling you, she's not here."
"I've found her," the Doctor said soberly.
"Oh my God," Rose whispered.
Scooti's body drifted in space above them, twisting as the gravitational pull of the black hole drew her in. When he looked at her, all the Doctor could see was Rose in the same position—if he'd let go of her hand earlier, he might have lost her too.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Jefferson cleared his throat. "Captain. Report Officer Scootori Manista PKD, deceased. Forty three K two point one."
"She was twenty. Twenty years old," Ida murmured, and closed the shutters.
Guilt shot through the Doctor. Rose was just twenty-two. Twenty-two, and stranded in an impossible place because of him.
Jefferson was the first to offer something resembling a eulogy. "For how should man die better than facing fearful odds? For the ashes of his father and the temples of his gods." The quote from Horatius had never seemed more appropriate.
The constant hum that had rumbled beneath the floor suddenly quit. "It's stopped," Ida said.
Rose moved over to the Doctor's side. "What was that? What was it?"
"The drill," he told her.
Ida looked like she couldn't believe what she was saying. "We've stopped drilling. We've made it. Point Zero."
Everyone was quiet for a moment, registering the strange sensation of still floors. "All right," Zach said. "Alpha team, get some rest. Beta team should be coming on any minute, and I need you at your best when you go down that shaft tomorrow, Ida."
Rose's lips turned up in a faint smile. The science officer's mouth had been opened to argue with her commander, and she snapped it shut.
"You heard the captain," Jefferson said. "Time for bed. Ah, Doctor, Rose…" His voice trailed off in the face of the domestic task of finding sleeping quarters for their guests.
"I'll show them where they can sleep," Ida offered, and he nodded in agreement.
Rose followed her out of Habitation Three, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the Doctor was coming. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets and the little furrow in his brow that she'd nicknamed Guilt Gulch was showing.
"We don't exactly have guest quarters," Ida was saying as they passed into Area Nineteen. "And most unoccupied rooms are being used as work spaces or storage. But there is one that should be empty, with a bed."
"Yeah, a bed would be nice," Rose said, the emotions of the day wearing her down.
Ida pushed open the door. "There's an attached toilet, no shower though. I'll go get a set of clean sheets from Laundry. I'm afraid I don't have anything to offer as far as sleepwear goes."
The bed was a little wider than a single back home, and Rose sat down on the edge of it while they waited for Ida to return.
"It's not your fault," she told the Doctor.
"We could have left as soon as we landed. The TARDIS felt off; we both knew it."
"Yeah, and the idea of turning around and leaving was a big joke to us," she countered. "I laughed first, remember? This was my choice, Doctor."
Ida returned before Rose could say anything further. "Here you go. The alarm will sound over the PA in six hours. We'll meet back in Habitation Three for breakfast, and then I expect Zach will have marching orders for us."
"Thanks, Ida," Rose said, taking the sheets from her.
The woman closed the door behind her, and Rose shook out one of the sheets and spread it across the bed. To her surprise, the Doctor took the other side, tugging at it until it was straight and then helping with the corners.
"I'm gonna get ready for bed," Rose said when the bed was made, and the Doctor acknowledged it with a terse nod.
Closed in the tiny toilet, Rose felt a momentary pang of fear that this forced intimacy on top of his obvious guilt would drive him away again. They'd been stuck sharing a bed before, but not since they'd gained an empathic connection. She reached out hesitantly, unsure she wanted to know how he was feeling.
But the vulnerability she'd come to associate with him pulling away was absent. She drew in a breath of relief, even as she rolled her eyes at his overpowering guilt. Satisfied he wasn't going to bolt, she stripped down to her vest and washed her face, jumping when the cold water hit her skin.
When she stepped back into the bedroom, the lights were dim and he was lying on his back. "Hey," she said softly. He opened his arms, and she crawled into them. "This is a new experience for the scrapbook," she said lightly.
His hand tightened momentarily on her arm, but he didn't say anything. "Doctor, look," she said, shifting her head so she could see his face. "The TARDIS is still out there. We might still find her."
"She's all I have left," he whispered. Of Gallifrey, he didn't say—and he didn't need to. Rose had known exactly what he meant when he'd told Zach the TARDIS was all he had, and her heart ached for him.
She ached for herself, too. The ship was her home—that wasn't just something she'd told the Doctor so he'd feel better about them being stranded. Rose ran her hand down his arm, offering what comfort she could. "You're going down the shaft with Ida tomorrow, aren't you?"
He nodded. "If there's something down there… a clue as to what this planet is, maybe something… it's the best chance we have of finding the TARDIS."
She settled back down, resting her head on his shoulder. "S'pose there's no chance of talking you out of it."
"Are you sure your mental barriers are holding?" the Doctor asked.
Rose accepted the change of subject. "So far," she said. "Maybe it's not that strong of a force, whatever it is? I mean, the Ood probably don't have any sort of barrier at all. They're just always open."
"Constant receivers," the Doctor said. "How do they avoid psychic feedback? Anyway, that could be the answer, but I'd feel safer if…"
Rose felt his hand drift to her temple. "Doctor, it's fine!"
"Rose, please let me—"
"Why are you pushing this so hard?"
"Because it's my fault you're telepathic in the first place," he said sharply, and she felt the guilt behind that statement.
The room was quiet for a moment while Rose processed that. They both knew she wouldn't be telepathic if he hadn't gone into the room where he'd locked away her memories of being Bad Wolf, but this… this went deeper than that. "Is that what you think?" she asked finally.
He snorted. "You wouldn't be telepathic if you hadn't looked into the heart of the TARDIS. You wouldn't have done that if I hadn't needed you to rescue me. It's not that hard a leap to make, Rose."
"Except you're missing a step!" she said, sitting up so she could glare down at him. "I looked into the heart of the TARDIS. I wanted to save you."
His forehead was drawn up into multiple furrows, and she raised a hand to smooth them out. "It was my choice, Doctor," she said. "An' also, you still seem to think I should be upset about the… changes, the telepathy and stuff, even though I've told you how right it feels." He frowned up at her, and she sighed. "Doctor, someday you've gotta trust that when I say I like this life, I mean I like everything about it. Not just the fun parts. And you've gotta trust that I know my own mind."
The room was quiet for a moment. Rose could feel his emotions shifting, some of the guilt easing as he finally accepted what she was saying. "Rose Tyler, what did I ever do to deserve you?" the Doctor asked softly.
She grinned. "Just got lucky I guess," she said.
He chuckled. "Yeah, I guess I did." He bit his lip. "I'd still feel better if you'd let me reinforce your shields," he admitted. "The risk might be small, but why take it if you don't have to?"
He had a point, so Rose nodded slightly and he raised a hand to her temple. A moment later, she felt the familiar sensation of him inside her mind, and she closed her eyes.
The buzz of the Ood faded as he worked. "All done," he said a few minutes later, and she settled down to sleep.
DWDWDWDWDW
When the alarm rang in the morning, the Doctor was already up and sitting at the tiny desk. "Good morning!" he said cheerfully. "You humans and your sleep patterns."
Rose blinked and sat up in bed, allowing the covers to pool around her waist. She'd only gotten five hours of sleep, but she felt fully rested. "You could have gone down by yourself," she pointed out.
"And leave you on your own? Who knows where you'd wander off to!"
The Doctor's smile stretched unnaturally wide across his face, reinforcing the waves of unease buffeting off of him. Rose held his gaze, wondering if he would drop the pretence on his own, or if she would have to call him on it.
The humour disappeared from the Doctor's face. "Can't you feel it, Rose?" he said quietly.
Rose frowned and focused inward, on the time senses she wasn't yet used to having. A discordant note jangled against them, and she realised it had been there for days, but she hadn't understood it. "Yeah. What is it?"
He huffed out a sigh and ran his hands through his hair. "I don't know. I just… it feels like someone or something is trying to…"
When he stumbled over the words again, Rose reached for his hand and put it on her temple. As their connection deepened, she smiled up at him and thought, Trying to do what, Doctor?
He closed his eyes, and she could feel how much he hated whatever he was about to say. To take you from me.
So you're what, not gonna let me out of your sight?
She expected him to roll his eyes or laugh it off, but instead, he opened his eyes and removed his hand from her temple. "At vulnerable moments like this, not unless I have to." Rose opened her mouth, but he shook his head and she nodded for him to speak. "This isn't about trust in your abilities. This is… there's someone or something that wants us pulled apart. I don't know why, but it feels wrong. You said you feel it too."
The slight wrongness of it was clearer to Rose now. Even thinking about it made her cringe, like hearing nails scraping across the blackboard. "Well give me a minute to get changed, and then we can get something to eat." He nodded slowly, relief and understanding shining in his eyes, and Rose retreated into the loo.
Most of Alpha shift were already in Habitation Three when they arrived, getting plates of food from the Ood. After her experience the previous night, Rose didn't really want to get too close, but that wasn't an option. Thankfully, this time she got her food without any Ood-ities, and took a seat next to the Doctor.
Zach stood in the middle of the room once they were all assembled. "All right people, this is it," he announced. "You all know the drill reached Point Zero last night. We finally have a chance to achieve our mission."
And make the lives we've lost count. The unspoken words hung in the air over a brief moment of silence.
Zach cleared his throat. "Danny, I want you to monitor the Ood. We'll be keeping them in Ood Habitation, but we need to know if anything unusual happens. Jefferson, you'll be running the controls on the capsule from the drilling station while I stay in the control room."
Ida shifted in her seat, and Zach nodded. "You've got the fun job, Ida. We'll send you down in a capsule. Toby, you stay in the drilling station in case Ida finds something of cultural significance."
Everyone nodded. "Doctor, Rose…" Zach faltered. "Do what you like I suppose, but make sure you don't get in the way of any essential functions."
The group split. "I'm going with Ida to suit up," the Doctor said quietly. "You stay with Zach."
Rose nodded and followed the captain out of the room. "D'you mind if I just go with you?" she asked. "I'd like to see the expedition, from your point of view."
He nodded as they made their way through the doors. "Like I said, as long as you don't get in the way."
The drilling room was already a hive of activity. Several crew members Rose didn't recognise were moving around, getting equipment ready for the trip into the centre of the planet.
"All non essential Oods to be confined," Zach ordered over the comms. Rose understood the order, the fear behind it, but she didn't like it.
Ida came in, dressed in an orange space suit. She moved quickly through her stations. "Capsule established. All systems functioning. The mineshaft is go. Bring systems online now."
Rose's eyes focused on the door Ida had entered through, and a moment later the Doctor appeared. He strode across the catwalk to Zach, helmet in hand. "Reporting as a volunteer for the expeditionary force."
Zach shook his head. "Doctor, this is breaking every single protocol. We don't even know who you are."
"Yeah, but you trust me, don't you?" Rose chuckled and wanted to tell Zach to give up now. "And you can't let Ida go down there on her own. Go on. Look me in the eye. Yes you do, I can see it. Trust."
Zach heaved a resigned sigh. "I should be going down."
The Doctor shook his head. "The Captain doesn't lead the mission. He stays here, in charge."
"Not much good at it, am I?" Zach returned, tacitly admitting the Doctor had won his point. "Positions! We're going down in two. Everyone, positions! Mr. Jefferson! I want maximum system enhancement."
Zach left the drilling station and the crew members moved to follow their captain's orders, but Rose's gaze was fixed on the Doctor, who was inspecting the controls on his suit. "Oxygen, nitro balance, gravity. It's ages since I wore one of these."
She tugged on the front of the suit. "I want that spacesuit back in one piece, you got that?"
"Yes sir." The words were flippant, but the look on his face told her he understood all her concern, her worry, and…
Rose bit her lip and watched him put his helmet on. "It's funny, because people back home think that space travel's going to be all…" She took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions. "…whizzing about and teleports and anti gravity, but it's not, is it? It's tough."
His fingers laced through hers, and even though it felt different with the bulky gloves he was wearing, the gesture gave her the same comfort it always did. "I'll see you later."
The promise in his eyes did more to reassure her than anything else, and she finally smiled. "Not if I see you first," she returned. Then, on a whim, or because she couldn't stand the thought of him going off on a mission like this without something, she pulled his head down and placed a kiss on top of his helmet.
The Doctor squeezed her hand, and then Zach's voice came over the comms. "Capsule active!"
The Doctor and Ida walked down the catwalk toward the capsule as Zach started a countdown. Rose watched anxiously as Jefferson sealed them inside, and then when the count reached zero, Zach ordered its release.
As soon as the door was shut, Rose grabbed the comm, needing to have something in her hands that could connect her to the Doctor. She twisted the cord around the fingers of one hand while she waved goodbye to him with the other. Be safe, she begged with the gesture, and his little half wave in return told her he would try.
When they were out of sight, she followed the cord back to the comm station and watched the computer readout of the capsule's depth. The larger the number got, the harder she found it to breathe. The steady feeling of time pulsing around her suddenly went haywire as the possibility of an endless separation from the Doctor became more likely.
Rose felt like a vice was slowly tightening on her rib cage, squeezing all the air out of her lungs. The rest of the team on the drilling platform were too focused on the capsule to notice her distress, but dual waves of calm washed over her from the Doctor and the TARDIS. All three of them knew this was the most serious situation they'd been in together, but Rose let them reassure her that they would make it out.
"Breathe, Rose," the Doctor said, and Mr. Jefferson turned to look at her. "Take in a breath—that's it, now hold it for four seconds." Even with her newly acquired ability to keep track of time, the seconds seemed to take hours. "Okay, now let it out, but not all at once. Slowly."
Some of the tightness in her chest eased, and Rose repeated the exercise a few times until the panic attack receded.
"I'm sure your Doctor and Ida will be fine, Miss Tyler," Mr. Jefferson said.
Rose hated the slightly patronising tone in his voice, but how could she explain that for a moment, she'd seen a timeline where she never saw the Doctor again? Where he was trapped below the surface while she was taken away by force? It was wrong, so wrong—she'd never leave him behind, not ever, but somehow she'd seen it happen.
She shook the image from her head with effort and focused on the present. "You've gone beyond the oxygen field," Zach told the Doctor and Ida. "You're on your own."
Zach's words, so close on the heels of her panic attack, pushed a weak laugh from Rose, and once her airways were open, oxygen naturally flowed back in. "Don't forget to breathe," she told the Doctor, letting him hear she was doing better. "Breathing's good."
"Rose, stay off the comm," Zach ordered.
"No chance," Rose muttered.
Despite the situation, that very Rose-like response brought a slight smile to the Doctor's lips. He'd been worried a moment ago when he could tell she was on the verge of a panic attack, but they'd staved that off together.
The telepathic presence of the Ood surged in his mind, but before he could consider what might have triggered the change, the capsule's descent into the shaft picked up speed until it was careening wildly out of control toward the planet core.
He and Ida braced themselves for the inevitable impact, but somehow when it came, it was more of a thud than a crash. At the speed we were going, we should have sustained a lot more damage.
And their friends topside knew it too. "Doctor? Doctor, are you all right?"
"Ida, report to me," Zach ordered.
Ida and the Doctor exchanged wide-eyed looks as they shook the rough landing out of their limbs. The Doctor opened the door and they stepped out into the dark. "It's all right. We've made it. Getting out of the capsule now."
He could hear Rose's sigh of relief and a muffled comment from Jefferson, but he was far more interested in the sense he had that he was getting close to the TARDIS.
"What's it like down there?" Rose asked.
The Doctor shone his torch around, trying to take in their surroundings. "It's hard to tell. Some sort of cave. Cavern. It's massive."
"Well, this should help," Ida said, pulling a familiar object from her back. "Gravity globe." She tossed it in the air, and as soon as it began to fall, it hovered in place and lit the entire cavern.
The sight of a subterranean temple struck them both speechless for a minute. Ida sucked in a breath and said, "That's… that's… my god, that's beautiful."
The space was dominated by a door hewn into the rock face with columns on either side. Off to one side was a stone statue, posed as if it were guarding something. As he and Ida walked toward it, a thought occurred to him. "Rose, you can tell Toby we've found his civilisation." They knew nothing about this planet or its original inhabitants, but if the race that excavated this cavern and built that statue weren't the ones who spoke the language Toby had found, the Doctor would give up bananas for a week.
"Oi, Toby," Rose said. "Sounds like you've got plenty of work."
"Concentrate now, people," Zach chided them. "Keep on the mission. Ida, what about the power source?"
Ida looked at her watch and tapped a button on the face to turn on the built-in energy metre. "We're close. Energy signature indicates north northwest. Are you getting pictures up there?"
"There's too much interference. We're in your hands."
They bit back a sigh at Zach's answer, but kept walking. "Well, we've come this far. There's no turning back," Ida said bracingly.
The strengthening telepathic presence had the Doctor on edge, and he couldn't contain his reaction to Ida's statement. "Oh, did you have to?" the Doctor whined. "No turning back? That's almost as bad as, 'Nothing can possibly go wrong,' or, 'This is going to be the best Christmas Walford's ever had.'" The EastEnders reference was purely for Rose's benefit, and he was rewarded with a burst of amusement.
"Are you finished?" Ida asked, apparently not as appreciative of his genre savvy moment.
"Yeah. Finished." But really—no turning back? Ida gestured over her shoulder, and they kept moving toward the power source.
"Captain, sir. There's something happening with the Ood."
The last of the Doctor's whimsical mood disappeared. The buzzing in his head had reached a constant level loud enough to be distracting, rather than merely annoying.
"What are they doing?" Zach asked, and the Doctor nearly growled at the skepticism in the man's voice. The Ood might be docile (naturally or via engineering), but they were still complex organisms. Why did humans insist any physiology different from theirs could be easily understood?
"They're staring at me," Danny said. "I've told them to stop, but they won't."
"Danny you're a big boy. I think you can take being stared at."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. Except disobeying a direct order should be almost impossible for an Ood, if your perception of them is accurate. Not to mention, he'd been on the receiving end of the Ood's uncanny stare the previous night. He didn't blame Danny for being unnerved.
Ida gestured at him, and he'd just reached her side when Danny continued his explanation. They stared at their find, then each other, and waited for Danny and Zach's conversation to end so they could report on it.
"But the telepathic field, sir," Danny protested. "It's at Basic 100. I've checked. There isn't any fault. It's definitely 100."
"But that's impossible."
"What's basic one hundred mean?" Rose asked.
The Doctor was still fitting this information into what he already knew, so Danny beat him to the answer. "They should be dead."
The conversation continued, but the Doctor tuned it out. Several oddities finally made sense. The Ood were telepathic receivers with no boundaries. They'd be the perfect vehicle for a stronger psychic presence—and a mind strong enough to take over a group en masse would be able to block itself from other telepaths. He'd said last night that it was like the Ood had someone shouting at them—what if he/she/it were shouting through them instead?
And the giant covered hole he and Ida were staring at only added to his trepidation. "What do you think it is, Doctor?"
He walked around it slowly, shining the torch on some of the markings around the edge, trying to figure out what they mean. "Oh, I don't know. It could be covering anything really. A bit large for a well I suppose, but who knows? Maybe the Valtino built a tunnel to the centre the planet, and this is the entrance."
A sequence of symbols he'd seen in Toby's office jumped out at him, and he bent over to run his fingers over the relief. "Only thing is, doors leading into the depths never seem to turn out well in the end. Look at Moria—the Dwarves just wanted mithril and instead they found a Balrog."
Rose's anger and fear caught his attention, and he realised he'd maybe done too good a job at blocking out the comms chatter. "Is everything all right up there?"
"Yeah, yeah," she said quickly, and he rolled his eyes. If she thought he was going to believe her…
Zach and Danny both chimed in, each less convincing than the last. The Doctor knew something was going on with the Ood, but on second thought, maybe it was better if he didn't know the details, since he was stuck with no way to help Rose.
"We've found something," the Doctor said, bringing the focus back to the large cover stone. "It looks like metal. Like some sort of seal." He leapt up onto it and hopped a bit, trying to get a feel for its composition. "I've got a nasty feeling the word might be trapdoor. Not a good word, trapdoor. Never met a trapdoor I liked."
Ida spoke up, continuing the narration of their exploration. "The edge is covered with those symbols."
"Do you think it opens?" Zach asked.
"That's what trapdoors tend to do," the Doctor said.
"Trapdoor doesn't do it justice," Ida countered. "It's massive, Zach. About thirty feet in diameter."
So it's a large trapdoor.
"Any way of opening it?" Zach asked again.
"I don't know. I can't see any sort of mechanism."
"I suppose that's the writing," the Doctor said, rocking back on his heels. "It'll tell us what to do. The letters that defy translation."
"Toby, did you get anywhere with decoding it?" Zach asked.
"Toby, they need to know that lettering," Rose said. "Does it make any sort of sense?"
The Doctor could suddenly feel it, that strange telepathic presence that was pulling all the strings. "I know what it says," Toby said, only it wasn't his voice. It didn't sound like him, and the thoughts weren't his.
"Then tell them," Rose snapped, and the Doctor sent her a mauve alert.
Be careful, Rose!
"When did you work that out?" Jefferson asked—a fair question.
Rose's fear spiked, and the Doctor was halfway to the capsule before Toby started talking. She was terrified, and on the edges of his mind he suddenly saw dozens of ways they might be separated forever.
Toby's words sent a chill down his spine. "These are the words of the Beast. And he has woken. He is the heart that beats in the darkness. He is the blood that will never cease. And now he will rise."
He is awake. The Doctor had a fleeting image of a shadow engulfed in flames. The Balrog of Morgoth is awake.
"Officer, stand down," Jefferson ordered. "Stand down."
"What is it? What's he done? What's happening? Rose, what's going on?" Talk to me!
"Jefferson?" Zach asked. "Report. Report!"