While Clara liberates me, I keep both eyes firmly on Jessica.
Objectively, if you were just looking and you didn't understand, you might think there was a sort of beauty to it. Now that the stone ceiling is gone you can see the upper edge of the containment field bubbling over her head. A young lady, plain but pretty, trapped on stones in a clear prison, and all around her the airturns bright and wispy, glowing. Objectively just looking, one might smile. After all, it looks like she's regenerating. But if you know anything about it, you know this is the opposite of that. There's no life going in, that's not what's happening here. All of that glow is supposed to be inside her. It doesn't hurt. She doesn't cry, or call out. You only see the effect when she stops beating at the glass. Gives up and sits down on the rubble she brought with her. Slowly, petal by petal, the flower in her hair withers and crumbles away.
The Scholar has relaxed, somewhat. Maybe because it's all in the room now. Already he can breathe a little easier. Reluctantly, he puts the flasks all back in place. He's getting his, and it's only fair that he collect the rest for Carling.
They'd make a good study, if one were so inclined. A symbiosis of mutual parasites. If you could get them locked up in a lab situation and watch them tear each other apart, not that I'm angry, these are purely objective thoughts, these aren't the dark sort of thoughts that occur when I'm angry, they'd make a good study.
Then the chains fall away, and Clara plants a hand between my shoulders, shoving me forward to do something about it.
This. This is better. Not graceful, given I've been sitting flat all day and there's a dead-legged, stiff-backed, sore-armed lollop to it all, but better. This is much, much better, to be staggering across the floor, scooping up the poor, abused sonic. I have to tell it I'm sorry before it finds its accustomed spot in my palm, before it regains any warmth at all. And even now, it doesn't want to be friends anymore. I point up into the apparatus, which I know now to be a nihilium vacuum with a sublimed diamond trap but 'apparatus' is just easier, but nothing happens.
The drain does not stop. Jessica does not regain any hope, or fight, or understanding. Filtering down through the collapsed stone, the first droplets are starting to run into the distillation tubes.
I'm aware, too, that I ought to have been tackled to the ground by now. After all, I'm costing him millions here. But Carling has made no move to stop me either. Now he stands quietly at my shoulder and says, "Nihilium is too fine an element for sonic technology to sustain any effect on. Keep it up, though, you might be speeding up the liquefaction process." And then he laughs at how quickly I put the sonic away again.
"Clara," I call over my shoulder, "Be a dear, would you, do a little favour?"
"What?"
"Run? Run very, very far away from here?"
"All those stairs again? In these shoes? No, I'm alright as I am, thanks." I love her voice, getting closer behind me as she goes on. I love her footsteps getting closer behind me. I love all of Clara getting closer, and her silly insubordination, and her ridiculous loyalty, and her absolute lack of respect for her own safety in favour of standing by me in the danger.
I still tell her, "Go."
"No."
I lift up one finger, indicating to Carling that I need just one little minute with her, and then I turn. Clara turns too. I put my arm around her shoulders and quietly, as privately as we can, "If they get me too, I need you to take the Tardis home. Just tell her what you need, she knows what to do. And don't be afraid of her, she doesn't hate you."
"She does."
"Don't make me lock the two of you in a room together."
There's just a touch of a smile on her face. For a moment, it almost looks as though she might go, and might do the sensible thing. It looks like she might take herself out of harm's way, and her pretty mind will be in no danger of being sold to the highest bidder just because she once had the awful misfortune to have known me.
Then the Scholar coughs. There's a high-pitched whine beneath it, a cry of pain and rage and fear. When we look round, it is pointing up, into the bottom of the funnel. Doesn't look like much is happening, really. The rubble has shifted a little. There's a tiny little piece of it rattling in a bend of the pipe, but that's all. Hardly going to do a lot of damage, really, when you look at it. It's just overreacting. After all, this was supposed to be the night of its great harvest, and it's collapsing, like a bottle crumpling it on itself when you suck all the air out of…
Oh.
Oh.
Oh-ho-ho, yes. Yes. Yes, please, clever Doctor, bloody wonderful, what a moment. Clever old Doctor.
Up there above our heads, a carefully calibrated vacuum operating at just the right strength to draw the nihilium out of Jessica or any other candidate without drawing anything else, and to drag it down into the pipes. And once you know that, well, it's only a couple of tiny little steps to the plan, isn't it?
"You don't get a drop out of that girl," I tell Carling. I'm taking the sonic back out again, too, but that's not as stupid as it sounds. This time, I'm not trying to stop the vacuum or the extraction. All I'm doing is unfastening a couple of the little brass screws in that antiquated equipment. You can't even hear them rattling out of place. Then they fall tinkling down through the clear pipes and the Scholar gives another cry.
It retreats from the table, scuttling, scrabbling steps, back into the shadows at the base of the wall. Good thing too; everybody needs to step back. Those screws were holding a bracket in place. That bracket was holding the top of the curling pipes in place. And now that that bracket is gone, despite every other prop and holder, it all starts to lean rather precariously.
I reach out with a fingertip and tip the balance. Then I run out of the way as it all comes crashing down, folding myself around Clara. Her scream of fear is no fun, but at least there's no pain in it. Amongst all the incredible noise of shattering, of the brilliant, lethal fragments showering down across the entire cavern, there's a very faint whisper of freedom, and escape; every little trace that still lingered in those tubes has been released now.
There at the very top, the vacuum pump is still functioning, dragging wisps of gold down out of the funnel, and a few more lumps of broken gravel too.
The silent aftermath passes. All at once, Carling and I both start to move. He's closer than me, and doesn't have to extract himself from around a shaking companion, so he's a little faster. He gathers any intact flasks from the bench and makes a run for the stairs.
He gets away, too. How can I stop him? I've got more on my mind.
I'm glad the flasks are gone anyway; it clears a space for me to stand up on top of the table. From there, I jump up and grab hold of one of the empty props. It can just about hold my weight, swaying slightly. With my other hand I grab off my tie, and then stretch.
The opening of the flask seems impossibly far away. Funny the things you can do when it's important. I stretch, and stretch, and because it's important, I can stuff that little gap full of silk, pushing harder and harder until it's entirely blocked, until not a scrap of anything could pass it. Now, don't get me wrong, I know nihilium is fine enough to pass through even stone. But the rest of the stuff that makes up an atmosphere isn't. And the vacuum is pulling on all that too.
Do you know what happens if you create a vacuum inside a sealed space?
Inside, Jessica shifts over to the side. She looks down at me. The dead stalk of the flower sticks out of her hair. There's nothing. Absolutely nothing. She looks at me with something like boredom, or the curiosity of a child who has lived through war and trauma already. She feels nothing about all of this, only wonders vaguely why she allowed herself to be trapped here like this, no longer understanding the loyalty and affection than led her to it.
Then she starts to suffocate.
Because it's important, I can stretch even further, and press my hand to the glass. Whatever humanity is left to her reaches out and presses back, and looks at me with anger and hate when I tell her, "I'm sorry."