"Guardian of the Array"
21. Digging Deep
Somewhere in Indiana, in the year 1987
He would have found it easy to get lost in where he was, playing video games with Jack and Tim again, but then the Doctor had modified his glasses, and so he would see them for what they really were. He was playing games with aliens. All he wanted was to ask them questions, about what planets they were from, what it was like to live there, if they could do things that humans couldn't do. But he couldn't, because he wasn't supposed to know what they were. He wished he could turn the glasses off. If he didn't have to think about what they looked like, he could focus on the fact that he had been having so much fun from the moment he'd been wheeled into that blue box.
X
The Doctor and Jenny had made their way to the Andrews' home. They knew from having passed the store where he worked that Joshua wasn't home, and that might have been best. They would keep his secret, so long as it didn't interfere with anything else, but they still needed his parents. They were their only source of information at the moment. They needed to know more about the town, its people. They had to know who to keep a lookout for, the troublemakers. They had to find a way to put everyone back at peace, living under the array.
They'd been hesitant to talk in the beginning, but once they started, they were good to go. And the more they talked, about what this one had done to get sent here, about what that one had been doing since they'd arrived, how this one or that one had been talking about what they thought and what they wished to do, the Doctor began to feel something, perhaps not at the pit of her stomach but deep within each of her two hearts. Something about this was beginning to feel almost… familiar, like she'd heard it before.
X
In Karen and Daphne's kitchen, Gemma didn't have the same problem he did. She couldn't see the two women as the aliens they were. She had their shields to thank for that.
"Your sisters are here then?" Karen asked.
"Yes, although they're still familiarizing themselves with the town."
"As you are," Daphne nodded.
"As I am, yes," Gemma confirmed. This was when she should have known that something wasn't going the way she thought it was.
"Yet you're here, with your nephew," she went on.
"It's easier than forcing him to follow them everywhere," Gemma shrugged.
"Our boys are the same," Daphne agreed with a smile. "I actually have something… I think it might help you," she stood, signalling for Gemma to follow.
"What is it?" she stood.
"Well, when we moved here, we didn't know all that much, but the intake was very helpful for that," she opened the door to a side room. Gemma had barely stepped in that she knew she'd made a terrible mistake. But it was too late. The door was shut, the lock clicked, and she was trapped.
"Walked right into that one…" she sighed to herself. Getting into a mess was one thing, but it all depended on whether she could get herself out of it. And she felt she could.
X
It was nearly closing time, and Joshua had been in the back of the store, putting his apron away and getting his things, when he heard their laughter. There was something about his friends, fellow stranded non-humans, that was distinctive in that way, but then his species was known for its sharp hearing. That's how he knew that, even though they were there to come pick him up so they could all go hang out, they had arrived while he was in the back and taken up this opportunity to pick on someone. And that someone's voice had come to his ears, maybe the clearest of them all.
When he stepped out of the back, he found three of them all crowded around Lydia's register, making increasingly out of line advances on her.
"Leave her alone," Joshua called after them. They looked up at him. The store was deserted, save for them, and it stood silent for a few seconds.
"We're just having fun," one of the boys said.
"Does she look like she's having fun?"
"It's fine, Josh," Lydia told him. "I can take care of it."
"She can take care of it," the boy repeated. "See, everything's good. We're all friends. In fact, how about you come with us, Diaz? We're heading to the house across the bridge and…"
"No, she's not going there," Joshua interrupted him. He knew what would happen to her if she went there.
"Did you not hear what the girl said, Joshua?" the boy stepped toward him, sounding increasingly aggravated. "She can take care of it, now why don't you want her to have fun?"
"Not your kind of fun," he frowned.
"Yes, because you're the big hero, is that it?" the boy stared him down. "The All-American Wonder, Joshua Andrews. Is that really what you are though? Why don't you see what you have under your apron, bag boy?"
The boy grabbed Joshua by the collar and started dragging him off deeper into the store. His friends dashed up and helped him, while Lydia followed behind, shouting for them to let him go. He was trying to wrestle himself free, but it was no use. He had no idea what was happening, but then he caught a whiff of something, a whiff that reminded him of… fish? He understood too late. The next thing he knew, his head had been dunked in the lobster tank.
There were no lobsters at the moment, but there was water, and plenty of it. It rushed into his nose, his ears, his mouth, and it wasn't long that he had no more sense of what was happening around him. And then he felt nothing at all.
Had he been able to see around him, he would have seen how his friends had finally pulled him out of the tank and dropped him on the ground once he'd stopped struggling. He would have heard one of the girls tell Lydia that her prince awaited before the whole pack of them had run out of the store laughing.
Lydia had stood there for a moment, completely traumatized, having no idea what she was supposed to do. She'd thought to run back to the front and call an ambulance, but then something had caught her eye that made absolutely no sense. It was as though her eyes were seeing one thing, but they wanted to see another. And then in the very next moment, in place of the boy she had known all this time, she saw… a creature. She didn't know how else to say it. He had the general shape of a person, but his skin had changed, his features weren't the same, not… not human.
But it was Joshua, she knew it was. And she knew she didn't want him to die. There was only one thing to do, and she didn't hesitate for longer than the time it took her to wonder if this would work on him. She crouched down, and she tried giving him mouth to mouth, so he could breathe again. For several seconds, it didn't seem like it would, but she wouldn't let up. She tried again, and again… and then he coughed up water, he breathed… She sat back on the ground, out of breath herself, and stunned. She watched the creature sit up, trembling, confused. And then a moment later, he was Joshua again, the human, with wet hair plastered to his face.
He was finally coming to his senses, and he knew what had happened to him. He looked to the side, and when he saw her, he looked scared. She'd seen him in a way she wasn't meant to. But she was still there; she'd saved his life. Even then, the first words out of her mouth had come nervously.
"What are you?"
TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)