Chapter 25- The Whole Story
Through the entire explanation, the Doctor kept my one hand sandwiched between both of his, rubbing it and massaging it the whole time through. My free hand clutched the edge of Naomi's table, my grip growing as all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
"The thing about the Aligrena race is…well, they just want to be human," the Doctor began. "You must understand that. Their entire species revolves around feeling as much as they can. All they want to do is feel. In fact, they've found a way to convert emotions into a power source."
"I don't understand," I interrupted. "What does that have to do with Naomi?"
He pressed his lips together like he always did when deciding whether or not to divulge information. "An Aligrena ship fell out of time and landed…they landed right underneath Chicago, in a pocket of air in the Earth's crust."
I stared up at the belly of the ship in the ceiling. "So Chicago- from my time- is somewhere up there?" I asked incredulously, pointing at the ship. "Is all this really that close to home?"
"Unfortunately, yes," he said, following my gaze. "In fact, we're only a few miles beneath Just Desserts."
I raise my eyebrows. I'd almost forgotten I owned a bakery, what with running around with the Doctor for so long.
"Wait a minute, I don't understand," I said. "How can a ship that gigantic crash and no one notice? Someone must've seen it."
"Well, it didn't actually crash," he said. "It force-jumped to this particular moment in space and time from another moment. Remember the temporal shift—when the Aligrena took you from Delta Delta and brought you here? Imagine that, but an entire space ship doing it. That's how they got here. It's awfully tricky, too, given the amount of damage they suffered. They lost almost all their navigation and power on the way here."
"That's another thing," I said, peering at him in confusion. "The Aligrena we saw on Delta Delta- our first visit, I mean- we know it's connected with this whole thing right here. If they lost navigation, how did it get from here to there?"
"They built a fail-safe into their systems," he answered. "It's called a Fast-Return Switch. The TARDIS has one. It can rewind, if you will, to the previous location in a state of emergency and then bring you back, as many times as you like. The place they left last was Delta Delta—I scanned the Aligrena that stole the atom accelerator as it disappeared, and the temporal signatures traced back to here."
"So that's why they needed the atom accelerator," I said, thinking out loud. "You said it was basically a steering wheel, right? Well, if they needed to fix their navigation, then an atom accelerator seems like the first step."
The Doctor smiled softly at me. "Exactly," he said approvingly. "Right on top of everything."
"They said they needed it for 'the journey home'."
"And that's all they want," he said, cutting off any continuation I might've had. "They just want to get back home. Delta Delta's not their home planet—it's Sarsgaroth, remember? We had tried to go there ourselves, but we landed back on Delta Delta."
"What happened to Sarsgaroth?" I asked. "Why did they get sent away?"
"Dunno," he replied. I could tell he was being honest. "Could be any number of reasons. War, disease, accidents in time…anything's possible."
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. "Okay. So, they're trying to get back home," I summarized. "I still don't understand why they needed to kidnap Naomi."
The Doctor's hands tightened around mine. I took a deep breath and clenched my jaw; I could tell that the worst was coming.
"I said that they'd found ways to turn emotion into power," he began, his eyes flicking down to Naomi. I followed his gaze as he continued, "Well, this is how. They extract memories and the emotional responses, and convert it into energy." The Doctor went on into the technical explanation of just how they could do that, but I couldn't hear through the blood pounding in my ears.
They stole her emotions and used them to power their ship. The Aligrena had plugged my baby sister into their ship to feed off her memories like parasites. My hand slipped out of the Doctor's grasp as I backed away, and he turned to me in concern, cutting himself off. My ribcage suddenly felt leaden, so heavy I wanted to tear it out of my chest. Maybe then the panicked pain would stop.
"Why her?" I choked out, my throat blocking up. "Why would they take Naomi, out of everyone in Chicago?"
The Doctor turned his big, sad eyes on mine. I searched for reassurance in those green eyes, but I found none. They held even more pain than mine, and that thought scared me more than anything I've seen. What could be so horrible that the Doctor couldn't hide the hurt?
"Like I said, they crashed directly under Just Desserts," he said. "So the vicinity was a factor." He was dancing around the rest of his answer, and he knew that I knew it.
"What else?" I said, my voice cracking. The Doctor hesitated, and I added angrily, "Don't you dare not tell me. I'm her legal guardian. I have a right to know. You tell me right now, Doctor, or so help me—"
"She felt more acutely than anyone in the area," he interrupted. I found myself in the corridor again: I wanted him to go on, but I feared what he would say. He went on, "How old is she?"
"Fourteen."
"She's fourteen. She's at that age where she's growing up, and becoming aware, and creating heavy worries that don't really exist," he said. "It's all part of becoming an adult. So her magnified worries with growing up were one thing. And there's also your entire situation together: her mother died giving birth to her, which could make her feel irrationally guilty; her father died when she was young, that speaks for itself; she might've felt like she was burdening you, with your having to put her first all the time; couple all that with growing pains, and you have the biggest batch of emotions this side of the Mississippi. The Aligrena saw her as the greatest power source in the area. That's why they singled her out."
It felt like someone had skewered my heart and held it over a fire. Not because of why they'd taken Naomi, but because I had no idea she could ever see things that way. No, no, this couldn't be true—I knew her too well for her to be able to hide all that.
"How do you know?" I asked venomously. "How could you possibly know for sure that that's why they took her? You've never spoken to Naomi in your life." I needed desperately for that whole explanation to be a lie. If it were true, that would mean I'm not the mother I thought I was.
The Doctor's eyes filled with pity. "Do you think, if it wasn't true, they would take her at all?"
Whoever had driven a skewer through my heart and roasted it now shoved it back into my chest cavity, useless and painful. "I never knew," I whispered, clutching and the gaping ache in my chest. "I never knew she could feel all that. She never told me anything like this."
"People growing up don't often tell anyone everything," he said sympathetically.
"But I should have seen," I said, my voice cracking. "I know her better than anyone, I should've seen that something was wrong."
"Teens know how to hide things," he consoled, swallowing.
"Why did they want me so badly, too?" I asked. "They wanted both of us. Why?"
"Because you've both been through the same things," the Doctor answered, sounding like his hearts were breaking. "You both had different responses to those events. That's even more power for them. It's not malice or anything, just economics." He licked his lips. "But Erica, we can't worry about this now. We have to get Naomi to safety, okay?" He looked at me pleadingly, begging me to calm down.
I nodded, pursing my lips. "Okay," I repeated. "Just…give me a second."
"Of course," the Doctor agreed sympathetically.
I walked away, feeling both heavy and empty at the same time. I found myself drawing towards the Aligrena, lying on the ground atop its piles of tentacles. I gazed down at it, unfeeling.
And then I slammed the sole of my boot into its black eye screen, screaming bloody murder.
"You son of a bitch!" I yelled, stomping all over the Aligrena. "You're feeding on my sister, you tried to pull me in to do the same—" The Doctor's arms suddenly wrapped around me, pulling me off the Aligrena. I fought against him, pounding his chest with my fists, but my wild strikes made no impact. He pulled me far away from the Aligrena and gripped me tightly, so strong that I couldn't fight free of his arms. I demanded that he let me go, but he absolutely refused. When my angry orders slowly transformed into quiet, desperate pleas, he still held me, stroking the back of my head and whispering soothing words in my ear.
"It'll be okay," he mumbled once I'd calmed down a bit. "She'll be okay."
"How?" I asked. "She's all hooked into the ship, we don't know how to get her out…how can she get out of this?"
"Don't worry, we can figure something…" the Doctor trailed off, directing his attention to something on the far side of the room. I followed his gaze and watched as a strange contraption descended from the ship on a wire, stopping just a few yards away from Naomi.
"What's that?" I asked, sniffling. I broke away from the Doctor, furiously wiping my eyes, and the Doctor followed after me, more cautiously.
"Careful, Erica," he warned. I waved him off impatiently, approaching the contraption dazedly. It turned out to be a helmet, identical to the strange one on Naomi's head, right down to the blinking lights.
"Doctor, what's this?" I asked, keeping my eyes locked on it.
"It's an Emotion Reader," he explained, "to put it colloquially. That's what's scanning Naomi's emotions right now and converting them to power."
"Why'd this one come down?" I asked. I turned around and found him halfway back, reaching out to me. He wanted me to come back, but feared coming any closer.
He sighed. "It—it sensed the emotions you were giving off," he explained. "It wants to convert those emotions, too." He beckoned to me frantically. "Come away from that, Erica, please," he begged. "It can do horrible things to your memory."
I looked back to the Emotion Reader. "You said they lost all their power on the way here," I said. "So they're using Naomi to…recharge, basically."
I glanced at the Doctor. He didn't answer, but his face told me everything. He was nervous because he knew I was getting a dangerous idea. He'd probably come to that same conclusion ages ago. But the Doctor always looked for another way out. That's another thing the Doctor's expression told me: there wasn't one.
"So if we gave them enough power to completely recharge," I said, turning back to the Reader, "then they wouldn't need Naomi anymore. And then they just might release her."
"Erica, whatever you're thinking—"
"You're thinking it, too," I interrupted, spinning back around to face him. I couldn't decide which direction to face, which decision I would fear more: letting the Aligrena play with my memories, or listening to the Doctor and stepping away, even though Naomi might never wake up again. "Doctor, if we overload their energy sources, they'll have to let her go. And you can't just sonic it back to life. It needs emotions."
I turned back to the Reader. "You said they wanted me, too, because I was the second-biggest pot of feelings around. Well, maybe it's time to give them what they want."
I reached out and grabbed the helmet, positioning myself right under it. The sound of the Doctor stumbling toward me echoed off the walls, along with several proclamations of my insanity and death wishes. He drew right up in front of me; even though I'm only a few inches shorter than him, I felt tiny, like he could crush me beneath his boots.
"Erica, you can't do this," he said, his voice heartbreakingly close to cracking. "You might lose everything that makes you, you to the Aligrena."
"That could happen to Naomi if I don't," I replied. My fingers flexed on the helmet. I didn't want to do this, not at all.
"Erica, if Naomi couldn't get their ship up and running, then neither can you," he said. Oh, he was fighting back panic like never before. "You just don't have enough emotions to do the job. It'll drain you until you can't feel anything anymore. You can't do it."
"Don't you understand?" I pleaded. "I'm the only mother she's ever had. It doesn't matter if I can't do it, I still have to try! If you had kids, you'd understand!"
"I do!" he exclaimed. I couldn't feel my heart beating. "I do understand."
"You have children?" I asked, temporarily forgetting our situation.
The Doctor shrugged, refusing to meet my eyes. "I did," he replied. "Once upon a time. I even had a granddaughter."
"River's awfully young to be a grandmother."
"Oh, no," he clarified. "River and I…we don't have children together. I had a family a very long time ago, before I even met her." His eyes were glazing over, like they had when I asked about his race, the Time Lords. God, that was our first day together. And look how far we've come.
"You have a different family now," I said. I might've been a bit presumptuous, but the Doctor needed to realize he wasn't alone. "I mean, there's River, which is obvious; there's Amy—remember how Algo thought you two were married? Algo might count, I don't know what you guys have been through together—"
"And there's you," he interrupted. His eyes finally met mine, and they blazed with determination and fear and a hint of pride. "You've become family to me, and I don't let my family take the fall."
I reached out a hand and cupped his face; my touch seemed to relieve him. "I'm sorry, Doctor," I said. "But neither do I."
I whipped my hand back to the helmet and slammed it on my head before the Doctor could stop me.