"The Generational Purge"
25. A Key In Pocket
Orcus Penitentiary – in the year 3086
It took Gemma a few seconds to really process what the woman told her. Did she mean this Doctor, the one trying to open the door, or her Doctor?
"I-I don't…" she sputtered, looking back to make sure her anti-sonic was still doing its job.
"I only just figured out this was the moment earlier, I didn't think you would actually be here."
"Maria, is it?" Gemma breathed. "I don't have much time," she reminded her, so the woman explained.
"One day, it must have been a week before I was brought here, someone sent me a note. I thought it was a prank, but then I read it. This person, they signed as 'the Doctor,' said I was going to run into a man who also called himself that, but that I wasn't to tell him about any of this. The note said that this other Doctor would be called away from me and I would be sent away, and when that happened, I had to come here."
"And you believed it?" Gemma had to ask.
"Somehow they knew these things about me," Maria revealed. Ha, yes, I see now. I will have told the Doctor. "They knew about how I broke a neighbor's lamp when I fourteen. They had gone on vacation for two weeks and asked me to look after their home. I picked up as many little jobs as I could so I could earn the money and replace the lamp. They never knew about it, no one did."
"What else did the note say?"
"It said that, when the time came, I should come here and give you a code. It said I had to memorize it because I wouldn't have it on me at the time. Good thing I'm good with numbers," Maria smiled.
"A code…" Gemma looked down to the cuff on her arm and she had to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Maria looked confused.
"I wish I had the time to explain it to you. But once you've given me the code, you'll need to get out of here, go back to doing whatever it was you're doing. The Doctor can't know about you helping me, and you won't be seeing me again… hopefully." Having to talk to Maria, at least, she hadn't been focused on her ankle, or the chance of getting caught, and it helped her to concentrate again.
"What's your name?" Maria asked.
"It's better if you don't know. Now what's the code?"
Maria would repeat it five times, making sure that she would remember it, then she stood and went to the second door. "Good luck," she told the stranger on the ground.
"Thank you, Maria," Gemma breathed. "You need to go now," she smiled, and Maria bowed her head, opening the door and shutting it behind her.
She'd have to put the anti-sonic away to enter the code, and if that took too long, then it would give the Doctor on the other side of the door the chance to finally break in. There was no margin for error. The Doctor, her Doctor, had found a way to send Maria Porter to her, and she wasn't going to let that go to waste. She had to figure that, to have been able to give the information to ensure Maria's collaboration, she had to have gotten out just fine, but there was still some element of stress. Her heart was beating mad again, and she took a few deep breaths.
"Pocket, code, gone," she told herself. In one swift move, the anti-sonic was slipped back into her pocket, she entered the code, and shutting her eyes, she hoped this would work.
X
They'd all been trying to break through the door one way or the other. Could they get a saw? The door wouldn't even be dented. Could the trip the mechanism? With the warden's upgrades, it was more likely they would get themselves a solid shock. Stubbornly, or possibly just trying to understand why it wasn't working, the Doctor kept at his one move, which was to use his sonic screwdriver.
"Are we even sure the assassin is still in there?" Rose asked. "She could get in, she could get out."
"She can't. If she could, she wouldn't have run, would she?" Jaime pointed out.
"Who knows why anyone does anything?" the Doctor wasn't convinced.
The moment things changed, he felt it like there had been resistance under his hand and it had finally released.
"Ah, well we may not have to wait for much longer." At the click of the door, he reached to pull it open.
He would only catch a glimpse of the tail end of someone transporting out, but it stopped him where he stood. It was all too familiar, it reminded him of… Mesphoria, the shimmer.
"The assassin, she's gone," Beth saw into the empty room.
"That wasn't the assassin," the Doctor told her, but he was looking back to Rose. He couldn't go into it with all of them there, but he would have to tell Rose later. The woman they'd chased had nothing to do with the prison, the warden, the treatments, none of it. The woman had to do with him. Someone was following him.
"Did you get the intruder?" Everyone turned, momentarily back on alert, but they relaxed when they saw it was only one of the guards.
"I told you to go back to the others," the Doctor told Maria.
"I'm sorry, I thought I could help," the woman explained, out of breath.
"Well there's nothing left to help. The intruder escaped," Jaime told her.
"What do we do now?" Beth asked.
"I need to talk to the warden again," the Doctor started back for his office.
TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)