19 JANUARY 2019, 13:01
SHEFFIELD
Ryan checked his watch for the third time that afternoon, getting antsy as there was still no sign of the Doctor.
"I'll give her five more minutes," Ryan muttered. Then I'll call Yaz since I don't know the Doctor's number—if she even has a mobile.
The door to the café swung open, and the Doctor walked in, looking flustered.
"Hi, Ryan. Sorry about that," she said, apologising. "The TARDIS still isn't letting me in, so I had to hail a taxi."
"Not your preferred method of transportation then?" he presumed.
"Nope," the alien muttered. "And we got stuck in traffic, which, let me tell ya, was a real pain in the arse. Very expensive." She shrugged. "Shall we?"
After a few minutes of standing in line, Ryan and the Doctor finally got around to ordering their food.
"I'll pay," Ryan told the alien. He ordered a coffee and a chicken sandwich, and the Doctor got tea and a fried egg sandwich.
"Seven," the alien blurted.
Ryan checked the total, raising an eyebrow. "It's just over eleven pence, mate," he told her. "Where the hell did you get seven?"
The Doctor stared at him, confused. "I didn't say seven."
"Actually, you did," the barista interjected. "Will that be all for you?"
"Yeah," Ryan responded in an effort not to hold up the line. He paid the barista the total—£11.69—and let the Doctor find a table.
"Sir?"
Ryan turned, seeing the barista who had taken their order. "Yeah?"
The dude—wearing a nametag that said "Keith"—looked concerned. "Your friend doing ok?"
"No idea," Ryan admitted. He turned back to the barista. "I'm glad it's not just me."
He walked to the table, sitting next to the Doctor. She was eerily quiet, a troubled expression on her face.
"Doctor?"
She looked up, smiling widely. "Hello, Ryan."
"Don't put on that masque with me," he said sternly. "You and I both know that you're not doing ok."
The alien was silent for a moment. "Ten, nine, eight, seven," she counted. "One number a day. Tomorrow it's probably gonna be six."
"A countdown?" Ryan asked, though he knew the answer was obviously "yes." "Why though?"
The alien's lip curled. "I have a theory, but I really don't like it."
"That bad?"
"Worse."
Ryan frowned. "What if you're right?"
There was a dangerous glint in her right eye. "Then things are really going to get ugly."
Ryan folded his arms. "So what is it that you're thinking?"
Their order number was called, abruptly ending the conversation. The Doctor went up to grab their meals, leaving the former warehouse worker to ponder what she meant by that.
19 JANUARY 2019, 22:27
SHEFFIELD HALLAM A&E, IMAGING WING
For the umpteenth time that week, Oslo Stefansson was really starting to think his university practicum with the police had become a lot less boring.
And more like an adventurous sci-fi experience.
Or was that horror?
He couldn't tell.
Under a technician's supervision, Oslo checked the PET imaging machine, frowning. He loved his job with the police, and Sergeant Sunder was a great boss, but he hadn't expected to be focusing on anything super weird.
Well…
The coroner thought it had been a good idea for the intern to study the neurobiology of Max Gentry post-mortem, not only since he was one of Oslo's professors, but also since the reports that Inspector Nielsen and PC Wagner had provided earlier that day had an alarming degree of weirdness. Oslo had initially been sceptical, especially since Wagner was still concussed at the time, but Nielsen's report was identical to the Constable's.
Since Oslo was a neuroscience major, it made a great degree of sense. And he was curious.
But nothing about what he had found was anything he could understand.
The intern ran the Positron-Emission Tomography for the third time that evening, finding the same thing once again: the occipital lobe was still exhibiting strange impulses…
…in a body that had been dead for well over a day.
"What the hell?" he breathed, confused. The intern deactivated the machine, pulling Max's body out. The smell was revolting.
Not my fault, he told himself. That's probably normal.
He was definitely going to need a shower before returning to his flat.
"Any luck, Stefansson?"
Oslo turned, seeing the coroner walk in. The man was balding, looked to be somewhere in his fifties, with pale skin—much in contrast to Oslo's own dark brown skin colour—a thick beard and a beer belly. Given his job, Oslo couldn't blame the guy for the alcohol habit, even though he knew it was bad for him.
"I think the machine's malfunctioning," Oslo told him, as the technician walked out of the room.
The coroner raised an eyebrow. "What makes you say that?"
Oslo gestured to Max's body. "I ran three separate tomographies, and all of them showed neural impulses still active in a corpse."
"Which area?"
"Striate cortex."
"Huh." The coroner stroked his beard thoughtfully, looking closely at the corpse's eye for a good moment. "Let's get this machine cleaned up. Then we can try 'er on me, just to make sure she's working properly."
"Are you sure we're authorised to do that?"
"We are. I'm supervising you."
"Okay." Oslo looked back at him, sceptical. "Did you find anything?"
"I found a strange image in his eye," the coroner admitted. "Probably the last thing the poor bloke saw before he died."
Oslo frowned, racking his head for stuff he learned about in his major classes. "His biochemistry must have been badly corrupted, then," he mused. "He also had meth in his system, but I doubt it would cause anything like that. It could have been the result of an occipital lesion, but I've never heard of a case where something like this happened."
"Ten," the coroner said, nodding.
Ten? Last I checked, I wasn't getting marks on this particular assignment. "Sir?" Oslo asked, cautious.
"Yes, Stefansson?"
"What was the image, if I might ask?"
"It looked like the statue of an angel staring straight at me—that is, until I blinked. Come see for yourself."
Oslo frowned, walking over. He glanced at it, seeing an afterimage of a stone angel with its eyes covered, but it spooked him so much that he scooted backwards after a couple of seconds.
The coroner glanced at him. "Too creepy for you?"
Stefansson nodded, gulping. Did that thing move?
"Nine," the coroner said.
The intern felt goosebumps running along his arms but forced himself to stay calm. Something's not right here.
"Are you all right, Stefansson?"
Oslo nodded, though a feeling of cold dread gnawed through the pit of his stomach. "Yeah," he said shakily. "Let's get the machine running."
The two wiped down the machine, the coroner counting down from eight to seven to six before they finished.
"All right," Oslo said, doing his best to remain calm. "Let's get this thing running."
The coroner nodded, muttering "five" as he stepped inside. Oslo switched on the machine, neural images downloading from the mechanical behemoth.
Scan Complete.
"You can step out now," Oslo announced.
The coroner emerged, muttering "four." The intern looked at him, concerned. "Dr Conahan, how much did you drink before work?"
"Nothing," he informed the intern. "I've been sober for the past week." He looked directly at Oslo, frowning. "Are you sure you're alright, Stefansson?"
Oslo backed up, flinching severely once he got a good look at the coroner's right eye.
And saw the same image that was embedded in the eye of a corpse.
And like Max had allegedly been doing according to Nielsen's report, the coroner was counting down.
That can't be a coincidence…can it?
"Stefansson?"
Oslo gulped, nodding feverishly. "I-I'm fine, sir," he lied. He gestured to the exit. "I'm gonna take a leak."
"Three—go ahead. I'll clean up here."
Oslo bolted, arguably the fastest he'd ever run, ignoring calls from multiple nurses telling him to walk in the hallway. He ran into the restroom, panting.
What the hell was that?!
He tried putting logic to the matter. There was an afterimage of an angel in Max's eye. Max had counted down from ten, and then died in a car accident shortly after leaving Park Hill. Did he overdose on methamphetamine? Unknown, but that remained to be seen as they still had to perform an autopsy. The coroner looked Max's corpse in the eye. He started counting down from ten, and the same afterimage of an angel was present in his eye. The coroner was sober.
So what was going to happen to the coroner—and to Oslo himself?
The intern frantically checked his reflection, relieved to find there was no such image in his own eyes. But he had also looked Max in the eye—why was he unaffected?
Just be glad that you are, he told himself seriously.
Oslo heard the lavatory door open and shut behind him, but the sound of footsteps was absent. He gulped.
Don't turn 'round don't turn 'round don't turn 'round—
He looked up in the mirror, terror overtaking him as he saw an angel statue bearing down behind, fangs bared in an evil contorted expression as it looked straight into the mirror.
Is this a Weeping Angel?
Oslo ducked, dodging the statue as he bolted out of the lavatory, not anxious to find out if he was right. The intern shut the door behind him, locking it from the outside. He couldn't tell if it was trying to get out, but he wasn't taking his chances.
"Professor Conahan," he breathed, running to the imaging area. Please be okay, please be okay, please—
One look at the coroner's body caused the intern to let out a bloodcurdling scream.
His corpse was eerily similar to Max's and looked as though all of the energy had been sucked out of it. In addition, the PET machine looked to be offline.
Oslo gulped, gingerly walking towards the corpse. Sure enough, the afterimage of a stone angel was there, very similar to the one that had snuck up on the intern in the bathroom.
"That bastard did this?" he whispered, shaken. Oslo put on some gloves and closed the coroner's eyes, and Max's too. This doesn't need to happen again.
Oslo exited the room, shaking as he screamed for help. Nurses came running, gasping at what happened. The intern described what he'd found, pleading with them not to open either corpses' eyes. Some didn't believe him, chalking it up to shock, though neither corpse was desecrated.
Oslo slumped down against the wall, sobbing in grief. Why is this happening?
Why did he have to die?
"Messer Stefansson?"
Oslo looked up, seeing one of the nurses standing in front of him, wearing a hazmat protection suit. The guy didn't look that much older than Oslo himself—maybe about three to four years at most.
"Yeah," he whispered, voice trembling.
"I've called the police," the nurse informed him.
Oslo glanced up, physically shaking. "I didn't do that to him!"
"I believe you," the nurse reassured him. "Nobody thinks it's your fault. But we really need to get you to decontamination." He sighed, placing a shock blanket over the intern's shoulders. "You think it's really one of those Weeping Angels?"
Oslo nodded.
The nurse frowned. "Can I trust you?"
"Sure."
It took a moment for the nurse to respond. "It's not just here. Weird things have been happening with those things—deaths, disappearances, who knows what else." The nurse glanced at him. "You work for the police, right?"
"Yeah, but I'm just an intern."
"Still counts." The nurse held out a hand, helping him up. "Oslo, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Kenji Tanaka. I'd say it was nice to meet you, but given the circumstances, that might not be a good idea right now."
"You look a bit young for a nurse," Oslo commented.
Kenji shrugged. "I'm in my third year of med school. You?"
"I'm still in undergrad."
"What year?"
"Fifth-year senior. Neuroscience major." He glanced at the nurse. "Do you normally get weird shit like this?"
"Nope," Kenji admitted. "They didn't teach us anything about this in class."
"Same here." Oslo wiped tears off his face. Kenji gave him a sympathetic look. "I take it you knew the guy?"
"He was one of my chem professors," Oslo said quietly. "And a pretty damn good one too."
"Sorry."
Oslo blinked., a stray thought crossing his mind. PC Khan has done weird cases before. Maybe—
"You good, mate?"
The intern glanced up at him. "I think I might know someone who can help us."