"Where would they take him?" Matt muttered under his breath as he looked through a phone book they found while looking for nearby hospitals. His dark green eyes fell to Mercy Hospital. It's the closest one to their location, judging from the bus map they found nearby.
"If we wait until morning, he might not be there," Ripley frowned as she looked at their options. There's a good chance that the homeless man left the hospital by morning and since he likely didn't have an ID or home address, they wouldn't be able to track him down.
Frowning, Matt closed the phone book and turned around to face Ripley.
"What was he talking about?" Matt wondered what the homeless man's scared about.
As they tended to him, Matt and Ripley didn't see anyone in the surrounding area, and they didn't hear anyone but the man.
Stabbed, likely the man talked about his attackers, and in his delirium, thought the EMT were taking him to them.
"Whatever happened, he was terrified," Ripley frowned.
The pair discussed what the course of action would've been and the pair agreed that they needed to find the homeless man.
Finding the correct road, the pair made their way back to where the TARDIS materialized.
They'll take the TARDIS to the hospital and use their CSS to talk to the homeless man. Now curious about the vehicle that followed the ambulance, they wanted answers and they judged that if the homeless man's at Mercy Hospital, so would the vehicle.
As they walked through a familiar stretch of crosswalk, there's an order wafting through the air that wasn't there before and smelled heavily of musk.
To describe the musk, it smelled heavily of wet hair, rot, and iron.
"Ew, what's that smell?" Matt complained about the smell as he plugged his nose.
It smelled like a bad day in gym and he hated the smell.
Ripley smelled it to as it lingered around them. It's so thick, it gotten trapped in her throat and she coughed.
Matt patted her back with his free hand and helped her away from the area as the smell continue to waft through the area.
Suggesting it's sewage, Matt glimpsed around the darkened city. There's a slight breeze and it carried the musky smell through the area they're walking through.
It's strong enough to overtake the salty air and Matt's getting sick smelling it as he covered his mouth and nose, encouraging Ripley to do the same.
The iron smell started increasing and it smelt sickly to the point the pair almost gotten sick as they fled.
Closing in on the alleyway they came out of, Ripley stopped suddenly in her track and felt phantom eyes. She glimpsed around, but didn't see anything, not that she could in the dark.
Her dark eyes moved until they fell on the similar vehicle that followed the ambulance parked across the street, parked near another park.
She called to Matt and he stopped in his tracks, twirling around to see Ripley walk across the street towards the empty vehicle.
Matt headed towards her as she cautiously peered inside. It's tinted windows, peculiar and highly questionable.
"Matt, this is just like the one we saw," Ripley said as she went to the side and asked him to make a light for her.
With his Sonic Screwdriver, he illuminated the logo for CINDERWOOD.
It's Cassandra's agency.
"Why was one of them following the ambulance?" Matt wondered.
Ripley didn't know and she asked him to open the car door for her.
The Sonic Screwdriver caused the locks on the vehicle to pop open and the alarm system unarmed as Ripley opened the driver's side and rummaged through it while Matt stood guard.
There's a laptop inside the vehicle and with Matt's help, the password on it's overridden, and she's able to see what's on the laptop.
Detailed files regarding the homeless around the city, their information, last whereabouts, and peculiarly their health caught her eye.
It's not unusual for cities to keep track of their homeless, especially during outbreaks, but this seemed different.
Each file she opened showed known conditions and the like, but strangely, there's no annotations regarding getting the sickly homeless help.
It says rather diminutively, "KEEP OUT OF RANGE."
Ripley went through as many files as she can before getting to the one with the most meat. It's a tally mark and disturbingly, there's confirmed four-hundred deaths in the last couple of years. There's a table and she's able to see the causes for the homeless deaths.
Stabbings, suicide, overdose, so forth, but something caught Ripley's eye and she saw the recent deaths under an acronym "DRK."
She would've found out more, but Matt told her to hurry up and he's able to make it look like they weren't even there with his Sonic Screwdriver.
Hurrying away from the vehicle as Matt hid with Ripley in an alley, they spotted a man in a two-piece suit walking towards the vehicle. He didn't sense anything amiss and he got into his vehicle. Grabbing the CBD transmitter, he's talking to a dispatcher, but the pair couldn't hear the whole conversation.
Watching as the man close the car door and pull away from the curb, it left the pair curious as they left their hiding spot.
He came from the park, so the pair decided to see what he was doing. Rushing across the street, the pair entered the park, where the only thing they seen were thick trees and shrubbery.
There's a heavy smell and it sickened the pair as they followed it as it intensified.
With the light from the Sonic Screwdriver, they made out a collapsed man in the centre of the park, he didn't move or make a sound as they neared him.
His back turned against them, Matt stepped forward and called out to the man, but he didn't respond.
Ripley stayed back as Matt asked her while he went towards the collapsed man.
He called out but the never responded and when he came closer, Matt noticed the smell intensifying worse, to the point he nearly gagged from it.
Nearly vomiting, Matt stepped back in revulsion.
Looking around, Matt spotted a broken umbrella in the rubbish bin next to the bench and grabbed it.
With the umbrella, he tried poking the man, but the man didn't respond, and with the lopsided umbrella, Matt pulled on the man to cause him to fall on his back, showing his face.
Well, what's left of his face.
Matt's eyes widened as he dropped the umbrella and double backed to Ripley as he held the Sonic Screwdriver over his head.
"Wha… what?" Matt's lost for words as he looked at the body.
The man's face, there's nothing… but a few teeth and the lower jaw.
It didn't look like someone concave his face in, rather, torn, like a pull-apart bread the pair had at a restaurant last week!
Turning his head, he saw Ripley lost for words and shivering at the sight. Reflexively, he held an arm around her and pulled her close to him as they looked at the body.
"Oh my god," Ripley covered her mouth.
They didn't know if this was caused postmortem… or the cause of his death.
"What was he doing here?" Matt remembered the man who came out of the park.
If he didn't kill the man, then what was he doing?
"The logs," Ripley's eyes widened.
Disturbingly, it seemed as though the man documented the body left in the park.
The smell and sight nauseating Matt, he led Ripley away from the body, and left the park through the way they came in.
"He was right," Ripley flinched as she realized that the journalist wasn't defaming the mayor.
Looking at the time with his pocket watch, Matt mustered they'd have nine hours at most before sunup.
He mustered they return to the TARDIS promptly, not only because he didn't want to come across more bodies, but because the pair have a bad feeling.
While they wanted to go to the hospital and catch up to the homeless man and it's a gamble if he's still at the hospital by the time they get there in the morning, Matt felt that they're risking a lot staying out this late.
Agreeing with Matt, Ripley fled with him into the night.
Didn't take long to get back to the TARDIS, they didn't stop along the way, just kept running until they got back to the blue beauty waiting for them.
Exhaling as they stopped finally, Ripley unlocked the TARDIS and the two rushed in, with Ripley locking the door behind them.
Unnerved, the two discussed what'd they witnessed.
"What… what do you think happened to him?" Matt coughed as he held a hand over his mouth, mortified.
Ripley didn't want to think it, but she forced herself.
Like a broken egg, the face completely gone, but it wasn't smashed in, like someone got violent with a bat. The brain, it was completely gone, so were the eyes. The body's intact except the face and it clued Ripley that it wasn't a person or an animal that killed the man.
"I have a bad feeling," Ripley felt a pit form in her stomach.
Reflexively, Matt held her as he comforted her, he'd too have a bad feeling.
It'd been a few minutes before he released his grip on her and went towards the console. He dialed in the next day and the TARDIS sprung to life.
The air shifted and cooled, the sounds of metal sheets rubbing against each other echoed throughout the console room, as the TARDIS reappeared in the same spot, but the next day.
When it stopped, Matt went towards the door and opened it with Ripley.
Peeking out, it's bright and sunny, and the two stepped out of the TARDIS once again.
Locking the door behind them, Ripley went with Matt out of the alleyway to see the city taking a new light. There's people out, cars lining the street, and seemed like a completely different city than the one last night.
Matt hailed a taxi for them and had the cabby take them to Mercy Hospital. With their CSSs they're able to fool the receptionist to tell them what they needed to hear, which unfortunately wasn't a lot.
The homeless man never arrived at the hospital like they thought. In fact, she's as confused as they were when they told her what'd happen.
"No, nobody by that description checked in last night," the receptionist replied.
The receptionist tried looking for him in the system, seeing if he turned up in other hospitals in the surrounding areas, but he never showed up.
It sent chills down the pair's spine as they learned that the homeless man, they tried to help last night, didn't make it to the hospital. Or any hospital for that matter.
Trying to find answers, Ripley asked about Cassandra Williams' campaign and the receptionist's opinion set the tone.
"I'm not one to talk, but that woman, I can't believe the mayor let her have her own agency. They don't even have to play by the same rules as we do!" Terry the Receptionist bemoaned Cassandra. She hated her because she overstepped her authority more than once and it made her incensed whenever talking about her.
"What do you mean, overstepping?" Matt spoke up as Terry fumed.
Terry explained that they had policies already set up for the homeless and then some, but when Cassandra came in, she took over completely and forced hospitals to forgo them.
"What happens to the homeless, then?" Ripley inquired about what happens to them if they don't come to Mercy Hospital and the surrounding hospitals.
Terry said that homeless go to Cassandra's clinics, which she knew nothing about.
"Do you know where they are?" Matt asks.
Terry shrugged as she told him that they're usually near camps, pop up clinics more than anything, and that she wasn't sure where the closest one was or if they'll find answers there.
Remembering, Ripley asked about the homeless camps themselves. She told the receptionist they came across one that's destroyed and Terry sighed.
"Wouldn't surprise me if they cleared them out," Terry sighed as she grabbed popcorn from under her desk and munched on it.
Seeing her pager going off, Terry told the pair that she couldn't answer anymore questions, she needed to help wheel in a pregnant woman coming to the hospital in a few minutes.
Bidding her farewell, the pair left the hospital, baffled.
Ripley had a feeling and said they should go back to the park where they found the body. Matt asked her why and she said simply, "Because it won't be there."