Chapter 19
The Doctor called out urgently to Selim. It was obvious something was wrong, even before he told her the ice had got him. At that point, she turned around. She was wasting time shouting at the door. There had to be something better she could do.
And it turned out, there was. Turning around, she realized someone was conspicuously missing. She slipped past Mike and Milan, and ran down the stairs. Down in the main room, Aqua was sitting by the controls, staring intently at the device in her hands. She hadn't even noticed the Doctor come in.
"I suppose I should've known it was you," the Doctor sighed.
Aqua looked up, surprise briefly flickering across her face before she settled into a more confident anger.
"Maybe you should've, but you didn't." Aqua got up. "I sure hope you didn't suspect Mr. Snokax, but you always took his side, so maybe not."
"Snooze . . . is that what this is about?" the Doctor asked, feeling her temper rise.
"Of course it was about Mr. Snokax. He uses all his money to create fake power, to boss superior people around. Do you really think we'd all just sit back and take it. You should know. You clearly don't let anyone tell you what to do. But you sure let him walk over you, and the rest of us."
"Don't try to make yourself sound noble. People are dead now."
"Yes I know. That's the point. If the town was iced over while it was empty that would've been a little embarrassing for Mr. Snokax, but he could've just pinned it on us doing our jobs wrong. It gets iced over while people are living there, because he was so confident it was safe? That's a big scandal for him."
"I'm warning you," the Doctor said tensely. "Give up now. I'm not letting you kill my friend."
"Oh so that's why you suddenly care so much." Aqua laughed. "Don't act like you cared before. You haven't done anything this whole time! You act like you know what you're doing, and then just let this keep happening!" She waved her free hand at the ice in the corners of the room. "I'm not even going to kill the brat. I. Have. Standards."
She clapped her hands on 'have' for emphasis. In doing so, she set her device down. The Doctor was hoping it would get to this point. That she'd either get angry or confident enough the Doctor would get a chance at the device. This was not how she expected it to happen, but no time to question that now. She grabbed the device. Aqua froze for a moment, staring with her mouth in an 'oh' shape.
"Thanks for that," the Doctor said.
"Hey!" Aqua shouted, snatching at it.
The Doctor wasn't too concerned. She just stepped back. She doubted Aqua was very strong physically, even if she did manage to grab it again. The Doctor muttered to herself, putting a plan together, and pressing buttons on the device.
Aqua's anger quickly changed to fear, because she couldn't move. Ice began to creep up around her feet.
"You reversed the signal," Aqua said quietly.
"That's the idea," the Doctor agreed. "This will now do to you, what you were doing to everyone else."
She set the device on the control panels, just out of reach of Aqua. She seemed to realize that too, because she made no attempt to snatch it back. The Doctor hadn't even really killed her. Members of Aqua's species hibernated in extreme cold, like certain frogs or insects on Earth. She'd be fine once she thawed.
"How dare you?!" Aqua shouted, squirming around as much as she could. "You can't do this to me! I will not be defeated this easily!"
"Actually, I think you just were."
The Doctor turned around and started back up the stairs. Aqua yelled after her, still mad this was happening and probably slipping some promise of revenge in, but the Doctor was barely listening. It was nothing she hadn't heard before.
Mike and Milan were still at the top, though they were staring down the hall with a certain amount of dread. She wondered how much they had heard. Well, she wasn't about to apologize. As soon as that device was out of Aqua's hands, they were all safe.
"So . . . what happened?" Mike asked.
The Doctor sighed. "I'm sure you noticed. Aqua was behind this. She'll still be alive when she's thawed out."
Mike nodded. "I see. We should probably get off this planet and tell people then. Might be best to leave her frozen here until we figure out what to do."
The Doctor shrugged. It would be easiest to just leave her as an icicle, but there were a lot of ways that could go wrong.
"Thank you, Doctor."
The Doctor nodded, then headed for the door while the other two headed for the stairs. She had someone to get. It took a little while to open the still iced over door, but it was melting without the technology to keep it going. She eventually managed to shove it open just enough to slip inside.
Selim lay unconscious on the floor. One of his arms, and a leg were partially frozen, but he was alive. She could see his chest rising and falling slightly.
Well, while he was out. . .
The Doctor scanned him. Her screwdriver said he was human, but that didn't always mean much. Humans spread out all over the universe and differed at least a bit from place to place. On Selim's home planet, for example, humans came with more blood than on earth. So the screwdriver might overlook a few anomalies. Still, it probably would've picked up if he was harboring shadows, or an energized Philosopher's Stone.
Now, time to get a move on. The sooner they got out the better.
Pride opened his eyes blearily. He wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but he wasn't in that shed anymore, and he wasn't frozen. In fact he felt pretty warm, and there was a soft blanket over him. Good.
He rolled over, and went back to sleep.
[Aqua not killing kids, or people she thinks are kids, was a last minuet idea, but it sure explains how Pride survived this arc. The Doctor also originally didn't know Aqua could hibernate, but that seems like an unlikely knowledge gap.]
