Historian's Note:
For those who wish to keep up with the timeline of events, for August Keyes Series Ten has just started. For the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble, between "The Unicorn and the Wasp" and "Silence in the Library". For the Eleventh Doctor and the Ponds, it is soon after "A Christmas Carol", but before "The Impossible Astronaut".
August thought that he really ought to stop rushing into things.
He clearly recalled a day from his childhood, back in—oh, say sixth grade? It was one of those stupid nature hike field trips he'd hated since forever. They were always hot, humid, and never any actual fun. The teachers and chaperones telling you to do this, and to do that, and 'don't wander off now darlings, we've got a schedule to keep'.
Eleven-year-old August, with his gap tooth smile, dinky plastic toy sonic screwdriver, and long scarf knitted by his grandmother (in retrospect, he probably shouldn't have worn it in a hundred-degree-weather), wanted so desperately to simply go exploring.
Parady—who at the time went by the cool name Zan—and Holly with her little pigtails were right by his side, slipping away to go on their own hike just off the path.
Holly had suggested they leave some sort of trail to mark their way back, Parady insisting they made sure their parents knew, but, with that silly toy brandished as a weapon, August insisted that he could find their way back on his own.
It was around midnight that the search party found them sitting out in the woods, August crying for Holly had fallen, her leg twisted into a position that didn't look right from any angle.
She'd spent two weeks in the hospital; he'd spent three grounded.
"You will be judged."
August quickly ducked back into his hiding spot, hoping dearly that the small army couldn't see him. They'd stopped at some sort of metal door half a mile down from where the Yanano was being held captive. The door looked relatively normal as most creepy metal doors went for being in the sewers, but there was something undeniably alien about it. Perhaps it was the large eyeball looking thing that emerged from a hole in the centre that gave it away.
The eye, attached to a long snake-like cord, blinked around at the army before it. Those under mind control were no matter to it, as it spent little time on them, electing instead to focus on the two women held captive. Both were frightened, but Donna held a steely resolve in her eyes that made August grin. Good old Donna was always so brave in the face of danger. The other girl was crying silently, head down.
If the eyeball had eyelids, August was sure it would have narrowed them. "Two measly, humans?" Came a slippery sounding voice, one that made August tense as it felt familiar. Could it be the voice that had been commanding him? "Is this the last of them?"
August allowed himself to peek around the corner more, none in the small army were answering the eyeball and it seemed like Donna was doing her best to comfort the crying girl. After a moment, the eyeball rolled, "ugh, forget it, you things are useless," the voice croaked—rather frog like, August thought— "bring them in. After we lost that other one you idiots could use all the help you can get."
August had a sickening feeling the voice was talking about him.
The eye shrunk back into its hole and the door clicked opened. Donna and the girl were shoved through and for a moment August locked eyes with her. The door swung shut behind them, the air in the room growing still. August hated the pure nervous energy that ran throughout his entire body at the thought of what could possibly be happening to Donna.
When the Doctor finally caught up to August, he didn't notice the Time Lord right away. The Doctor cleared his throat. August jumped, biting down on his lip perhaps a bit too hard, and almost sucker punched the Doctor.
"Oh," he breathed, "God, don't do that." August rubbed at his punctured lip, sighing at the bright red blood now on his palm.
"Number one rule," said the Doctor, "don't wander off. I thought you would know that, Keyes, or does that TV show of yours skip over the important parts?"
August didn't pay much attention to the Doctor's words; he didn't need berating. Donna was his main concern. The Doctor poked his head around the corner as well.
"Is that where they've taken her?" Asked the Doctor.
August nodded, wiping his hand off on his trouser leg, "Donna and this other girl. There was a voice, sort of all, froggy." He couldn't think of a better word to describe it.
"Froggy?" Asked the Doctor.
"Part of me doesn't doubt the possibility of a giant frog on the other side of that door," said August, thinking of the Judoon and other such aliens that resembled Earth animals, "but I really hope I'm wrong cause then I'm going to have nightmares." It being that the alien didn't look like rubber and did look very much like a large, very real, slimy frog.
"Hmm," hummed the Doctor, moving towards the door, "you might be onto something there."
"Oh, don't say that," whined August, walking over to the Doctor. He pointed towards the small circular opening in the door, "there was an eyeball sort of thing that popped out through here earlier."
"Real eyeball?"
"Honestly, I'm not sure. Can you get it open?"
"Easy enough," the door clicked open with one more whir from the sonic, "there we go, careful now." The Doctor took the lead and August followed closely behind.
It was intensely warm, so much so that August had the urge to pull off all of his clothes; the sweat was near immediate on his brow, but it didn't seem to bother the Doctor. A soft light blinkered overhead, enveloping the near pitch-black room in red light every few seconds. It wasn't a very wide room, but it was long. August found himself backed into the corner the moment they had walked a pace from the door. It was dark enough that August doubted they were going to be spotted unless someone was looking for them, even still they found a good box to hide behind.
Up ahead there was the small army that had taken Donna and the girl. They were standing on either side of a large machine with a seat and some sort of head probe. Donna was being held off to the right, the girl was in the chair, whimpering and pleading for them to stop what they were doing. Whatever it was, it seemed like it was taking a while to start the process.
"Doctor," whispered August, the word rolling of his tongue with a slight accent, "what is that?"
"Mental stasis probe," said the Doctor, "a device used on colony ships to ensure passengers don't go into synaptic shock during the cryogenic process. Basically, it puts the brain into a vegetable state until you're ready to be woken again, but I've never seen one used like this…"
"You said a lot of the alien technology around here has been stolen, right? First with the Yanano…"
"The Yanano is an antenna," said the Doctor, "normally a Yanano can only suggest things to you, make you feel a certain way about things, but if the brain is dormant than it's basically an empty playground for a telepath."
"There's no one to resist," murmured August, "but all those thoughts put in my head about Doomsday…"
"You might be a vegetable, but the brain is a tricky thing, it still takes some convincing to get it to do something it innately doesn't want to do. Which is why the Yanano never use force, they use suggestion. The mind is more cooperative that way."
It was all starting to make sense to August, "someone is putting the whole of London into a vegetable state using this mental stasis probe thing," he thought aloud, "then hacking into the Yanano's telepathic frequency to give themselves access to the humans dormant minds in order to basically hypnotise them into doing their bidding?"
"Well, I wouldn't say hypnotise..."
August looked boggled, "this seems so overtly complicated just for a bit of mind control. I mean, why not use blood control or—or, I dunno, something simpler?"
"Oh, blood control is way more complicated than this!" Said the Doctor, "creating a telepathic network is child's play," the Doctor threw his sonic into the air, "if I can find the frequency that machine is using to vegetize everyone and trace back the telepathic signal the Yanano is transmitting through, I should be able to reverse the polarity and wake up all the humans."
"Like you did with me?"
"Sort of, not really, they hadn't completely the process entirely with you, all you needed was a mental snap to wake up the synapsis, this is more of a big bang of electromagnetic feedback." The Doctor gesticulated just how big of a bang with his arms excitedly. "I'll need to find a way to amplify the signal of course, which might be tricky. There's got to be a control matrix involved somewhere, something to enter in all the commands separately from the Yanano, if I can locate that I should be able to send out the jamming frequency to everyone."
August thought hard. "What about the Yanano? Can't we just disconnect them? If the antenna goes down won't it disrupt the transmission?"
The Doctor shook his head, "disconnect the Yanano from the machine, life support fails, the Yanano sends out a massive electrical impulse onto the network and it'll fry everyone brain dead. Defensive mechanism, can't be helped."
"And that would be bad," said August matter-o-factly.
"Very bad," said the Doctor.
The machine in front of them began to whir and clink, the lights along the bottom rim of the seat flashing on. The girl cried out even louder, her silent sobs, turning to uncontrollable wailing. The helmet piece began to slowly lower into place. August watched with rapt attention.
A beam of white light shone from the helmet, clasps moving to keep the girls head steady. August felt himself lurch forward in anticipation, but the Doctor held him back.
"She'll be fine. Once we shut down the network everyone will be alright."
There was a lot of screaming in the next few minutes. August held his lip tight, watching as the girl's struggling slowed and she cried herself hoarse. She was still, asleep for a matter of a moment. August could see the moment her brain became interrogated with the network for her body tensed, she sat up straight, and when she opened her eyes the colour had drained.
"Jane?" Asked Donna, "are you alright?"
The girl stood from the chair and faced Donna, "you will be judged."
August really did stand up then, anger rising in his chest. He felt the Doctor wrap his arm around August's shoulders.
"Alright, Keyes, you go grab Donna as soon as soon as you can, I'll create a distraction." Without even waiting for August to reply the Doctor stood from the corner and made his way to the centre of the room. "Hello!" He said brightly, "what have we got here! Hmmm, looks like a violation of article 15 of the Shadow Proclamation! Stasis technology on a level five planet?" The Doctor dodged a swift grabbing motion from one of the zombie people surrounding the device as he took a step up on to the platform. He knocked his knuckle against it, "in pretty bad shape too." He turned to look at the Donna, "are you alright?" He asked softly.
Donna looked him up and down, her mouth hung open.
"Who're you?" Crackled that slimy frog voice from somewhere outside the room. Whoever was speaking wasn't present among the mind slaves.
"I should be asking you the same question," said the Doctor. His gaze drifted towards the ceiling. Looking for a speaker most likely.
August saw Donna studying the geeky looking young man with big hair, a bowtie, and strangely familiar eyes with a very scrutinizing glare. The geek in him was fanboying beyond belief and he found himself smiling. Donna Noble and the Eleventh Doctor, wowie.
As the Doctor continued on distracting the alien creature, spouting off about their wrong doings and how much trouble they were going to be in if they kept on, August searched the ground for anything he could toss at Donna to get her attention. He found a pebble, weighed it in his hand and chucked it over at her.
He missed, by a long shot, the pebble plinking off the toe of the girl, Jane. Luckily, she didn't notice; Donna, lucky, still caught sight of it and glanced down to where it had landed. From there her eyes trailed over to August's place in the shadowy corner.
He beckoned her.
Donna glanced between the Doctor and August, then the guards surrounding her and shook her head.
August nodded, mouthing "Yes," and waved his hands again.
Again, Donna shook her head, mouthing back "no."
This went on for quite some time.
"How very noble of you," spoke the Doctor, louder than any other thing he had said to the alien thus far. His tone was snarky, lip curled in disgust. Both Donna and August glanced at him, "but the rest of the human race isn't just going to turn over and submit to you! Cause at the rate you're going it's going to take until, what? August to conquer the whole planet? Somebodies bound to notice somethings wrong before then, and you can bet the human race won't just run away." The Doctor was jerking his head at August in such a way that he wasn't sure how anybody hadn't noticed the obvious gesture in his direction. From there, the Doctor moved to the other side of the room, the zombie people's eyes following him. "Now why don't you show me exactly what you look like, hmmm? You've got a big, fancy, flatscreen here, probably high def, I'd love to meet who I'm talking to."
Donna stared at the Doctor for a long moment, before quietly slipping her way over to August. As soon as she was close enough to him, August grabbed her by the shoulder.
"What's going on," she whispered, "who's that? You aren't picking up strays, are you?"
"I'll explain later," said August, pushing her toward the opened door. However, much noise it made, August didn't care, he knew the Doctor could handle himself.
Once the door closed behind them, both Donna and August let out the air they'd been holding in.
"Blimey!" Said Donna, "I thought you were never gonna show up!" She turned around to let August undo the ropes around her hands, "where the hell have you been?"
"Well, a zombie for the most part," muttered August, "there you go."
As soon as her hands were untied, August suddenly found Donna's arms around his neck. "Thanks," she said, "I'm glad to see you're alright."
"You too," he said, hugging her back so tightly he might have been choking her, "God, I was so worried about you. I don't think I could have lived with myself if something bad happened."
August, surprised, felt Donna hug back tighter and It was a few minutes later that she released him, giving him her customary Donna Noble glare, "now are you gonna tell me who that funny looking bloke in there is, or am I just gonna have to guess?"
August chuckled awkwardly, "erm, yeah, that would be the Doctor."
"The Doctor?" She looked at August like she hadn't quite heard him right. "You're kidding. My Doctor? Our Doctor? THE DOCTOR?!"
"The Doctor." Confirmed August, smiling wide.
"but he looks younger than the Doctor," said Donna, "and what's with that chin? It's huge! Are you having me on, again?"
Oh, how to explain regeneration. "I wasn't 'having you on' the first time, round! Look, I'll explain more later, but really we should—"
Like some sort of dormant instinct, August choose the perfect time to pull Donna's hand into his and duck before the tail end of that weird, fleshy eye stock thing could wack him upside the head.
"Prisoners!" Croaked the voice, "escaping! Fools! After them! The weak minded will not escape!" The eyeball went to swing at August again, but suddenly found itself slammed up against the wall as the Doctor swung open the door it was attached to.
"Run!" Shouted the Doctor.