The young woman has been walking for two days now. She has come across a couple of small streams which she has sustained herself on, but her stomach is grumbling loudly from the severe lack of food. Her feet are bloody from the endless walking, her shoes worn, and she has taken her shirt off and wrapped it around her leg to create a makeshift bandage after she deeply cut herself on what she later realised to be a bayonette, sticking out of the ground.
She sees a large, looming hill and begins to climb it. A mangled corpse is protruding halfway out of the ground, it's skull caved in. She seems to have left the area of the massacre a while ago, but there are still occasional corpses around here. Probably the ones who tried to run away from whatever did this. The woman arrives at the top of the hill and gasps, her eyes instantly filling up with tears of joy. There, less than a mile away, is a small town. She couldn't make out any people in the streets, but it was a blessing nonetheless. She scrambles down the hill, falling a little, and runs in the direction of the town, happy tears streaming down her cheeks, streaking her dirty face.
She runs and runs, getting closer and closer until, suddenly, she hears a noise from behind her. She swivels round but doesn't see anything. Another noise, like the fluttering of wings. She wheels around again, dread beginning to pool in her stomach. Then she spots something. Something odd. A hand coming out of the ground. She crouches down and touches it, realising it seems to be made of stone. Bewildered, she moves on, continuing towards the town, straining her ears for any more terrifying sounds. Then, suddenly, she hears a crunching, and then sound of fluttering again. She wheels around, only to come face-to-face with a figure. Made of stone, it had a face contorted in rage, it's arms outreached towards her. It looked almost like an angel, with long, grey wings protruding from its back. She falls to the floor, terrified. How the hell did that statue just...appear? She noticed a huge hole in the ground behind the statue. It was as if something had ripped it up from the inside, like a corpse clawing its way out of the grave.
She got up and walked towards the statue, and then poked it in the chest. It didn't move. She knocked it with her fists but it wasn't hollow. She shrugged - it's only a statue - and turned away.
*
A droplet of water hit Yaz's face. And another. And another. She begins to stir, and is then jolted awake by a loud crashing. Yaz sits up and looks around frantically, before realising it was just thunder. She gets up, brushing dirt off her dress, and takes in her surroundings. She seems to be on a street, which is cobbled and dirty. Lining either side of the street are tall, pale buildings with ornate windows and gorgeous hardwood. Paris, Yaz thinks. This is Paris. She spins around, looking for the Eiffel Tower, only to realise she's being stupid. The Eiffel Tower wouldn't have been built by this point.
As she takes in her surroundings, she sees something that makes her heart stop. The TARDIS. The beautiful blue box was shimmering, fading in and out of focus like something in a badly filmed movie. Seeing this suddenly caused Yaz to remember what had happened:
'Doctor! Doctor!' Yaz calls out into the night, to no answer. Yaz starts to panic slightly, before taking a deep breath, hitching up her dress, and walking down the street towards the centre of the city. Seems like as good a place as any to start looking.
*
The Doctor brandishes her Sonic Screwdriver and spins on the spot, scanning her surroundings. She brings it up to her eyes, perplexed.
'What? That's not helpful. The Eiffel Tower is literally there, it can't be 1782!' She scans again, only to get the same result. 'Oh, you're useless.' She places it back in the jacket of her tuxedo, then sits down on the kerb, thinking out loud. 'OK, so if I've been spit out into 1903 when it should be 1782, that means that the TARDIS's chronological displacement is worse than I'd anticipated. If Yaz did go through, then she could be anywhen, though it seems that the temporal distortion may have pulled us in like a gravity well, which means...', The Doctor springs to her feet, smiling widely. 'The time distortion isn't limited to one time zone. Intriguing.' She pulls the sonic out again. 'If you can't tell me the year it is, can you at least tell me which direction the distortion is?' She looks at the readings, and her eyes go wide. 'Oh. That's bad.'
*
As Yaz made her way down the streets of Paris, she started to realise something that seemed a little strange. She had been walking for about twenty minutes...and hadn't seen a single person. She didn't expect the higher class of Paris to be out at this time, but to see absolutely no one feels strange.
However, just as she was thinking, there is a loud crash. A door of one of the buildings crashes open, and a young girl, no older than 17, comes bursting through. Her hair is messy and tangled and her eyes were popping. She is clearly terrified. Tripping over her feet, she falls to the ground, falling facefirst into the street. Yaz runs over to her, hooks her arms under the girl's and pulls her to her feet. The girl looks back at Yaz, her eyes wide.
'Hey. You OK? What happened?' Yaz asks. The girl shakes her head furiously and replies shakily in a thick French accent.
'We need to run. It will catch us. We must run.' Yaz is bewildered. The girl starts to cry, but Yaz continues to hold her.
'Hey, hey, it's OK. What's your name?' The girl begins to speak, but the words catch in her throat. She swallows, and tries again.
'My name is Ana. But listen, we must go. It will come for you too.'
'What will?' Before Yaz could ask any more questions, however, Ana grabs her hand and starts running down the street, dragging Yaz with her. Yaz looks back at the open door and sees a strange, shadowed figure in the doorway. It's completely still, and she couldn't quite make out any features but it seemed to have strange shapes protruding from its back. They look almost like wings.
Ana and Yaz keep running, turning a corner into a darkly lit side road. Yaz lets go of Ana's hand and leans against the wall, breathless. Ana joins her, looking around fearfully. After a few seconds, Yaz speaks up.
'I'm Yaz by the way.' Ana nods slightly, still looking weary. 'So tell me Ana... what are you so scared of?' Ana, who seems to have calmed down slightly, slides down the wall. Yaz joins her on the floor.
'My friends have been going missing the last few weeks. All of Master Lacroix's servants have been going missing one-by-one. My sister, Marie, went missing yesterday evening, but before she did she told me about something following her. A demon hiding as God's herald.' Yaz thought back to the winged figure she was.
'An angel.' Ana nods in agreement.
'And tonight, it came for me. I have to get away from here, out of Paris. Marie told me it will continue to chase me, but it can't get me outside of Paris, right?'
'I don't know, it depends on what exactly it is. It didn't look like it was moving, though. Are you sure it was chasing you? Looked almost like a statue to me.'
Suddenly Ana screams at something over Yaz's shoulder. Yaz spins around, and sees the angel standing ominously before them. It's hands were covering its eyes, as if it were crying. Yaz walks slowly up to it and peers closely, but it did just seem to be stone. She begins to retreat nonetheless, grabbing Ana's hand. Ana grasps it like a life raft, holding it so tightly Yaz felt her bones click. They turn to run but BAM! Another angel appears in front of them, this one's face contorted in an expression of pure evil. Ana screamed. There was a cracking sound behind them, and Yaz felt something touch her shoulder.
*
Yaz falls to the ground, cracking her knee on the hard stone floor. She gasps for air, and hears a familiar accented voice calling her name.
'Yaz. Yaz!' Yaz tries to peer through the inky blackness, but sees nothing. 'Yaz, where are you?' Yaz starts crawling towards the voice.
'Ana?' she calls out into the blackness. Yaz's outstretched hand suddenly connects with another and grasps it. Ana's hand is clammy and cold. 'Hey, Ana. You OK?'
'I'm OK', Ana replies shakily. 'What happened. Where are we?' Yaz pulls a small torch from her pocket and clicks it on.
'Always be prepared,' she says. She shines it around the room, taking in the surroundings. The room seemed to be a square, with brick walls and no windows. There are bloodstains on the wall and floor, and a small puddle in the corner. There is some sort of cavern in the bottom of the room, a large staircase leading down to a rusted gate. She turns the torch behind her, and is shocked to see three more people behind her - all of whom look wildly different. One is a dirty middle-aged man in a ragged brown tunic, another is a young teenage girl with bright blonde hair and a long but bedraggled dress, and - the most confusing to Yaz, was another girl, this time with a shock of short bubblegum blue hair, high heels and denim overalls. Yaz walks over to her and sits down next to her.
'Hey, I'm Yaz.' The girl looks at Yaz with sad eyes, holding herself. Yaz smiles kindly at her. 'Hey, could you tell me where we are?' The girl laughs shrilly.
'How should I know?' she says in a thick French accent. 'All I know iz zhat I was shopping and then, suddenly, I am here.' She shivers, but clearly not from the cold.
'How long have you been here?' Yaz asks.
' I don't know. A few days,' she replies.
'And you haven't tried to escape?' The girl laughs again in that horribly joyless way.
'Escape? How would I 'ave escaped? Do you see a way out. Non. The only way out of here iz down zhere.' The girl points a slightly trembling finger down to the rusted gate. 'And going zhere is worse.'
'Why?'
'Becauze the people who 'ave gone zhere 'ave never come back. They leave and a few minutes, sometimes hours later, we hear zheir screams. We never see zhem again after zhat.' The girl puts her head down, shaking slightly. Yaz gets back to her feet, pointing the torch once again down to the gate. She walks towards it again, stepping down the stone staircase and reaches the gate. She pulls at it slightly and it creaks open. She leaves it for now, but at least knowing she has a way out. Hopefully, at least.
Yaz goes back to Ana, who is huddled in a corner, terrified. Yaz crouches down in front of her and hands her the torch.
'Hey, Ana? I need you to take care of this for me, OK? I'm gonna have a look around, see if I can get us out.' Ana nods, and Yaz scurries off.
Feeling and knocking the walls, she could feel they were extremely solid and extremely thick. There didn't seem to be any weak points, or any points where the bricks were slightly dislodged. Though seemingly ancient, these walls still seemed to be fully intact and therefore making for a perfect prison. Yaz looks back down at the gate, pondering what the young girl had said. No one ever comes out. Yaz thinks to herself that she's done riskier things, and with Ana with her, they might be able to make it out there. Whatever it is that is out there. Yaz walks back over to Ana and sits herself next to her, thinking. Where the hell is The Doctor?
The Doctor is examining a trapdoor she's found on the ground. She is directly beneath the Eiffel Tower, and has found a small trapdoor in the floor that is almost invisible to the naked eye. She scans it with her screwdriver but it just gives her s confused jumble of nonsensical readings. There's definitely something going on down there.
'Catacombs', she says to herself ponderously. Just 9 meters below the city lay a deep, complex web of catacombs. Her sonic had told her that the temporal disturbance was present in all directions. Could it have meant the catacombs? The Doctor pulls at the trapdoor, and it springs open, revealing a long ladder that descends into complete blackness. The Doctor observes this in trepidation, before replacing the sonic back into her pocket and pulling out something a lot bigger - a bright, purple UV light. She waves it down there but doesn't see anything. She picks up a small pebble from the ground and drops it. After a few seconds of silence, she hears it drop. She nods to herself - 18 feet - and begins to climb, holding the UV light all the while.
She slowly begins to make her way down, the small ray of light from the trapdoor getting more distant, until she reaches the ground. Bouncing on impact, she shines her UV light around her. The walls are stacked with skulls and bones, very tightly compressed together. The air is thin down here and the ceiling low, making for something that feels pretty claustrophobic. The Doctor, oblivious to these terrifying factors, takes out her sonic and scans, trying to decide on a way to go. It doesn't give her anything to work off, so she points in front of her and starts talking. Not three seconds after she starts walking, she hears a blood-curdling scream from behind her. She turns on her heel, and runs in the opposite direction, heading towards the sound. She runs through what seems like an endless tunnel of bones before she comes out into a wider area, an expanse of darkness. She wheels around, straining her eyes and ears for any sign of the screamer, but nothing. She takes a step forward, only to quickly withdraw her foot after hearing a cracking sound. She looks down and picks up something. A small rectangular object. The Doctor shines her light on it, and her curiousity quickly evolves into concern. In her hand was a mobile phone.
Concerned, The Doctor turns around to look for the exit...only to stop dead. Not three inches from her face was an outstretched stone arm from an angel standing in the doorway, blocking the exit. The Doctor, unblinking, backed away.
'Weeping Angels. Of course,' The Doctor says to herself. Making sure not to blink, she starts towards the passage on the other side of the room, hoping to get away. But then...CRACK! The Doctor starts as another Angel appears from that doorway. She backs away, lighting up both with her UV light. She shines it between them, trying to keep them both in view. CRACK! Another one comes in behind the first, quickly moving to the centre of the room. The angels start to close in on her. The Doctor tries, but can't keep them all in her eye line at once. CRACK! The second Angel is now just a few feet in front of her, its face contorted in rage. The Doctor continues to back away, but suddenly trips on a skull on the ground. She manages to keep her balance but loses her grip on the light, which goes skittering away to the other side of the room. She can now only just make out the Angels in the consuming darkness. She squints, trying to keep them in sight, but the closer they get the less she can see them. CRACK! The first Angel has moved to her side, forcing her to turn away from the others to keep it in her eyeline. They've trapped her. And just as she thinks this couldn't get any worse, the UV light on the other side of the room - the only source of light in this cavern - started to flicker.
To Be Continued...