It's dark. Very dark. Sarah, wearing a Heddlu Uniform shines a torch around a street.
"I know you think this is ridiculous. But I - saw it - Neil." She points a torch one way. She points a torch another. She turns a blind corner and turns left and right. "Because they're coming Neil, I've seen it"
Sarah frowns as her partner says soothing about being on another street. They should have never split up.
"Hinckley Way Shopping Centre - meet me there." She hears the noise of a bin clattering. She points a torch towards it. Her torch hits a person. Crouched in the dark. He looks a mess.
"Hello?"
There is liquid all around him. It could be blood, it could be rust.
"Neil. Hang on..." She takes the phone from her ear but doesn't disconnect. She looks again at the… man " Are you OK?"
She approaches. There is a sound. The sound of something breathing without a throat. A sound akin to a fish dying in the open air.
"Are you... hurt?"
The Thing's eyes are revealed - they burn amber.
Sarah is trying to get closer, crouching as she asks "Can you..."
Suddenly the Thing turns and lunges straight at her. There isn't even time for Sarah to scream. The phone spins out of her hand and across the floor and spins away.
"Sarah... Sarah... SARAH!"
.
.
.
Paul lands hard. "Ow."
His bike is buckled. He is hurt. He looks at his hands and his arm. He's badly scraped himself. His eyes fill with tears, but like a good teenage boy he blinks them back. He touches his arm tenderly. "Shit."
And then he stands and starts brushing his knees and clothes down. Then, suddenly, he stops - There's a Heddlu Officer pointing a gun at him. "What the Fuck?"
"Where's Sarah? I'm looking for Sarah." Neil says sternly "A Heddlu Officer, she is supposed to be back there."
Paul looks at Neil like he is mad. This sort of thing does not happen in this town. What the hell? Paul takes off running, bugger the bike. He enters a bus station what is closed down for the night, the large semi-enclosed area supposed to be for full sized buses to enter and allow passengers on and off in bad weather. Like… nowhere to hide man!
"Who are you?" he yells over his shoulder. Then a body comes crashing down from the skylight behind them. Crash. Bang. Glass and debris surround it. It lands with a slight thud and crunch. It's Sarah.
"Shit." Paul screams.
Neil looks at the body. Then up at Paul. Then around the top of the complex as a figure flits by. And another. Neil notices. He grimaces.
"Run." Neil yells.
"What?" Paul asks.
"Run." Neil yells again as he turns and runs. Paul thinks, bends, picks up a strange capsule … a pill? - looks at it. And then runs hard after Neil.
Neil runs quickly. He now has Sarah on his back. He notices running shapes on the walls behind him. There are shadows. There is kinetic movement. This is scary. He hits a dead end. He looks back. There is something lit in the far distance. A shadow. A shape. Something. The shape moves towards Neil. It's got a strange sort of loping movement.
Neil lifts his gun and shoots again. Once. Twice. Three times. And then the gun jams. And the shape keeps moving. Neil looks around for somewhere to escape to. There is nowhere. Neil puts Sarah down, he faces the shape, he readies himself for attack. "Come-on. Come-on."
Bang. Suddenly Neil's attacked not from the front but by a blur from behind him. He is sent hard to the ground. And the thing that's landed on Neil. It's extraordinary. His flesh looks rotten. His face the same yellowish black and white.
Neil is pinned to the floor. "No... No..."
Neil looks up and sideways and all around, there is no escape. And then he sees something which surprises him even more. He sees a man coming from across the way, running hard with his coat flying behind him.
Sarah coughs. Blood comes out, she touches it, she knows what it is. Her face crunches like a little girl. She dying. She knows she is.
Neil watches with horror as the Thing is evolving. He's getting stronger. Suddenly it reaches out and grabs Neil's face it pulls him closer towards it.
Then came the gunfire… not from the man running towards them but from where neither he nor the Thing saw it coming … to the left as another man… a younger one … who fires at the things' head with open malice.
Neil can only yelp as the Thing dies then he looks over to find Paul standing back staring at the older man in the coat "Who the hell are you?"
"Captain Jack Harkness." Comes the reply with a grin "Torchwood"