Chapter 31.
More Like a Prison.
It was quieter in this part of the museum. The kids were not as interested in wars and carnage as they were in robot dinosaurs and cave people. Before the atmosphere had been very lighthearted, very hopeful, but the more she walked, the more somber it became. Entire walls were taken up by panoramas of faces lost in the wars – the Orion Wars, from her time, and hundreds after it, both on the planet and across the stars. She was shown the slow degradation of her home, from the incredible wildlife she had seen when the Doctor took her to the past to the toxic rain she knew, and beyond; beyond, to the continents breaking to pieces; beyond, to the air becoming like smoke on the surface; beyond, to the empty oceans and bleak, open plains; beyond, to the silence.
In the end all that remained was the quiet. All life had been wiped out. The music cut off and the lights were turned down as Grace walked along its final days.
Grace wondered, again, how the Doctor could do it. He knew what was going to happen to Earth, and yet he took trips there. He found his friends there. He knew that one day they would all wither and die. He knew that every species that ever was would eventually be destroyed. He knew bad people were going to do bad things – she had seen those terrible things listed, displayed, drawn out. Genocide. War. Slavery. How could he stand by and let that happen when he had the tools to stop it? It was not her opinion about the value of life that was wrong, it was his.
Right?
She turned into a corner exhibit entitled 'the remnants of Earth' and listened to testimony from scientists in a dozen little screens all over the walls. They said 'Earth death' was inevitable, from the moment the planet began to form. It was always inevitable, no matter the variable, no matter the planet, no matter the species.
Grace came upon a rock in a glass case in the center of the room. She was drawn to it, almost magnetically. It was collected from the cold, dead planet as a last souvenir.
But it was wrong.
It was not of the Earth. Grace could feel it. She pressed her hands to the glass and felt compelled to test her theory. Rose was not here to object this time.
Before she could lift the case, she heard a high whining sound.
A presence settled around her.
It was heavy, weighing her shoulders down, but it became gentler after a moment. The whining sound subsided, and the presence remained. Grace staggered away from the rock, thinking it came from the case, but it was inside her head. It moved with her. It was all over her like a cloud, like the mist she and the Doctor had seen in the past.
It was waking up.
One moment at a time, she felt it budding inside. She felt it brushing over her thoughts and stunting them. She wanted to be afraid, to go for the exit, but the presence became more like a prison. It was just as the Doctor had described to her. It was the thing he had been so afraid of before, the reason he had offered to take her to the past. He wanted to escape this sensation.
Suddenly, the speakers up above crackled. The presence vanished.
Grace leaned against a monitor, trying to catch her breath. The Doctor was right about what he had felt – it was following him. She needed to tell him as soon as she could find her balance again.
But the lights popped off in the exhibit, and heavy metal doors slammed down over the entryway. Emergency lights came on in all of the glass cases, with a red one shining over each of the sealed exits. It all happened so quickly that by the time she was startled back into mobility, it was too late. She was trapped.
A camera shifted up above. It followed her path across the floor.
"Let me out!" She waved at the camera. "Are you blind? Open the doors!"
A door opened, but not the one she expected. It was behind one of the monitors. The monitor swung away and a hulking, purple-skinned creature emerged, all four eyes focused on Grace.
She backed away, circling around the exhibit. He grabbed for her, but seemed unwilling to charge, instead following her closely. "I don't know what you want. I don't know what you want!" Grace almost stumbled, and the creature held out a hand, but she dodged it. "What? What are you doing? Back off! I don't want to hurt you!"
He was smart. He held himself in a way that made her make a wrong turn, and she got herself stuck against one of the metal walls. In an instant he had a hand around her wrist and he was dragging her back toward the door he had come from.
She struggled, digging her feet into the carpet and then trying to bite her captor. He made a strange sound, like he was gurgling, and pulled her relentlessly, unfazed by her efforts.
Grace did not want to find out what was behind that door.
In fact, it terrified her.
She felt the same terror she had when the mist closed in all around them, and when the Doctor told her Henry was going to be killed. It coursed through her like a fever.
"No! Who are you? Let me go!"
He got her to the doorway, and she clung to the frame, but he was much stronger. He pulled once and her fingers popped off. She staggered into a dim hallway and hit the opposite wall. The door to freedom slammed shut. The alien started dragging her along again.
There were more of them coming. She could see the purple sheen of their skin under the emergency lights. If just one more got a hand on her, it was over.
And then the impossible happened.
The presence returned much more forcefully, only it was not a weight this time, but a power. It surged through her blood like a drug. The hallway flashed brighter. Deep in her arms, the veins gave a green flash with every frantic beat of her heart, showing right through the skin. It burned.
The alien paused, surprised by the light show, and his grip loosened.
Grace took the split second to wrest her wrist away, but as soon as he was not holding her up, she hit the ground. Her muscles coiled up in protest. The tiny veins in her hands were pulsing green, and every heartbeat felt like a million pins prodding her nerves.
She scrambled up, unsteady, and the alien reached out for her.
There was no space to run, no time to think.
Grace thrust her hand at him defensively.
Her palm hit his chest, and as she touched him, she got a snapshot of his entire body in her head. Muscles, tissues, bones, organs – a massive heart pumping away. She heard the strange slither of alien blood in his veins. She felt his mind turning, his synapses firing. It was the same thing she had seen when she touched the Doctor, when she showed him the memory he had been searching for. It had been a mystery to her then, but now it was horrifying.
Because the alien did not smile, as the Doctor had.
He disintegrated.
His body fell backward, into dust, and the dust never settled. It dissipated, like he had never been there at all.
Grace got the awful, sickening thought – what if I had done that to the Doctor? – and the precious seconds she spent going over that in her head were her downfall.
Something hard struck her, and the hallway went black.