Notes in part 1
Quote of Tolkien from the Two Towers Movie, definitely not mine.
** Turlough often wondered if his travels with the Doctor would be the death of him. Although a capable young man (if he did say so himself), some of the situations he had experienced lately had tested his boundaries, his patience and his resilience. Take, for instance, he thought, this situation. He was pressed against a cold wall with an infuriating girl, and an old man who would most definitely lose any tests of physical strength he was given. The Brigadier was missing and the Doctor and Tegan were Universe only Knows where. And.the Daleks were involved. To top it all off, he though as he rolled his eyes heavenward, his little group of derelicts was trapped with someone approaching around the corner of the building.
If the travels with the Doctor didn't kill him, he was sure the perversity of the Universe would drive him insane.
He took a deep breath, tightened his muscles and prepared to fight.
Only to have his arm grabbed in a cool vice-like grip.
Before he could force his brain to interpret its visual clues, his ears were assaulted by a familiar and yet strangely irritating Australian drawl saying: "Oh, it's you."
Turlough's eyes snapped open. "Doctor. Tegan."
"Turlough," the Doctor stated with a nod. He released the boy's wrist. "I gather by you using subterfuge to try and leave the compound, you're escaping. And with friends, yet." The Doctor reached behind him and ushered Tegan around the corner to join the small band.
"But." Turlough sighed in frustration and glanced longingly at the direction his friends had come. That way, he thought, was the way of freedom.
"We were attempting to leave that way," Penny pointed out, waving her hand at the corner.
"You'll do much better to find another route," the Doctor whispered conspiratorially. He glanced around the corner with a frown. Then, a brief second later with a flourish that still brought a smile to Tegan's lips, he turned back around. "Al Pendrall. How are you? It has been ages."
"Do I know you?" Al retorted. "I've never met you before in my life."
"Oops, Doc," Tegan issued. "Seems he knew an older model."
"Quite," the Doctor agreed. "Trust me, Al, I'm Doctor Smith, UNIT Scientific advisor. I'll explain later how this difference exists. I know your work. If you can't believe that I am he, then believe that I do work for UNIT, know your work and am on your side. Turlough?"
"He tells the truth and if the Brigadier were here, he would tell you the same," Turlough answered with a grim nod.
Tegan, however, had tired of the explanation time. She gave the two scientists a look of disdain. "Duplicates?" she said, quietly, accusingly.
Penny caught on immediately. "You wouldn't believe me if I said I wasn't. But we were locked up with your mate here. We were prisoners too. That has to count for something."
Tegan opened her mouth to argue, but was stopped with a glance from the Doctor. "Of course you were, and of course we believe you" The Doctor rubbed his brow. "Al, do you believe me? We have little time to convince you. Daleks might move slowly, but the duplicates, I assure you, will move very quickly."
Turlough nodded towards the gap in the buildings. "So we make for the TARDIS? You did bring it with you, didn't you?"
"Of course I did," the Doctor answered. "But we won't be going that way right now."
"But-"
The Doctor shook his head slowly. "Al?"
"Don't ask me why, but I do believe you," Al answered as he ignored Penny's incredulous look.
The Doctor gave a small grin. "Good. I'll show you it was the correct decision. Now, if this is a typical military installation, there will be the laboratory wing, a barracks of sorts and an XO office. You were imprisoned."
".in the laboratory building. This one," Penny offered. She didn't look entirely happy.
"Ah, then the barracks should be the building in front and the XO will be off to the side."
Tegan grimaced with thought. "So we're heading to.where? Oz?"
"Back into the laboratory building. We need to find the Brigadier. They took him for a reason and I won't leave him behind." The Doctor glanced around the corner and then nodded to the window that stood open a distance away down the wall. "Your exit, I presume."
He led them back along the wall and indicated for Turlough to crawl back inside. The boy did so with a sour turn to his mouth. Tegan was the last in and gave the Doctor a patented frown. "Are you sure about this?"
"I'd come back for you or Turlough-"
"No, I mean is this the proper way to handle those Daleks?"
"I don't know, Tegan. I'm improvising as I go along. Up you go."
**
"It isn't possible."
Reynolds released a chortle that made the Brigadier turn quickly. "What is it about humans? They always state something is impossible or implausible even as it stares them in the face. Your science and definition of science is so narrow. When will you learn that nothing exceeds the ability of science, Alastair, only your ability to define it."
The Brigadier straightened his coat with a quick jerk to its hem. "What are you going to do with it?"
"With you, you mean," sounded the Brigadier's own voice. Alastair twisted back to stare at his own face split in a wide grin. "How do you like your own likeness, Alastair? You want to know what they will do with you and me."
With a sharp cough to clear his throat, Alastair shook his head. He spoke only to Reynolds when he continued. "What are you going to do with it? My duplicate?"
"What we have done with all the others, my dear Brigadier. You are going to be used as a decoy, or an object of the bait and switch, if you will. Your friends are here. We will use your twin to infiltrate and mislead your friends while we finish our plans. Eventually, your twin will be led back to Britain and UNIT and will be our agent there. There at the heart of UNIT we will have someone that can countermand orders and issue ours."
The Brigadier lifted his chin. "I'll never allow that."
Reynolds gave the captive soldier a grin and approached him. The Brigadier faced down the man (duplicate, he reminded himself) as his face grew to fill his entire vision. "You make it sounds as though you have a choice, Alastair. You don't. I believe your friend Smith is known to say: where there is life, there is always hope."
Steven turned to the guards at the door. At this point the Brigadier didn't know if they were duplicates or their originals. "Take the Brigadier to the forward brig, if you will, and place him under guard. I will move him in a short while."
The Brigadier, again, shook off the hands that extended to move him along and stepped out the door with his head held high. Reynolds was amused as he watched the soldier leave the room. "Brigadier," he said, turning to the duplicate, "follow me. I believe I know a place to put you where you can be found by the right people."
**
"Is he insane?" Penny hissed to Al. Tegan turned to address the young lab assistant. The Doctor smiled a hidden grin. There were few things at that moment that could tie and bind Tegan's sanity together well enough to make her coherent and reliable. The major things were her loyalty to her friends and anger at any slight directed at them. He could help her by being an object of ridicule. Insults little affected him, but Tegan had never learned that fact. She took insults to him personally. He waited patiently to hear her retort.
"Do you have a better idea? The Doctor deals with situations like this all the time. I don't see you giving any other thoughts in the matter."
Penny narrowed her eyes. "Going back into the lab when that is where all those duplicates as you call them are and men with guns isn't the best idea no matter how you look at it."
The Doctor glanced around a corner and ushered his small band around a corner. "Have you read Tolkien, Penny? 'The closer we are to danger, the further we are from harm.' Come along; don't dawdle. Do you think that they'll actually be looking for us here?"
The girl nodded. Her white coat was drawn back as she put her hands on her hips. "Yes. Don't you? Think what you are doing?"
The Doctor nodded once sharply. "Yes. We are going back to a place where they expect us."
Al gaped at the Time Lord. "Then that means, Smith, that you are taking us into a trap."
"Is it?" the Doctor smiled back at his old friend. "If you know something is a trap, doesn't that neutralize the danger? If we were to go the other way, out into the jungle and back to the TARDIS and attempt to take on this problem without direction, then we're very much on our own. But with walking back into a trap, we are actually traveling further from harm, if we're on our toes. This is all occurring according to someone's plans, which should be somewhat comforting to you. I'd rather use them to our end and throw a wrench in their works as opposed to starting over from scratch. Does that make sense to you?" He whispered to Penny.
As they turned another corner, Al led the way into the heart of the laboratory wing. Penny frowned and muttered something about men and lack of conventional wisdom under her breath. Tegan stayed behind the Doctor, neither cowardly nor brave. He glanced at his friend with a wide grin. "She sounds like a younger you, Tegan."
She gave him her patented look number five and edged past him.
"We're coming up on the main labs, here, Smith," Pendrall whispered back. "If they are using them for their purposes, I'd say they would be using the main sickbay lab off the side. The rest of the areas are for microbiology research and PCR analysis."
"Then that's where they'll be dealing with the Brigadier," the Doctor reassured. "We also need most of your research. I saw the results of it in Australia. If you can tell me what you've found out about the virus and what they might be using for the vaccine-"
"I've got it all in my head, lad," Al voiced. Penny smiled.
"Then let's gather the Brigadier, see what they have planned for us and then see what we can do, hmm?" He gave Penny a wide smile. "I think that is a rather smashing plan."
He joined Al at the front of the group with large steps. The two of them hurried down the hall, with Penny and Tegan jogging behind them. Turlough took up the rear, glancing behind the group as they ran, walked and skipped around the final corner leading to the sickbay. He only hoped that the Doctor knew what he was doing. Everything always worked out in the end with him, but the means to the ends were always shaky.
**
"This is it, Smith," Pendrall whispered and hid in the corner to punch his personal code into the keypad. The entry screen blinked red. "They've changed my code."
The Doctor squinted at the keypad and grunted. "Move aside, Al. There's a good chap." He shimmied in next to the aging scientist and the wall.
Turlough shook his head. "We don't have time for this. Is there another way in?" he pressed. "We're sitting ducks out here."
"Be quiet," Tegan hissed. She and Penny edged into the doorway and glanced about nervously.
"I highly doubt the big guns are here," the Doctor answered as he punched in a code. After five minutes, he finished a final sequence and the door slid open silently. "Well, this is obviously the right way. That was too easy."
"Too easy?"
Turlough pressed his hand flat against Tegan and Penny's backs to get them inside. He backed in behind Al and the Doctor as they entered the room. He released a loud sigh of relief as the door slid shut.
But when he turned, he cursed.
The Brigadier was tied to a table and there were several guards standing about the room with guns. As he had said before, he thought fast and furiously, traveling with the Doctor would be the death of him.
** Turlough often wondered if his travels with the Doctor would be the death of him. Although a capable young man (if he did say so himself), some of the situations he had experienced lately had tested his boundaries, his patience and his resilience. Take, for instance, he thought, this situation. He was pressed against a cold wall with an infuriating girl, and an old man who would most definitely lose any tests of physical strength he was given. The Brigadier was missing and the Doctor and Tegan were Universe only Knows where. And.the Daleks were involved. To top it all off, he though as he rolled his eyes heavenward, his little group of derelicts was trapped with someone approaching around the corner of the building.
If the travels with the Doctor didn't kill him, he was sure the perversity of the Universe would drive him insane.
He took a deep breath, tightened his muscles and prepared to fight.
Only to have his arm grabbed in a cool vice-like grip.
Before he could force his brain to interpret its visual clues, his ears were assaulted by a familiar and yet strangely irritating Australian drawl saying: "Oh, it's you."
Turlough's eyes snapped open. "Doctor. Tegan."
"Turlough," the Doctor stated with a nod. He released the boy's wrist. "I gather by you using subterfuge to try and leave the compound, you're escaping. And with friends, yet." The Doctor reached behind him and ushered Tegan around the corner to join the small band.
"But." Turlough sighed in frustration and glanced longingly at the direction his friends had come. That way, he thought, was the way of freedom.
"We were attempting to leave that way," Penny pointed out, waving her hand at the corner.
"You'll do much better to find another route," the Doctor whispered conspiratorially. He glanced around the corner with a frown. Then, a brief second later with a flourish that still brought a smile to Tegan's lips, he turned back around. "Al Pendrall. How are you? It has been ages."
"Do I know you?" Al retorted. "I've never met you before in my life."
"Oops, Doc," Tegan issued. "Seems he knew an older model."
"Quite," the Doctor agreed. "Trust me, Al, I'm Doctor Smith, UNIT Scientific advisor. I'll explain later how this difference exists. I know your work. If you can't believe that I am he, then believe that I do work for UNIT, know your work and am on your side. Turlough?"
"He tells the truth and if the Brigadier were here, he would tell you the same," Turlough answered with a grim nod.
Tegan, however, had tired of the explanation time. She gave the two scientists a look of disdain. "Duplicates?" she said, quietly, accusingly.
Penny caught on immediately. "You wouldn't believe me if I said I wasn't. But we were locked up with your mate here. We were prisoners too. That has to count for something."
Tegan opened her mouth to argue, but was stopped with a glance from the Doctor. "Of course you were, and of course we believe you" The Doctor rubbed his brow. "Al, do you believe me? We have little time to convince you. Daleks might move slowly, but the duplicates, I assure you, will move very quickly."
Turlough nodded towards the gap in the buildings. "So we make for the TARDIS? You did bring it with you, didn't you?"
"Of course I did," the Doctor answered. "But we won't be going that way right now."
"But-"
The Doctor shook his head slowly. "Al?"
"Don't ask me why, but I do believe you," Al answered as he ignored Penny's incredulous look.
The Doctor gave a small grin. "Good. I'll show you it was the correct decision. Now, if this is a typical military installation, there will be the laboratory wing, a barracks of sorts and an XO office. You were imprisoned."
".in the laboratory building. This one," Penny offered. She didn't look entirely happy.
"Ah, then the barracks should be the building in front and the XO will be off to the side."
Tegan grimaced with thought. "So we're heading to.where? Oz?"
"Back into the laboratory building. We need to find the Brigadier. They took him for a reason and I won't leave him behind." The Doctor glanced around the corner and then nodded to the window that stood open a distance away down the wall. "Your exit, I presume."
He led them back along the wall and indicated for Turlough to crawl back inside. The boy did so with a sour turn to his mouth. Tegan was the last in and gave the Doctor a patented frown. "Are you sure about this?"
"I'd come back for you or Turlough-"
"No, I mean is this the proper way to handle those Daleks?"
"I don't know, Tegan. I'm improvising as I go along. Up you go."
**
"It isn't possible."
Reynolds released a chortle that made the Brigadier turn quickly. "What is it about humans? They always state something is impossible or implausible even as it stares them in the face. Your science and definition of science is so narrow. When will you learn that nothing exceeds the ability of science, Alastair, only your ability to define it."
The Brigadier straightened his coat with a quick jerk to its hem. "What are you going to do with it?"
"With you, you mean," sounded the Brigadier's own voice. Alastair twisted back to stare at his own face split in a wide grin. "How do you like your own likeness, Alastair? You want to know what they will do with you and me."
With a sharp cough to clear his throat, Alastair shook his head. He spoke only to Reynolds when he continued. "What are you going to do with it? My duplicate?"
"What we have done with all the others, my dear Brigadier. You are going to be used as a decoy, or an object of the bait and switch, if you will. Your friends are here. We will use your twin to infiltrate and mislead your friends while we finish our plans. Eventually, your twin will be led back to Britain and UNIT and will be our agent there. There at the heart of UNIT we will have someone that can countermand orders and issue ours."
The Brigadier lifted his chin. "I'll never allow that."
Reynolds gave the captive soldier a grin and approached him. The Brigadier faced down the man (duplicate, he reminded himself) as his face grew to fill his entire vision. "You make it sounds as though you have a choice, Alastair. You don't. I believe your friend Smith is known to say: where there is life, there is always hope."
Steven turned to the guards at the door. At this point the Brigadier didn't know if they were duplicates or their originals. "Take the Brigadier to the forward brig, if you will, and place him under guard. I will move him in a short while."
The Brigadier, again, shook off the hands that extended to move him along and stepped out the door with his head held high. Reynolds was amused as he watched the soldier leave the room. "Brigadier," he said, turning to the duplicate, "follow me. I believe I know a place to put you where you can be found by the right people."
**
"Is he insane?" Penny hissed to Al. Tegan turned to address the young lab assistant. The Doctor smiled a hidden grin. There were few things at that moment that could tie and bind Tegan's sanity together well enough to make her coherent and reliable. The major things were her loyalty to her friends and anger at any slight directed at them. He could help her by being an object of ridicule. Insults little affected him, but Tegan had never learned that fact. She took insults to him personally. He waited patiently to hear her retort.
"Do you have a better idea? The Doctor deals with situations like this all the time. I don't see you giving any other thoughts in the matter."
Penny narrowed her eyes. "Going back into the lab when that is where all those duplicates as you call them are and men with guns isn't the best idea no matter how you look at it."
The Doctor glanced around a corner and ushered his small band around a corner. "Have you read Tolkien, Penny? 'The closer we are to danger, the further we are from harm.' Come along; don't dawdle. Do you think that they'll actually be looking for us here?"
The girl nodded. Her white coat was drawn back as she put her hands on her hips. "Yes. Don't you? Think what you are doing?"
The Doctor nodded once sharply. "Yes. We are going back to a place where they expect us."
Al gaped at the Time Lord. "Then that means, Smith, that you are taking us into a trap."
"Is it?" the Doctor smiled back at his old friend. "If you know something is a trap, doesn't that neutralize the danger? If we were to go the other way, out into the jungle and back to the TARDIS and attempt to take on this problem without direction, then we're very much on our own. But with walking back into a trap, we are actually traveling further from harm, if we're on our toes. This is all occurring according to someone's plans, which should be somewhat comforting to you. I'd rather use them to our end and throw a wrench in their works as opposed to starting over from scratch. Does that make sense to you?" He whispered to Penny.
As they turned another corner, Al led the way into the heart of the laboratory wing. Penny frowned and muttered something about men and lack of conventional wisdom under her breath. Tegan stayed behind the Doctor, neither cowardly nor brave. He glanced at his friend with a wide grin. "She sounds like a younger you, Tegan."
She gave him her patented look number five and edged past him.
"We're coming up on the main labs, here, Smith," Pendrall whispered back. "If they are using them for their purposes, I'd say they would be using the main sickbay lab off the side. The rest of the areas are for microbiology research and PCR analysis."
"Then that's where they'll be dealing with the Brigadier," the Doctor reassured. "We also need most of your research. I saw the results of it in Australia. If you can tell me what you've found out about the virus and what they might be using for the vaccine-"
"I've got it all in my head, lad," Al voiced. Penny smiled.
"Then let's gather the Brigadier, see what they have planned for us and then see what we can do, hmm?" He gave Penny a wide smile. "I think that is a rather smashing plan."
He joined Al at the front of the group with large steps. The two of them hurried down the hall, with Penny and Tegan jogging behind them. Turlough took up the rear, glancing behind the group as they ran, walked and skipped around the final corner leading to the sickbay. He only hoped that the Doctor knew what he was doing. Everything always worked out in the end with him, but the means to the ends were always shaky.
**
"This is it, Smith," Pendrall whispered and hid in the corner to punch his personal code into the keypad. The entry screen blinked red. "They've changed my code."
The Doctor squinted at the keypad and grunted. "Move aside, Al. There's a good chap." He shimmied in next to the aging scientist and the wall.
Turlough shook his head. "We don't have time for this. Is there another way in?" he pressed. "We're sitting ducks out here."
"Be quiet," Tegan hissed. She and Penny edged into the doorway and glanced about nervously.
"I highly doubt the big guns are here," the Doctor answered as he punched in a code. After five minutes, he finished a final sequence and the door slid open silently. "Well, this is obviously the right way. That was too easy."
"Too easy?"
Turlough pressed his hand flat against Tegan and Penny's backs to get them inside. He backed in behind Al and the Doctor as they entered the room. He released a loud sigh of relief as the door slid shut.
But when he turned, he cursed.
The Brigadier was tied to a table and there were several guards standing about the room with guns. As he had said before, he thought fast and furiously, traveling with the Doctor would be the death of him.