It was just the other side of creepy, the yellow sticky note on the silver device that said, "Antonio: Squeeze Me" in felt tip.
But he did it anyway, his hand shaking as the device began to vibrate and somehow began to weld the door shut. The way the door melted into the metal doorframe was strange, almost as strange as finding the note addressed to him, waiting for him on the chair by the door.
He'd ran, panicked at first, through the deserted streets of DC, sweating and cramping every muscle he'd never known he'd had, as the creatures and swarmed tore themselves out of flesh, man, rat or poodle, before his eyes, falling out of the sky among the litter shredded pigeon corpses and landing with wet splattering smacks onto the pavement.
Antonio hadn't known where he was running, wasn't aware of thinking only knowing that he was dead, exhausted and his throat numb from screaming. But something had led him here, perhaps knowing that the one person who could save them all – and wouldn't- might, just might come back to save the one person he had before.
Welding the last foot of the door shut with the strange device, Antonio turned away from the door and the creatures that lurked and hissed in the hallways behind it, and sat next to Shard, watching her slumbering form. Her hair, as wild as he'd last seen it, was dry and ravaged by split ends. It spiked upwards around her head on the pillow, speaking to her frayed and scattered nature, even without her tie-dyed shirt and torn jeans. Antonio barely knew her. Had only spoken a few words to her, and yet he felt more comfortable around her than anyone he'd ever knew.
The room was empty; there was no strange blue box. There was no Sahara.
They'd abandoned Shard too.
Strangely comforted by that thought, Antonio curled up in the chair next to her and tried to sleep.
Whapp!
Whapp!
Fwwapp!
Chest, heart, shoulder.
Over and over.
Crimson and clover.
No, wait. Shard felt something, something was different, something wasn't right, something had changed. Bryce looked different. Like someone else was seeing him through her eyes. His face, always familiar, looked pale, peppered with acne, thin and awkward.
She felt the overwhelming scream stutter and curdle in her throat.
Sáhseht.
Hide. It meant 'hide', wasn't it? Hide what?
'Help me hide.'
She stared at Bryce again, watching as he fell into the street.
Street?
Hadn't he died in the grass? Shot by a rifle… once?
Whapp!
Whapp!
Fwwapp!
Chest, heart, shoulder.
Over and over.
Shard tried to pull away, change the dream, turn around roll over, get away, just get away, this wasn't right this wasn't right…
Falling, she'd remembered falling, leaping off the cliff at Yellowstone, falling through the air, dying and flying and flying and dying, crying all the way, screaming-
And it caught her. She remembered now. Remembered the whiteness forming around her, holding her, the flashing lights, the warm touch as she'd seen the console materialize around her- she'd been inside the glass column, held lovingly by the flashing lights and burning energy, arrested in her fall before becoming solid outside the console in front of the Doctor.
Whapp!
Whapp!
Fwwapp!
Chest, heart, shoulder.
Over and over.
Shard was back, watching Bryce die again, from far above, only now, she realized, the Doctor hadn't saved her.
His ship had.
Whapp!
Whapp!
Fwwapp!
Chest, heart, shoulder.
Over and over.