"Up you come."
The rough voice filtered hazily through Tegan's ears. She felt herself lifted to her feet, though her legs seemed reluctant to support her. She blinked and tried to focus her eyes. The room appeared foggy; then she remembered the smoke. She was pulled along until the air cleared somewhat. Finally she was able to breathe.
She found herself leaning against the Doctor. His jacket was grey from the smoke, and his face was smudged with soot.
"We survived the explosion?" she asked hoarsely.
He frowned. "Explosion? No, the machine didn't explode. I've disabled it."
"But I dropped the wires," she began. "I'm sorry—I just couldn't—"
"You were overcome by the smoke," he said bluntly. "A human failing, I'm afraid."
Scowling at his last comment, she asked, "Then what happened?"
The Doctor nodded over his shoulder. Tegan saw that Turlough stood a few feet behind them. Remnants of smoke clung to him, too. His expression was cheerless.
"He took the wires from you just in time," the Doctor explained.
Tegan rubbed at her chest; her sternum was decidedly sore. "Something hit me."
The Time Lord glanced down at the hand pressed against her chest. "He had to get you out of the way."
She turned to face Turlough. "So you did what? Hit me?"
"Kicked, actually," he replied laconically. The corners of his mouth twitched upward.
She took a step toward him, but the Doctor restrained her with an outstretched arm. "And if he hadn't, we would all be dead. He saved all of our lives."
Now the look Tegan shot the Trion was one of surprise. "It must have been an accident," she muttered. "Or else he was just trying to save himself."
"Hardly," Turlough mumbled vehemently.
"Not trying to save yourself?" Tegan jeered. "Trying to do something for someone else? Trying to save the Doctor? As if you'd ever consider—"
Turlough glowered at her. "I did," he shot back.
"Oh right," she hissed. "When? Tell me when you thought of saving him," she goaded angrily.
Turlough's face had reddened in indignation and rage. She had no idea; she didn't even know what he'd done. Her mocking expression drove him to blurt out, "On Striker's ship! All right? I threw myself overboard so that the Black Guardian would leave the Doctor alone!"
Tegan's mouth snapped shut as she regarded him with momentary awe. The Doctor watched him, too, then gave a curt nod of appreciation.
Turlough shrugged. "Let's get back to the transmitter," he said rather sharply. "Then we can all get out of here."
"And the Doctor can take you home."
Turlough replied mordantly, "I think that was the plan."
Tegan's temper had settled slightly with Turlough's revealing outburst, but his mood became even more sullen. His hands shook as he attempted to disentangle the wires on the transmitter, finally causing the Doctor to send him away. The Trion now stood just outside the exterior door of the building, watching the sun set over the hills. The impending darkness did nothing to change his mood. His neck and head still throbbed mercilessly, and his irritability seemed to grow exponentially as he remembered his experience on Striker's and Wrack's ships.
When Tegan called to him to return to the control room, he spun around furiously. "Leave me alone!" he spat.
She hesitated, seeming to consider his request with a deepening frown, then relented. "The Doctor wants you back inside," she finally said, emphasizing the subject of her brief sentence to stress that the entreaty was not from her. Without waiting for his reply, she turned and stalked back down the hall.
He waited until she had vanished from his sight to follow her, finally plowing through the corridor with one hand thrust deep into his pocket and the other gripping at his neck. When he entered the room, he found the Doctor and Tegan crouching next to the transmitter.
"It's about time," Tegan said reproachfully when she saw him.
"That's quite enough!" the Doctor interjected, clearly fighting to remain in control of his own raw emotion. "You both need to know that I'm very close to completing the repairs, but there is going to be one significant spike in the transmission before I can readjust it to stimulate only delta and theta waves."
"What does that mean?" Tegan asked testily, perturbed by the Time Lord's constant insistence on scientific jargon. Perhaps he did it solely to vex her…
"That means," he said rather condescendingly, "that all of us are going to experience a sharp increase in our beta wave production for a few minutes, and our emotions—aggression, fear, and anger—are going to increase as well. I—" he hesitated; Tegan could see him take a deep, steadying breath. "I am going to require all of my concentration to complete the final part of the repairs. This means that both of you must keep yourselves in control."
"Maybe he should go back outside," Tegan huffed, pointing at Turlough.
"Fine by me," Turlough replied irritably. "The farther away the better."
"No." The Doctor's voice was firm. "You will both remain here in case I need your help. And you will refrain from goading each other in any way. Is—that—understood?"
Tegan nodded somewhat resentfully. Turlough merely rubbed harder at his neck as his frown deepened.
The Doctor returned to the transmitter while his companions stood silently. Within a minute all in the room could feel the increase in tension. Turlough's neck and head seemed to explode with pain, and his hostility deepened, gnawing into his gut, echoing self-loathing through his soul.
Tegan's eyes darted about the room. Her heart pounded as waves of fear washed over her. There were so many threats, so many ways to be hurt or killed. She had been in mortal danger so many times—the Mara, the Cybermen, and they had killed Adric, murdered him in a massive explosion intended to destroy the Earth, her home… Her fingers clawed at the wall behind her.
The Doctor had only a few wires to connect and three switches to alter, but his fingers refused to cooperate. His knowledge, his aptitude, his wealth of skills were vanishing. He could not fail in this. Yet with each slip of his fingers his agitation grew, twisting inexorably into a deep sense of rage at his failure. When the wires slid out of his shaking clutch once again he slammed his hand against the side of the transmitter. "No!" he shouted.
His cry hit Tegan like a blow. She started, her head whipping around to see what had made the fierce noise. The Doctor's face clearly conveyed his fury, and it terrified her. She backed up into the corner as far as she could, pressing her shoulders into the walls so hard that they ached, but the pain barely registered with her. This man—hadn't he been her friend?—was livid, and she felt certain that he was going to attack her. She turned her face to the wall, lifting her arms over her head to shield herself as she began to whimper.
Her sobs grated on Turlough, immediately redirecting his emotion outward. "Stop it!" he yelled at her. "Stop that noise!"
Steeling himself with the last reserves of his self-control, the Doctor reached for the wires one more time. His fingers grappled with them, and he cursed in Gallifreyan, his unintelligible words even more appalling to Tegan than his shout. He was not the man she knew. He was something else, something alien, something very, very dangerous…
Turlough's hands were pressed against his temples in an ineffectual effort to staunch his pain. "Stop it!" he cried over and over, but now he had lost all sense of the direction of his words. Through his lowered eyelids, he caught a flash of movement, but he did not bother to open his eyes. It was Tegan's scream that finally roused him for an instant from his trance of agony.
The scream drew the Doctor's attention, too. Automatically he looked up, still clamping his fingers over the wires. Tegan was cowering in the corner, and Turlough was towering over her, wrapping his hands in her hair and jerking her head up.
"Stop that!" the Doctor commanded, a tiny shred of human concern still burbling within him. He began to stand, shouting, "Turlough! Get away from her!"
From across the room, a voice cried, "I'm nowhere near her!"
The Doctor's eyes shot toward the sound. Turlough stood several meters from Tegan, but the Trion had now focused his bleary gaze upon her and her attacker. As if waking from a nightmare, he stumbled forward toward Kol.
"I must fix it, must do it now," the Doctor muttered, his eyes moving quickly from Tegan and Kol to the wires. He plunged his hand inside the transmitter, wincing as Tegan screamed again.
Kol had pulled her up by her hair and slammed her head back against the wall. She was dazed, beginning to slide down, but he grabbed her hair again and forced her up as he clenched his right hand into a fist. He raised his arm in preparation for a wicked and terrible blow to her face. She watched in silent, paralyzed horror as his fist shot forward, her eyes closing over the tears that streamed down her cheeks.
Tegan braced herself for the blow, but instead all she heard was a small thud. She opened her eyes cautiously to see Kol and Turlough falling to the ground. The Trion held a wrench in his hand. He and Kol were struggling, clawing and kicking at each other, edging away from her and toward the Doctor. Turlough lifted his arm to swing the wrench at Kol, barely missing his temple. Kol grabbed Turlough's wrist, twisting it until the wrench fell from his hand.
Turlough delivered a solid blow with his knee to Kol's ribs then managed to scrabble to his feet. The former prisoner was undeterred; his rage mitigated all sensations of pain. He rose to his knees, seizing the wrench and swinging it at Turlough. The Trion stumbled out of the path of the heavy tool, sending Kol tripping forward.
From his position beneath the transmitter, the Doctor glanced at the fight. With just one more connection the machine would be repaired and would stimulate delta and theta wave activity in all within its range. The effects, he knew, would be even stronger here in the room. Kol's rage would quickly diminish. The Time Lord kept to his work, using his last remnants of willpower to complete the wiring and for the moment ignore his companions' plight, suppressing his own wrath at Kol for his attack.
Turlough and Kol grappled and lurched, now only a few feet away from the Doctor. Kol had lifted the wrench again and managed to grip Turlough's collar. He swung the wrench at his opponent's head. Turlough jerked sideways to avoid the blow, somehow managing to deliver a sharp kick to Kol's ankle. Kol faltered for an instant, and Turlough, strength intensified by his fury, flung the man away.
The Doctor scooted back just as Kol's body slammed into the transmitter, still clutching the wrench. His hand, heavy from the tool, fell toward the open circuitry. The wrench connected with the wires, sending a halo of hissing sparks over Kol. The popping of the arcing wires could not drown out his screams.
As the transmitter's circuits ignited, Turlough stumbled back to Tegan, pushing her against the wall again. The Doctor had scrabbled around the machine and toward his companions as soon as Kol fell. With several swift glances back at the transmitter, he finally stood and took his companions' arms to hasten them out the door and into the hallway. He kept his arm around Tegan, who remained dazed, but dropped his hand from Turlough's forearm to rip open the exterior door. He pushed Turlough outside then dragged Tegan through the doorway.
The explosion shook the building; several concrete blocks extruded from the wall from the force. The Doctor panted, "Down!" and pulled Tegan to the ground as Turlough fell beside them. They lay motionless for nearly a minute, then finally the Doctor lifted his head to look at the building.
"It's over," he said shakily. "It didn't destroy the building."
Turlough sat up. "But the transmitter's gone? And Kol—"
"He can't have survived it. And yes, the transmitter's been destroyed."
Turlough blinked in the twilight. "So no more delta waves?"
"Generated artificially? No."
"But no more beta waves, either," Turlough said, a touch of relief evident in his voice.
"No. We will all experience our normal emotions again." He turned to look at Tegan, who still lay upon the ground. She was just beginning to lift her shoulders. The Doctor gently took her arms and helped her to sit. "Are you all right?" he asked her, taking her cheeks in his hand. He studied her eyes carefully.
She rubbed at the back of her head for a moment. "I think so."
He smiled. "I'm glad to hear it."
Staring at the building, she asked, "How did he get here?"
The Doctor pointed to a vehicle just beyond the side of the structure. "He drove."
"But I thought all of the vehicles except the one we took were wrecked," Turlough said.
"He must have taken the engineer's assistant's car when he and the bartender returned to the resort," the Doctor surmised.
"He was a mechanic," Tegan said softly, "when he first came here. He said he'd worked his way up…"
The Doctor stood, offering his hand to her to help her to her feet. "We should get back to the resort. I need to tell them about the transmitter so that they can deal with the workers appropriately."
"Do you think they'll have problems?" asked Turlough, standing too.
"Not with everyone, but there may be some who still have violent tendencies," replied the Time Lord.
The Doctor and Turlough had begun walking toward the vehicle, but Tegan remained still, staring at the building. "Was it the transmissions?" she asked.
The Doctor turned his head to look at her. "Pardon?"
"Was it really the transmissions, Doctor, that made him act that way, or was it… was it something I did, something that made him—"
He had returned to her side in several quick steps. "No, Tegan," he said, cupping her chin in his hand, "it wasn't you. You didn't do anything wrong. His emotions were out of control—all of ours were—and that drove him to behave as he did."
She looked up into his face, remembering for a moment the fear she had felt as he shouted and uttered foreign expletives. Now she saw only a benign expression and a touch of concern in his eyes. She nodded and gave him a wan smile. He brushed his thumb over her cheek then turned, dropping his hand but allowing it to rest against her back as they walked to the vehicle.
"Maybe I should drive this time," Turlough said with a quirk of his eyebrow.
The Doctor frowned for an instant then grinned. "Maybe you should." He climbed into the passenger seat as Turlough started the ignition in the small car.