Chapter Eighteen

Close The Pathway

This open display of Jason's unwavering faith surprised even the Doctor, but he did not al low it to show. The last thing he wanted was to lose the upper hand now. "There's your answer," he said triumphantly. "Trust. Absolute trust. Something you don't know how to handle. You need negative emotions to pull you through, and with Farrell dead, you don't have a catalyst to focus the ones being generated outside."

"Farrell was expendable. This boy will—"

The Doctor cut him off, pressing home his advantage. "An Alterran as your catalyst? Come now. He can't possibly generate the kinds of emotions you need to latch on to. You need hate, greed, malice, jealously. You need human emotions."

To the Doctor's chagrin, he heard the only human in the room moan as Peri regained her senses. He groaned inwardly, wishing she had stayed unconscious. He knew by his silence that Jason was following or at least attempting to follow his reasoning. He was not sure if Peri could, and if she got angry or upset or even—

The Doctor's fears were justified as the intensity of the energy field suddenly increased, causing him to cry out in pain. Across the room, the ball surrounding Jason flared also, tearing an agonizing scream from him.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Peri cried from her place on the floor. "You're killing them!"

The Doctor knew he had to distract her before Ormril could get control of her. "Peri, never mind us, get to the Prince. Break his concentration! You must shut down the pathway!"

Peri took in the seemingly overwhelming situation and moaned helplessly, "How?" The container of fungus solution was still in her pocket and she pulled it out and winced, its having made a very large bruise when she was thrown against the wall. She was about to toss it aside when a wild idea came into her head. "What've I got to lose?" she thought, pulling open the container.

"Do you mock me now, Time Lord?" the deep voice laughed as his captives twisted helplessly within the energy fields.

The Doctor ignored the taunts, fighting the pain racking his body. When this only increased the severity, he realized he was going at it the wrong way and forced himself to relax. "Jason, don't fight!" he called. "Fear and anger…are negative. That's the key!"

"Silence, Time Lord!" Ormril commanded.

The Doctor cried out again as the glow of his sphere flared, increasing the severity of his torment.

"I'll destroy you! I'll destroy you all!"

"How?" the Doctor struggled to say. "You need…hate to do that…and we…won't…hate. Jason can't kill. He's Alterran. It…isn't in his nature. And the real Juris couldn't kill for the same reason. Stalemate." As the Doctor spoke, the intensity of the energy field subsided dramatically, the pain fading along with it.

"Of course!" Jason gasped, finding his voice at last. "He can't use Juris to replace Farrell because he's not human. In spite of everything, deep down he's still not violent by nature." The anger Jason felt at the enslavement of his son fueled his own energy sphere and he cried out as his torment increased once again.

Ormril laughed in sadistic delight. "The boy is my puppet, O King of Stupidity. An extension of my will."

During the entire exchange the controlled Prince had remained motionless, the weapon unwavering in his hand. Peri had been inching her way over to him, encouraging the Doctor under her breath to keep talking, to keep that Ormril guy busy so he would not notice her. She was within an arm's length of the Prince when Ormril finally noticed her. "Juris, the girl," he snapped suddenly. "Kill her."

"No! Juris, don't!" Jason cried in desperation. The energy field flared to an excruciating level. Helpless in its grasp, he succumbed to the pain with an agonizing scream.

Even with the restraining life force of the real Juris removed, the Alterran's true nature dominated, just as Jason said it would. The puppet Prince fought his last command, his innate abhorrence to violence struggling against the order to take a life.

Peri watched the hesitant youth, her fingers tightening around the container in her hand. "Come on, come on, just look at me," she said under her breath.

"He's fighting control!" the Doctor announced.

"Kill the woman. I, Ormril, command it."

Juris' grip on the gun tightened and he turned to Peri, who immediately threw the liquid into his face, hoping it would make him drop the gun, which it did. The Prince cried out as the solution burned his eyes, reeling back with his hands to his face. Peri snatched up the laser pistol and pushed the lever to the front as Jason had shown her and took aim. Holding her breath, she fired and the staggering Alterran collapsed to the floor.

Without realizing, Peri succeeded in closing the pathway in a permanent fashion. When the fungus solution was absorbed into the Alterran's bloodstream, it triggered the rejuvenation of his brain cells that had been damaged when the pathway was created. This immediately caused Ormril's control to slip, and because Peri had also stunned the youth, it was impossible for control to be reestablished. In fact, he lost control completely. Since this was the only thing keeping him at the threshold of the inter-dimensional gateway, there was a backlash of energy. The unprepared Ormril was thrown helplessly back into his own dimension.

"Nooooo!" The deep voice was heard fading into the distance, the blue haze flaring brightly and then subsiding. The same instant the energy spheres vanished, releasing the Doctor and Jason from their torment. Dazed and visibly shaken, they collapsed to the floor gasping for breath.

Not quite sure what had just happened, Peri looked around in blank astonishment. She went cautiously over to the downed Prince to make certain he was really unconscious.

When Jason recovered enough to drag himself to his elbows he saw Peri sitting beside his son and crawled over to her. To his dismay, she looked up with tears streaming down her face.

"I…I…I've killed him."

The real Prince Juris had watched in pride and sorrow as the confrontation in the power station played out before him.

"My Master could not make them turn against one another," Asta observed in puzzlement. "No matter what he said."

"I told you he wouldn't," Juris said in as even a tone as possible. "But you still don't understand, do you?"

The image on the viewer moved in closer on Jason as he sat cradling his son's body in his arms. "Your father," Asta said, "his emotions are very strong, even with the pathway fading. Do you feel them? It is as with you when you thought him dead."

"I told you. It's called grief. It's what happens when you lose someone you love."

"Love again," came the mystified reply. "Explain. Why does he grieve? He should be pleased that he's won."

The young man gazed sadly at his weeping father. "No. The price was too high."

"Your words still have no meaning."

"No, I don't suppose they do," Juris sighed, thinking sadly of the things left unsaid. The things his father would never hear. Never. Pulling himself together, he said, "It's difficult enough to lose a loved one. But to have your own child murdered in front of you…" Shaking his head, the Prince said, "He'll mourn for the rest of his life."

The cloud changed shape as the entity considered all this. "This one emotion is very complex. How do you understand it?"

Juris was about to say that no one truly understood it when the room was shaken as if by an earthquake. "My Master has been returned to his observation port," Asta announced.

With his death now an absolute certainty, the trapped Alterran swallowed hard, watching fear fully as the cloud darkened until it was almost completely black. In a sudden and swift movement, it completely enveloped the sphere, causing Juris to catch his breath. He closed his eyes and braced himself, but nothing happened. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes and was shocked to see a thick, sticky ooze coating the exterior of his prison. "Wh…what…is that?" he gasped.

"That's how I appear within the cloud," Asta replied.

Juris looked at the substance and shuddered. "Are you…going to…absorb me now?" he asked shakily.

"No. I must wait until my Master recovers from the energy backlash."

Unable to think of anything to say, Juris fell silent, and tried to stay as calm as possible so as not to give the creature anything negative to latch on to.

The silence was broken by the entity itself, but unlike before, the voice was strained, the speech less stilted and formal. "Juris, I want you to understand that…I don't want to harm you. I…I have no alternative. I am powerless against the will of Ormril."

The captive Alterran could not quite believe his ears and wondered if he had actually been right in the first place. Asta had attained sentience. Whether it was this glimmer of hope or just blind panic, Juris could not say, but something caused him to have a brainstorm. "No! You do have an alternative. You can send me back. Then you can utilize the positive energies I taught you about and cross over with me—alone."

"I can't! Ormril is my Master," Asta replied regretfully.

"He's not! You're not a thing anymore. You have feelings, emotions of your own. You may not understand them, but you've got them just the same." Receiving no reply, Juris pressed on, "Asta, I can't help you here, but I can there. Please, you must send me back."

"I…I…can't…I can't think," Asta moaned.

"Don't think, act. That's what freedom is all about."

"Juris, you don't understand. I'm not free. I'm a slave controlled by mental force. Any mental force. If you drew me through the gateway, then you would control me. I would be your slave."

Juris blinked, not having realized this. Would he be able to free her from himself on the other side of the gateway, he wondered. Surely that wouldn't be that difficult, would it?

"But here, Ormril is my Master, and…he commands that you die," Asta went on sadly. "I…I have no choice. I must obey."

The Prince stiffened visibly as the ooze coating his prison suddenly thickened further. "Did he tell you to kill me just now?" he asked hurriedly.

"No, but—"

"Then how do you know he wants me dead?" Juris cried in desperation. "He said he was sending me back to my people, remember? I'll still have to stand trail for my part in all this. Send me back now, before he changes the order."

There was no reply from the blackening cloud and Juris looked around in near panic. "Asta, if you kill me, you'll be his slave forever! Out there I can change that, but you must send me back. Please! For both our sakes!"

Another rumble shook the room and the Prince covered his face with his arms as the sphere started to dissolve.