Just after Sky had finished skim reading every file she could be bothered to get access to, the base crew had started to explain things to them a little more finally.
"That's the black hole." Zach nodded towards the hologram being projected in the centre of the control panel, in the centre of them.
"Officially designated K three seven Gen five." Sky mumbled just loud enough for the other to hear and and to have the Captain confirm it.
"Ye-yeah. How did you know?" Both Zach and Ida looked at each other and then back to the woman.
"It's on your system." They missed the Doctors's coy smile and shook the worry from their heads. All that they were about to tell them, every little detail already rested inside her head ready to be accessed by her…and him, if he needed and she allowed.
As Ida carried on, telling tales of scriptures of the Falltino and bitter pills of poison, the Doctor pushed on that buzz a little harder in his mind. She felt it and let him pass, giving access to the data she herself had highlighted as a priority during her download.
Once Ida finished the Doctor left, taking some data with him. A little gift from her end,
"We are so far out. Lost in the drifts of the universe. How did you even get here?!" The Doctor exclaimed, looking at the hologram of the black hole Zach had brought up for them.
"We flew in. You see, this planet's generating a gravity field. We don't know how. We've no idea. But it's kept in constant balance against the black hole. And the field extends out there as a funnel. A distinct gravity funnel, reaching out into clear space. That was our way in."
"You flew down that thing? Like a roller coaster." Rose grinned, seemingly unable to grasp the seriousness.
"By rights, the ship should have been torn apart. We lost the Captain, which is what put me in charge."
"You're doing a good job." Ida responded reassuringly but he didn't seem to buy what she was saying.
"Yeah, well, needs must."
"But if that gravity funnel closes, there's no way out." Danny informed from his station.
"We had fun speculating about that." Scooti smiled.
"Oh, yeah. That's the word. Fun." They all seemed so calm, it was strange. Humans were strange but this was beyond strange. They should be dead, but here they were.
"But that field would take phenomenal amounts of power." The Doctor shook his head. "I mean not just big, but off the scale! Can I?" He asked, referring to the controls.
"Sure. Help yourself." Ida smiled and passed him a calculator, beginning to talk about their findings more with the Doctor.
Sky, already having seen it all and not wanting to hear it again, was in her own little world when an Ood came over with two cups. "Your refreshments." He said and passed one cup to Rose and one to Sky.
"Oh, Thanks." Sky smiled, taking the drink.
"Thank you. I'm sorry, what was your name?" Rose asked nervously, eyes still roaming over the new face.
"We have no titles. We are as one." The Ood answered and then walked back to their work.
"Er, what are they called?" Rose asked Sky curiously.
"Oh, come on. Where have you been living? Everyone's got one." Danny jumped in as Sky opened her mouth to answer.
"Well, not me, so, what are they?" Rose shook her head.
"They're the Ood." Sky smiled, liking how it sounded.
"The Ood?" Rose grinned.
"The Ood." The girl could be nice and she was funny sometimes. But still there was some sort of...awkward wall there.
"Well that's ood."
"Very ood, but handy. They work the mine shafts. All the drilling and stuff. Supervision and maintenance. They're born for it. Basic slave race." Danny explained, watching the Ood move and serve around them.
"Ah, I hate that word, slaves." Sky frowned, sticking her tongue out as if the word had left a bad taste in her mouth.
"You've got slaves?" Rose asked.
"Don't start. She's like one of that lot. Friends of the Ood." Scooti joked, nudging Danny with a smile.
"Well maybe I am, yeah." Rose looked offended and glanced at Sky, nodding over at the other two. "Since when do humans need slaves?"
"Well it's tricky…the Ood offer themselves." Sky began to explain. She had sort of the same opinion but this was life and, well, there was little more to their purpose with how things had gone recently. At least it was recent when she had last seen them. "If you don't give them orders, they just pine away and die." She pouted.
"Seriously, you like being ordered about?" Rose asked, stopping a passing Ood.
"It is all we crave." They answered.
"See, it's like Ood instinct." Sky sighed. It was funny, she had never given it a second thought after finding it ridiculous the first time she had learnt it herself, but having practically acted a slave as a human it didn't sit right with her anymore.
"Why's that, then?" The Ood never did explain it, just like Time Lord's never explained why they travelled. It was just...what they did.
"We have nothing else in life." The Ood nodded at Rose.
"Yeah, well, I used to think like that, a long time ago." She sounded sad, and Sky knew instantly that it involved the Doctor. But a long time ago? How long had they actually been travelling together?
"There we go. Do you see?" The Doctor leapt to life, bringing Sky out of her thoughts. "To generate that gravity field, and the funnel, you'd need a power source with an inverted self extrapolating reflex of six to the power of six every six seconds."
"666." Sky smirked, raising her eyes at the Doctor.
"That's a lot of sixes."
"And it's impossible." He groaned, eyes fixing back onto the hologram.
"It took us two years to work that out." Zach frowned, looking up at the Doctor.
"Ah, I'm very good." The Doctor nodded.
'Forever modest.' Sky muttered through their bond but winked when he looked up and smiled at her. She already knew, she had read it, because she could cheat. But she still didn't show off like he loved to do.
"But that's why we're here. This power source is ten miles below through solid rock. Point Zero. We're drilling down to try and find it." Ida explained.
"It's giving off readings of over ninety stats on the Blazon scale." Zach looked over the control, seeming helpless.
"It could revolutionise modern science." They all spoke with such determinism, all of them trying so hard to explain that them being here was right, that them staying was the right thing to do.
"We could use it to fuel the Empire." Mr Jefferson looked over the stats.
"Or start a war." The Doctor added.
"It's buried beneath us, in the darkness, waiting."
"What's your job, chief dramatist?" Sky laughed lightly at Rose and looked to Toby, hoping for some sort of explanation.
"Well, whatever it is down there is not a natural phenomena. And this, er, planet once supported life eons ago, before the human race had even learned to walk." Oh he was the archeologist wasn't he?
"That lettering written on the wall. Did you do that?" She asked and he looked shocked hearing her voice. They all did due to how she had been sat quietly observing them since arriving.
Out of the three of them, she was the one who looked like she belonged there with them, but they also sensed a darkness which came with her. That silence, it carried a sullen sensation. It was like a cloud hung over her, a cloud of inky black mist…death. When members of the crew looked at her, they sensed death.
"I copied it from fragments we found unearthed by the drilling, but I can't translate it." Toby nodded as he finally found his tongue but his hands showed how frustrated he was, fingers twisting together almost painfully.
"No, neither can we. And that's saying something." There was an airiness to the Doctor's words that Sky didn't like.
"There was some form of civilisation." Toby continued. "They buried something. Now it's reaching out, calling us in."
"And you came." Sky stared, sullen.
"Well, how could we not?" Easily, very easily...to most people, Sky thought. But not them.
"So, when it comes right down to it, why did you come here?" The Doctor asked, unable to keep from smiling. "Why did you do that? Why? I'll tell you why. Because it was there." He looked around at each of the crew. "Brilliant. Excuse me, er, Zach, wasn't it?"
"That's me." Zach answered, leaning against the control board.
"Just stand there, because I'm going to hug you. Is that all right?" The Doctor was grinning now.
"I suppose so." Zach nodded although he was defiantly a bit weary of the situation. But hey, who wouldn't be when a complete stranger who had shown up impossibly was asking to hug you?
"Here we go. Come on, then." The Doctor hugged Zach, he was enjoying all this impossibility just little too much. "Oh, human beings. You are amazing! Ha! Thank you." He patted Zach's shoulders, stepping away. "But apart from that, you're completely mad. You should pack your bags, get back in that ship and fly for your lives."
"You can talk. And how the hell did you get here?" Sky was surprised that hadn't been the first thing they had asked. But they had been too busy showing off and impressing them all with their magical black hole.
"Oh, I've got this er, this ship. It's hard to explain. It just sort of appears." The Doctor shrugged off the explanation.
"We can show you, we parked down the corridor from er. Oh, what's it called?" Rose thought aloud. "Habitation area..."
"Three." Sky finished for her, remembering the giant number '3' painted on the wall of the area.
"Do you mean storage six?" Zach asked, standing up from where he leant on the console and looking between the three newcomers.
"It was a bit of a cupboard, yeah." The Doctor squinted, rubbing the back of his head. "Storage six. But you said...You said..." His mouth opened and closed a few times quickly as he stared blankly at the Captain. It took a while but Sky soon recalled what Zach had said after the quake.
"You said storage five to eight." She breathed and took off running, the Doctor only a few steps behind. She had never run so fast, it was impossible. Seriously, this really was impossible, it couldn't be happening, it just couldn't. Through countless corridors and habitation areas, they sprinted, Rose falling behind by a few meters.
"What is it?" Rose screamed from behind them. "What's wrong?" She yelled again when no one replied.
They finally reached the door to storage eight and Sky started beating on the button to open the door, beginning to spin the lock for the hatch. "Open the door! Come on!"
"Door 16 out of commission." The computer spoke.
"It can't be. It can't be!" The Doctor screamed and repeatedly banged his hand against the door.
"What's wrong? What is it?" Rose panted. "Doctor, the TARDIS is in there. What's happened?" She stood back as Sky opened the window hatch in the door and looked out, her chest sinking, feeling as if it was going to cave in when she saw what was out there.
"The TARDIS is gone." She spoke and then stepped aside for the Doctor to look out himself, but she doubted he really wanted to. "That earthquake. This section collapsed."
"But it's got to be out there somewhere...Doctor?" He gestured for the girl to come forward until she was looking out of the glass.
"Look down."
'I'm sorry Theta' Sky spoke to him so Rose couldn't here. She knew he heard cause he looked at her, his face a picture of sadness, so much so it was almost painful for her to look at as the emotion came to her through him.
'It couldn't be helped. I should be sorry, I promised you a trip and you're stuck here.'
For the first time it felt like they were bonded again, she could feel his sadness, it ran through her like her own blood. It was strange, after so long of feeling nothing, feeling helpless and alone, there he was again at the back of her mind. It may have been sadness she was feeling from him but at least it was something.
'Don't start that, we're not stuck here. Worse things have happened and we got out of that. We're living proof right here, you and me.' The Doctor watched her for a short time, while Rose still stood there, and then walked over slowly to wrap his arms around Sky.
'I'll get us out Lelia.'
As Rose turned around the two pulled apart, smiling sadly at each other as they did.
"Come on." Slowly, the Doctor led both girls back to the control room with heavy feet.
It took a lot longer than their race to the storage unit and as soon as they returned to the company of the crew, the Doctor was off on one.
"The ground gave way." The Doctor was pacing, tracing the Captain's steps as he moved about his duties. "My Tardis must've fallen down right into the heart of the planet. But you've got robot drills heading the same way."
"We can't divert the drilling."
"But I need my ship. It's all I've got-" Was. Was all he had, he corrected himself. Now Lelia was all he had, and her TARDIS, back on Earth. "I need my ship."
"Doctor, we've only got the resources to drill one central shaft down to the power source, and that's it. No diversions, no distractions, no exceptions. Your machine is lost. All I can do is offer you a lift if we ever get to leave this place, and that is the end of it."
"I'll er, put you on the duty roster. We need someone in the laundry." Ida spoke, coming over. That didn't make anyone's mood any better, whether it was a joke or not. But then she left, along with all of the others, leaving the Doctor and Sky alone as Rose paced in the corner.
"I've trapped you here." The Doctor spoke, aloud this time without using their bond. They didn't need to speak, their kind could have lived and communicated silently if they needed, but when said out loud for all to hear words meant more. They were solid, they could be recorded. They could be drawn or scripted - they were real, not just a thought.
"No." Sky smiled lightly. "No you did the opposite bringing me here. I'd rather be here, trapped with you, than where I was. But just so I know..." She smirked and gently nudged his arm. "Was being placed in the most critical life threatening scenario your plan for showing me the ropes?" She tried to joke and surprisingly, it did make him smile.
"Oh of course." He laughed, looking down at his feet. "Or just part of the plan to make sure you never leave my sight again." A light blush rose to her cheeks and the Doctor bit his lip to hide a smile very unfitting to the occasion.
That was until her eye squinted and then squeezed shut, tighter and tighter until Sky needed to bring a hand up to her temple. A…noise, a squeal like iron against stone screamed in her mind getting louder and louder until it felt like it was a part of her.
"You alright?"
"Mmm." The hum was only just audible and even though she nodded, the Doctor could still sense her discomfort. It peaked and then faded, trembling in a rhythm that felt like words. And then it was gone. Just like that, silence.
Sky opened her eyes in a flash and when she came to her senses the Doctor had one of his hands in hers and the other on side of her head. "Just…getting used to it all again." She whispered but her eyes searched the room for something, anything, which could have caused some interference.
"Take it easy." He nodded but she felt that knock and chuckled, this time denying him access. "You're still calibrating." Theta smiled gently. "I've missed that mind."
"Me too." She grinned, laughing as he allowed his hand to stroke down her cheek and drop back down to his side.
However, they were both so busy giving each other their full attention, neither noticed the glossy eyes watching them from across the room.
