Ok I seem to have developed an environmental thing here… probably resulting from my 4 days at an eco – convention, lol. And oddly I've been having probs spelling "laboratory"… Thank god for spellchecker.
"Fina!" Bella cried, rushing forwards to the female Myvian lying crumpled on the floor. The woman was clutching at her throat and gasping. "What happened?"
As Bella helped her into a sitting position, Fina pointed feebly into the darkened laboratory behind her. Jack, ready for action, began making his way around the workbenches, and the Doctor followed suit, taking the other side of the room.
Rose knelt down cautiously beside Bella, aware of the stench of spilt chemicals.
"It – it looked like one of the guards – but it kept changing – then it attacked me – "
"I thought they'd evacuated the sector! Why are you still here, Fina?"
"I've got an experiment going. It can't be tampered with," Fina explained, coughing, before struggling to her feet with determination. There was a small glass tank on a table nearby, and she began fussing over its contents. Bella turned on a nearby lamp, and Rose saw a blue gooey substance in the container, floating in a pale yellow liquid.
Fina had inserted a tube-like instrument into the tank, and, after checking the dial on the side, added three pellets from a bottle in her pocket, and sighed in relief.
"It's alright. It's not been disturbed too much."
The blob was now moving, and Rose realised that it was actually alive. It pressed itself against the glass of the tank, making a splat shape, as if trying to escape.
"What is - ?"
"Leave it, Fina," Bella snapped, interrupting Rose's question. "We need to get out of here." She switched off the lamp decisively, throwing the room back into gloom as the Doctor and Jack appeared in the doorway.
"Nothing," Jack called, "It must've escaped into the corridor on the other side."
Bella was practically pushing Rose and Fina out of the room, despite the latter's protests about leaving it in a state like this and her "experiment". She insisted on locking the door. It suddenly occurred to Rose that whatever was in that tank, Bella didn't want the three foreigners to know about it.
"I think we should split," Bella said, all at once pragmatic and in control. "Doctor, go and get the Tardis."
Rose knew that the Doctor didn't take lightly to being bossed around, so she was amazed when he nodded in agreement without complaint.
"Rose, you're with me. And Jack, I'm sure you won't mind joining Bella…" Despite the situation, Jack's eyes twinkled.
The Doctor suggested that they escort Fina out of the sector, but Bella was adamant that she should report to the commander first. The minute they were out of the HQ compound, Rose told the Doctor what she'd witnessed in the lab.
"There's something they're not telling us," he said, before she'd even aired her own fears. "The whole race is too greedy for their own good. Or anyone else's. They're not satisfied by anything. Always searching for something more, experimenting with any technology they can get their hands on…. And with any species they find."
"You think that's what they're up to with this Healdon thingy then?"
"It certainly looks that way," he said, getting out his key to unlock the door of the Tardis. "As much as I trust Bella, I'd never leave her in the Tardis on her own."
"You think she'd…"
The Doctor looked at Rose sadly.
"The atmospheric disaster changed these people totally. They've had to be adaptable and ruthless to survive. This planet won't last forever, they know it but they don't want to admit it. So they keeping running, trying to escape their fate."
She followed him into the Tardis. "Hmm. I keep going all melancholic all of a sudden. Right then!" He clapped his hands together and focused his attention on the console, setting the flight co-ordinates.
"Now," the Doctor said, typing on a keyboard with his left hand and fiddling various buttons with his right, "I'm not sure the Tardis will – pull that lever down for me, would you – I'm not sure she'll appreciate being forced through a force field, so – "
The ship shuddered violently, and Rose, not for the first time, would have been flung across the control room if she hadn't hung on to the lever. After a few seconds more, the Tardis came to a halt with a slightly more graceful wobble.
The Doctor, typically enthusiastic for adventure, was almost out of the door in the time Rose's brain told her feet to get moving. They'd landed in a different part of the sector, with walls the colour Rose usually associated with the sea. There were signs and warning notices all over the walls, with windows giving a view over various laboratories and testing zones. The whole place was deserted.
But not for long. Like a reoccurring bad dream, the commander appeared on the scene, flanked by two guards. He looked the Tardis up and down, gestured for the guards to lower their weapons, and then locked eyes with the Doctor. Rose knew confrontation was inevitable.
The commander didn't bother with formalities. "How did that thing get in here?"
"Oh, I'll spare you the details. Bit complicated."
Rose groaned inwardly, realising the Doctor was going into one of his deliberately awkward moods. She avoided the commander's stare and sidled away from the guards, deciding to have a quick scout around for Bella and Jack while the Doctor resolved his parking problems.
She'd reached the junction of the corridors and was just about to turn back when a shadow down one of the passageways caught her eye.
"Jack? Bella?" She moved forwards, and the shadow disappeared. "Who's there?"
Cautiously, she walked to the turning, and looked around, just in time to see a figure run around the next bend. Rose glanced back in the direction of the Doctor's voice. Running off on her own had got her into enough scrapes on previous occasions. Then, as she dithered, Jack appeared at the end of the passage.
"Oh, it is you!" Rose called, relieved, and started towards him. Jack returned her smile, then turned his head as if startled by something down the corridor to his left. And promptly disappeared again.
"Jack, wait!" Somehow worried by his lack of greeting, Rose ran after him to the corner, and chased him down a long straight section, to yet another bend. "Jack, what - ?"
He paused, about fifty metres ahead of her. "Hurry!" he yelled, and was off again before she could argue. Getting more puzzled by the second, she followed him, now at a more reluctant jog. He didn't wait but always stayed ahead, so that she only caught a glimpse of him at each new turn, showing her which route to take.
Left, right, then right again and she lost sight of him. Gasping for breath, she halted at a crossroads, feeling increasingly stupid as common sense caught up with her. The place was like a rabbit warren, and she was going to get herself lost. If she wasn't already.
"JAAACK!" Her voice echoed back to her, but the corridors leading off from her path remained empty. Then cold realisation hit her. It hadn't even occurred to her that what she had thought was her friend, could have been the Healdon.
Nervous now, she turned back into the tunnel she'd just emerged from, making a mental note of the signs on the walls so that she'd be able to show the Doctor where Jack – if it was him – had gone.
That was if she could get back to where she'd left him. She wasn't sure she could remember the way, even if she did spend every day in a timeship with a similar maze of corridors and rooms.
Rose suddenly felt an odd prickling sensation somewhere around her brain, spreading downwards, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Someone was behind her. She wasn't sure if a tiny sound had unconsciously alerted her, or if it was just instinct, but somehow she just knew.
She turned slowly around, and came face to facewith herself.
Now this is possibly the bit where it gets nasty… R & R please people!