A/N: Hi everyone. So sorry that it has taken me such a long time to post this. After being ill with Covid and dealing with a family members illness my mind was elsewhere. Thank you for waiting so patiently, here is the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it!
They were making their way into a tunnel and Kari was gripping the Doctor's hand tightly. "Dark, creepy tunnel. Perfect place for hundreds of spiders to be lurking." She called to the Doctor, trying her best not to get too freaked out.
"I don't get why spiders bother you so much." There was definitely concern in the Doctor's voice as she spoke to Kari.
"Neither do I. I don't know if they are something I have always found creepy, or if it's a new thing. I just don't remember." Things like that always bothered Kari, when she couldn't remember things from before she met the Doctor, from when her life had been so different to what it was now. Her memories of her father had all faded now and she had given up trying to remember when her birthday was. Her whole life before was nothing but a very distant memory.
The Doctor could see that it was bothering Kari, and she wished that there was something she could do to help, to make things better. "They aren't going to hurt you, Kari. I promise."
All Kari could do was look at her, knowing that her fear of spiders was just making her worry even more. That wasn't what Kari wanted at all. Instead, she noticed the lights come on and looked over at Yaz, who had managed to get them working. "Nice work, Yaz." She said, glad that they now had a bit more light around them.
"No, not nice work." Robertson growled. It was pretty obvious that he was not happy. "None of you are allowed down here."
The Doctor was in no mood for games and ignored the way he spoke. "Are all your hotels built on repurposed sites?" She asked him, knowing that it was very unlikely that the answer given was one she would like.
"Well, that's the business. I mean, every city in the world, big or small, has an area that they want repurposed." Robertson told her as they continued walking along the tunnel, deeper into the mine. "Maybe it's not too pretty, maybe it's never been used, maybe it's an industry that's died. We go in and we help them figure it out. We get a good deal, but we give them world-class facilities. It's a win for everybody."
"Not for the spiders." Kari muttered, feeling herself getting more anxious the further down they went. "A network of mining tunnels could explain how the bigger spiders are moving. The question is, does that make your hotel their target or their base?" Of course she already knew the answer to that question. "And does anyone else think it smells like death and decay down here?"
The Doctor just looked at Kari with worry before taking a few more steps down the tunnel, which opened out into a huge cavern. There, hanging from the roof of the cavern were what looked like cocoons. "What are they?" Yaz asked, feeling a little freaked herself.
"Doctor…" Kari called, watching as the woman took another step closer and ripped open one of the webbed cocoons. The sight that they all saw just made her stomach churn. It was a person.
Robertson had walked over and was standing there looking over the Doctor's shoulder. "Oh, my God." His reaction told everyone one thing, he knew that person, the one who had been encased in a cocoon.
Kari struggled to find her voice for a moment. "You knew her, didn't you?" She eventually managed to ask him.
"Her name is Frankie." There was a look of horror on his face now, and he finally seemed to be realising just how serious this whole situation was. "Look what they did to her."
"These poor people are being stored as food. Innocent people." Kari hated it, she always hated it when the innocent were caught up in something. When lives were taken too soon. "Spiders may not eat people, but that's because something isn't right. These spiders are outsized and confused. All their behavioural patterns have been disrupted. The big question is, how did they get like this?"
Everyone was looking at the scene before them, but it was Jade who spoke up. "It doesn't make any sense. This is not what spiders do."
Kari shook her head at her while the Doctor went and opened another cocoon. There was a man in this one, a man in a suit. "I presume this is Kevin." The Doctor asked Robertson, a sad look on her face.
"Yeah." His reply was short, and you could tell that this whole situation was finally starting to sink in for him.
There was only one person there who really knew just how bad things were. "Doctor, we need to keep going. There's something you need to see." Kari told her, knowing that things were about to go from bad to worse. There was a frown on the Doctor's face as Kari led her a little deeper into the mine.
As everyone followed the Doctor and Kari, Robertson shouted after them. "You don't need to go any deeper!" They all just ignored him. They all wanted to find out what was going on, to know what was happening. It was pretty clear that the man had something he wanted to hide.
The group carried on, following Kari and the Doctor until they reached a large, open cavern. They were looking upon a mountain of rubbish and waste. "It's a landfill." Kari muttered, knowing that things would still get worse from here. They were far from seeing the end of this just because they had found a landfill.
"Is that what the smell is?" Najia asked, looking around at the waste everywhere. "It goes on for miles."
The Doctor had her screwdriver in her hand and was scanning the rubbish mountain. "And down." She added, unable to believe the size of the thing.
Najia turned to look at Robertson, a rather unimpressed look on her face. "Your hotel's built on landfill?" She asked him, starting to feel pretty glad that she had been fired and would no longer be working for this man.
He let out a sigh before answering. "I have a lot of companies, okay? JLR does corporate waste disposal. They're very efficient, very highly rated internationally."
It didn't matter what he said, the Doctor was not impressed. "You fill up disused mines with landfill waste and build a luxury hotel on top?"
"Smart business planning. Perfect vertical integration." He sounded so smug, so pleased with himself, so much so that Kari really wanted to smack the man. She hated what they had seen, what he had done, and he just didn't seem to care at all. He had the money, that was all that he cared about, money.
"And all of your hotels are built this way, aren't they?" Kari said, the disgust seeping into her voice. "And none of this is perfect."
The Doctor looked at Kari and could see how annoyed and frustrated she was getting, which was never a good sign. "Not quite perfect, I'm afraid." She said, giving Kari's hand a squeeze, letting her know that she was there, reassuring her. "Not quite efficient. A blocked-in site pumping out methane and sulphides and trichloroethylene, never mind the specialist material that haven't been properly preserved. A soup of toxic waste, incredibly badly managed. I mean, there's no outlet for it. It's just building and marinading and becoming more and more toxic. It's a botched job."
"I didn't know." Robertson said, trying to feign innocence.
But Najia knew more, because she had heard the conversation he had been having previously. "Yes, you did. That's what she was telling you when I saw you. That woman, Frankie." The man scoffed at her. "She was telling you this site was unsafe."
The man knew it was caught out here, and needed to dig himself out of it somehow. "Okay, all right, you're right. That's why I came here. Apparently JLR was a little overzealous in cutting corners and worried about keeping the bottom line instead of doing the right thing. But I just sign the contracts, okay? I expect other people to do their jobs. This is not on me."
This time it was Kari who scoffed. "Yes it is. This is all on you. You don't even care, do you? People have died, people that you know, and you just don't care. There is only one thing in this world that you care about and that is yourself." It made her so angry that innocent people had died because of someone else's greed.
"Look, I'm going to pay you all off." Robertson told them, clearly not having listened to a word that Kari had said. "You'll never have to work again."
Najia was the first to speak up. "I like working." She told him, her own anger now starting to show through. "Do you know the worst thing? Bits of this is leaking out above here. It's in my kitchen. My husband's right. It's a conspiracy. Do you have any idea how annoying it is when my husband's right?"
"Look, I've never even been down here. It doesn't even add up." He was still trying to defend himself, to make it all someone else's fault.
Kari looked over at Jade and saw the worried look on the woman's face. It was all starting to fall into place, to come together and make sense. "It does for me." The woman said, all eyes now on her. "JLR Disposal. JLR takes the waste from our lab. Our aborted experiments and our spider carcasses."
A sigh escaped Kari's lips. "And they're all in there. Your spider carcasses in his toxic waste."
"Not my fault. I didn't know anything about spider carcasses." Kari was getting really fed up with the man now and his pathetic excuses. He needed to shut up and take responsibility for all of this, because it was his fault. He was the man in charge, it was his company and his responsibility to check that the company was running things correctly.
Jade was thinking the same thing as Kari. "Course you didn't. You don't know anything. You just avoid taking any responsibility." She told him, before looking at the Doctor and Kari. "I'm running through our work, stuff we shut down. Spiders bio-engineered for stronger cobwebs, prolonged life."
"Because spiders can keep growing as long as they live." The Doctor and Kari said at the same time. The Doctor couldn't help but give Kari a worried look. She knew that she was finding this difficult, that she had a slight fear of spiders. The Doctor could also sense that there was something else that was bothering her.
Then another thought flashed through Jade's mind. "What if our waste included something that we thought was dead, but was still just alive?"
"And with enough food in all that waste to survive, and enough toxicity to mutate and to keep on growing." The Doctor added, a grim expression on her face.
"Come on." Kari said, turning away from the landfill. "We need to head back up. I'm sure Ryan and Graham will have something for us by now." She was not looking forward to the prospect of seeing more spiders, but Kari knew she was going to have to deal with it.
The group rushed back up to the kitchen, the Doctor giving Kari concerned glances all of the time, which hadn't gone unnoticed by Yaz. "Are you okay?" The Doctor ended up asking, wishing that she could make things better.
Kari didn't look at her as she replied. "Not really. I know what's going on, Doctor. I know what is going to happen." The Doctor was already aware that she knew what was going on but hadn't asked her about it or tried to get information from her.
"I don't want you to tell me anything if you don't want to, Kari. We will work all this out and fix it." The Doctor told her, trying to reassure her that things would be fine. All Kari could do was let out a sigh as they finally reached the kitchen.
As they ran in from one end, Ryan and Graham came rushing in from the other. "Massive spider in the ballroom!" Ryan announced, causing everyone to stop.
"How massive?" The Doctor asked, curious and nervous at the same time. She could tell it must have been big, both of the men were out of breath and had most likely had a very lucky escape.
Finally, Graham managed to get a chance to reply to the Doctor. "The size of a large van."
The Doctor seemed to be rather impressed and worried at the same time. "Wow, that is massive."
"It's the mother." Kari announced, causing everyone to look at her. "The one in the ballroom, that's the mother and the rest are all her babies. Some of them stayed here while others went out and ventured into the city. It would be their pheromones that are disrupting the spider's ecosystem and causing the other spiders to behave abnormally."
That was when it all dawned on the Doctor as well. "Of course." She said, before turning and looking at Yaz's mum. "Najia, you were never the link. Your colleague, Anna. What if she had the same pheromones on her, accidentally calling out to a spider that had gone out hunting from this hotel? All these spiders answering the same call, because in the end, every living thing has the same instinct. To come back home."
"That's very touching." Robertson called out, grasping everyone's attention. "But there's a plague in my hotel and it needs to be fixed."
The Doctor looked at Kari, who nodded at her, before she looked back at the owner of the hotel. "Show me your panic room."
The walk down to the panic room was made in silence. Kari was getting more and more nervous, but she couldn't explain why. The Doctor's concern was growing because of the way that Kari was acting and everyone else around them could see it too.
When they finally made it there, Robertson unlocked the heavy steel door using a retina scanner. "It looks like a bank vault." Graham commented as the door opened
"My lockdown palace." Robertson said as they all entered, clearly rather pleased and hoping to impress them. "I have one in every hotel, just in case it's needed. Not finished yet, but still." He couldn't help himself as he started to tell them all everything that he had int here, about how he would survive in there for six months rather happily. And then came the talk of guns. "And I've got a huge stash of weapons, enough for all of us. Enough for two guns apiece."
There was a worried look on Ryan's face as he spoke to the man. "Oh, mate, she's not going to like that."
"No, I'm not." The Doctor said, striding over to Robertson, Kari right beside her. "You are not shooting those creatures."
Robertson was ready to defend himself and his actions. "They're mutants."
"Caused by you." Jade retorted.
"Your carcasses, lady, not mine."
Kari wanted them all to just shut up. She wanted to get out of there, sooner rather than later. "That doesn't matter." She ended up saying. "They are living, breathing organisms and we treat them with dignity." Kari told them. "So here's what we're going to do…"
Before she could finish her sentence, Robertson was talking, or more like shouting this time. "Shoot them!" The volume and tone of his voice actually made Kari jump a little.
The Doctor did not like that one bit. She didn't like the way that he had spoken to Kari, the way he had made her jump, and the fact that he was so adamant on killing those poor creatures. "We're not going to shoot them!" She shouted back, her own anger really starting to rise.
"What's wrong with you people?" Robertson asked. "What is wrong with this country? Why don't you do what normal people do? Get a gun, shoot things, like a civilised person." The frustration in the room was growing by the second.
The Doctor could see how much that comment had riled Kari up and quickly jumped on before she said anything. "Because I've got a much better idea. Spiders are roaming this hotel searching for food. We're going to lure them in here with the promise of food, then deal with the spider mother in the ballroom. Oh, that sounds like the best novel Edith Wharton never wrote."
Kari was actually grateful for what the doctor was doing. There was just so much going on inside of her head, so many things that were bothering her. She really did not like Jack Robertson and it was only thanks to the Doctor being there she hadn't said something she may later regret. "We need to isolate the spiders here."
There was a look of horror and disgust on Robertson's face. "You're going to let spiders use my panic room?"
"Yes." Kari snapped at him. "It's the least they deserve. A humane death for all that they have been put through. For all that has happened to them, it is the least that they deserve." She was trying to keep herself calm, to keep control, but she was losing it slightly.
It appeared that Robertson had seen that, and he couldn't resist another retort. "Shooting's quicker." That was the final straw and Kari could feel her anger rising.
"You are a pathetic piece of excuse for a human." Kari spat at him, the familiar glow beginning to appear with her anger. "You have an excuse for everything, don't you? Well, let me tell you this, you are not going to hurt a single one of those creatures, do you understand me?"
Everyone was just standing there, their eyes wide as they watched Kari give this man a piece of her mind. The only one who was not slightly terrified was the Doctor. "Kari, it's okay." She said, trying to calm her down. "Just calm down, please." The Doctor really hated it when Kari got herself wound up and angry. It usually didn't end well for someone.
There was silence for a few minutes before Kari closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The orange glow had settled down and the tension that was in the air started to dissipate. "So how are you going to lure them?" Graham soon said, breaking the awkward silence that was filling the room.
After a quick glance at the woman beside her, checking that she was okay now, the Doctor started to get things rolling. "Spiders gravitate to their food through vibration. Any ideas?"
There was silence for a few moments before Ryan spoke up. "Easy." He announced. "Raze. Am I right?"
Everyone just looked at him with confusion. "I don't know what you're saying." Yaz admitted, sensing that no one else knew either.
All he could do was shake his head at her. "Yaz, you're so uncool right now." Ryan told her, before going over to the sound system and connecting his phone up to it. Moments later and there was a lot of noise coming from the speakers. "Sheffield's sickest grime station!" It was pretty easy to see that this was the kind of music that Ryan liked, he was enjoying himself a little too much which to Kari it was just a noise that was hurting her ears.
"Right, come on." Kari said, needing to get away from that noise. "The noise will bring the spiders here, we need to make sure that we shut them in. Then we can go and deal with the big mummy spider."
It didn't take them very long at all to watch as the spiders all flocked to the panic room. "You three, into the spa. Get every bottle of essential oils that you can." The Doctor said to Yaz, Ryan and Najia as they passed through the swimming pool. She knew what they were going to need and how they were going to deal with the big spider.
"What are we going to do, spa it into submission?" Yaz asked, not understanding what the Doctor's plan was yet.
"Pretty much." The Doctor replied. "Meet you outside the ballroom." She added, before heading off with Kari.
They were almost at the ballroom when Kari made the Doctor stop. "Doctor, I need you to listen to me." She said, knowing that she had to say something. "Robertson has a gun, and he is going to use it to kill the mother."
The Doctor frowned at her. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Do you remember Vincent and the Krafayis?" Kari asked, receiving a nod of the head from the Doctor. "Vincent didn't mean to kill him, everyone in that room was frightened. The Krafayis was terrified, and blind. Remember?"
"Yeah, I remember. What are you saying, Kari?" The Doctor asked her, not yet able to follow her train of thought.
Kari bit her lip slightly. "This spider, the mother… we can't kill her." Before she was able to finish what she was going to say the others had joined them both. But she wasn't going to give up. "Doctor, please. Leave her alone."
Now the Doctor was even more confused. Kari had been so creeped out by these spiders, but now she was asking for her to leave the giant mother spider alone. "But why, Kari? What is it? Why should we leave her alone?"
"Because she is dying." Kari said, before stepping into the ballroom, the others following behind her. "Just looked at her, look at her and listen."
The Doctor and the others all stopped and watched as the spider tried to climb up the wall, only to slide back down again. Her movement was sluggish and her breathing was not right either. "It's grown too big." The Doctor said, finally realising what Kari had been saying.
"She's suffocating." Kari said, taking small steps over toward the spider. "She's got too big to breathe properly. Even moving around here, it's using up what little oxygen she can absorb. She won't survive for long. She's more scared of us than we are of her." She hated it, it reminded her all too much of the Krafayis who had been left behind and was terrified.
The Doctor didn't really know what to say. "I'm so sorry this has happened to you." She said to the spider, watching as Kari continued to slowly approach the struggling spider. Even though she had been scared of these spiders herself, she was going to comfort that mother.
"So what do we do, just leave her?" Graham asked, realising that the spider was not a threat at all.
That was when the doors opened and in walked Jack Robertson, a gun in his hand. "No. Absolutely not." The Doctor said, having a terrible feeling that she knew what the man was going to do. She quickly glanced over at Kari and saw that she was now with the spider, she was right there beside it, comforting it.
"My hotel, my rules. I am the future President of the United States. How's this for fire and fury?" He announced, aiming the gun at the spider. But he had one problem, Kari was in the way. "Get out of the way."
Kari just looked at him, a fire burning in her eyes. "Not a chance. You are not going to kill her, do you understand me?" She growled. She was not going to back down, she was not going to let this innocent creature be murdered in that way. "She is dying. Let her have her final moments in peace."
While the man was distracted, gazing at Kari in horror, Ryan snatched the gun out of his hand. With the gun no longer threatening anyone, the Doctor rushed over to where Kari was with the spider. "You poor thing, I'm so sorry." The Doctor said, resting her own hand on the large creature.
"Is there any way to save her, Doctor? Is there anything we can do?" Kari asked, hating seeing the spider suffering that way.
The Doctor looked at her sadly. "Oh, I wish there was. I wish we could save them all."
The pair of them stayed there, Kari doing her best to comfort the spider as best she could. It had stopped struggling, stopped trying to get away. "It's okay, you rest now. Go to sleep." She knew that her time was nearly up. "I'm so sorry." Without realising it, Kari had let a few tears slip down her cheeks. While the spiders had really given her the shivers, she knew that none of it was their fault, they weren't intentionally out to hurt anyone. It was not their fault.
There was a sombre atmosphere when they left the hotel. Kari and the Doctor headed straight back to the TARDIS while the others headed to do their own thing. Jack Robertson had left before them, no one had seen him since Ryan had taken the gun away from him.
The moment the pair of them were in the TARDIS, Kari leaned up against the console, exhaustion washing over her. It was always difficult meeting a new regeneration of the Doctor for the first time, this one even more so since the Doctor was now a woman. But Kari had managed it.
A few moments later and the Doctor was resting beside her. "Are you alright?" She asked, trying to mask the concern in her voice.
"Yeah, I'm alright. What about you? How are you doing?"
This time the Doctor smiled at her. "I'm alway better when you are here." She said, before there was a knock at the door. It opened on its own and in stepped Yaz, Ryan and Graham. "Proper goodbye this time." The Doctor said to them sadly.
"About that…" Ryan said. Something in his voice made Kari want to smile.
"Do we have to?" Graham asked as the trio approached the console where the Doctor and Kari were standing. "You see, Doc, the thing about grief is it needs time. I don't want to sit around my house waiting for it to go away, cos that house is full of Grace and it makes it so much harder. But, er, being with you and Kari and seeing all these things out there, it really helps."
It was easy to see that the Doctor was slightly shocked. She had never expected that response from Graham. "What about you?" She asked, looking at Ryan.
'Do you really think I want to go back to working in that warehouse? No way." No, he wanted to stay as well.
Kari moved and went to stand next to the Doctor. "Yaz, you wanted to come home." She said, taking a hold of the Doctor's hand.
Yaz let a small sigh. "I know. I love my family, but they also drive me completely insane. I want more. More of the universe. More time with you two. You're like the best people I've ever met."
"You're pretty awesome." Ryan agreed.
Kari and the Doctor both looked at Graham, wondering what he was going to say. "You're all right, I suppose." He said, causing Kari to chuckle a little.
It was great that they wanted to come with them, to travel through time and space and see the whole universe. But it all comes with a warning. "We can't guarantee that you're going to be safe." Kari told them, knowing that they had to understand the bad as well as the good.
Yaz looked at her and smiles. "We know."
"Do you? Really?" The Doctor said quickly. They had lost people before, friends, family, it was always difficult. Some times people didn't come back. They needed to know what they were letting themselves in for. "Because when I pull that lever, I'm never quite sure what's going to happen."
Ryan seemed okay with it. "You're not going to come back as the same people that left here." Kari told them. The Doctor was being much more cautious these days, making sure that anyone who wanted to travel with them really understood what could happen.
"But that's all right." Graham said, sounding very certain of himself. "I think that's good." Kari couldn't help but smile. It was good. It would usually change people, make them better. The people that travelled with them learned new things, not just about the world they lived in, but able themselves as well.
While Kari was convinced and happy, the Doctor still needed some reassurance. "Be sure. All of you, be sure." The trio before them told her how sure they were, and the Doctor finally accepted it. "Look at you. My fam. No, still doesn't quite work. Team Tardis?"
Kari rolled her eyes when Yaz replied. "Meh. We'll take that." Kari was more than happy to have this new bunch as part of her dysfunctional time travelling family. It was always getting bigger and she knew it would continue to get better in the future.
Now there was a smile on the Doctor's face. "Welcome aboard. Properly. Oh." She said, before darting over to the lever on the console, Kari being dragged with her. "Do you want to do it together?" Yaz, Ryan and Graham came over, and placed their hands on the lever with the Doctor and Kari's. "I love this bit." She said, before pulling down the lever and sending them hurtling through time and space.
Kari couldn't help but smile through it all. While the Doctor was different in this regeneration, she knew it was going to be just as much of an adventure as all the other regenerations she had been with, and will be with. Things with the Doctor were okay, this regeneration still wanted her around. That was all that Kari could ask for, considering this had been a rather big change. Kari was excited for all of the adventures to come and it just made her smile more when she saw how happy the Doctor was.
A/N: I hope that you enjoyed the chapter. I really did enjoy working on that episode and figuring out how the relationship with Kari and the Doctor was going to build. I'm happy with how it came out.
I have to admit, I'm not sure when I am going to be able to update again. The next chapter is not completely ready. I'm not happy with it and feel like it needs changing so I'm sorry in advance for the wait that there will be for it.
A massive thank you to all who have followed/favourited the story recently and a huge thank you to those who have left a review. Seeing these reviews and knowing that there are people out there who enjoy my writing is a wonderful feeing.
One last thing, Happy New Year! Let's all just walking in calmly and slowly, not making a fuss, and everything will be okay!
Until the next time...
Pippa.