Chapter LXXIX
Mira
The Doctor pulled her with her, out of the sickbay. Then, halfway to engineering, he stopped. No one of the crew was near them as he asked, "Possessed by whom?"
He was still holding her hand as she turned around to him.
"I said it - I have no idea."
"Is it something on this ship?"
She shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment.
"It's alien. I mean, really, really alien. I really can't say. Maybe it is on the ship, maybe not," she finally said and shrugged.
"Well, then I guess we have to be careful," he replied, looking intently at her. "Come on! We have to get that engine fixed."
"In thirty-two minutes? I didn't know that your such an optimist. That's hardly enough time to figure out what's broken!" she said as he pulled her with him.
"Really?" he replied quietly, stopped in his tracks and turned around again, his dark eyes fixed on her, with one of those looks. Despite the heat she felt a shiver down her spine "There I thought you knew me."
"Yes," she said, "Well, let me rephrase it. You can't accept defeat any more than I can."
"Here we go then," he said with a soft smile and turned around again.
A few moments later they reached engineering and he went over to the next intercom.
"Abi, how's Korwin doing? Any results from the bio-scan?"
"He's under heavy sedation." Abi's voice came over the board-communication. "I'm just trying to make sense of this data. Give me a couple of minutes and I'll let you know."
He activated the intercom again, asking, "Martha? Riley? How're you doing?"
"Area twenty nine," Martha reported quite out of breathe. "At the door to twenty eight."
"Yeah, you've got to move faster," the Doctor replied.
"We're doing our best!"
The Doctor now walked away from the intercom, leaving it activated, burying his hands in the remains of the engine.
She herself couldn't do much more than holding parts of the engine he handed over to her or giving him tools. Even though most engines followed similar design principles, it would have taken her hours, if not days – and blueprints and a handbook – to get to a stage of being able to do basic repairs for this particular drive-system. He on the other hand seemed to know it as much as he knew the systems of the TARDIS.
"Find the next number in the sequence three one three," Riley's voice came over the intercom.
"Three seven nine," the Doctor replied without looking up.
"What?" Martha asked.
"It's a sequence of happy primes," the Doctor explained, talking even faster than he normally did. "Three seven nine."
"Happy what?" Martha asked.
"Oh Martha," she barked in and took some more cables from the Doctor, "Just believe it!"
"Are you sure? We only get one chance," Riley asked.
She sighed. Should she now really explain the concept of happy numbers – and happy primes?
But the Doctor made the decision for her as he walked back to the intercom and started to explain, "Any number that reduces to one when you take the sum of the square of its digits. And you continue iterating until it yields one is a happy number. Any number that doesn't, isn't. A happy prime is a number that is both happy and prime. Now type it in!" The last sentence he had yelled. Then he looked up, obviously talking to her and the rest of the crew instead to Martha and Riley. "I don't know, talk about dumbing down! Don't they teach recreational mathematics any more?"
"Did they ever teach it?" she asked. "They certainly didn't when I was at school. Don't think most people would think of mathematics as a recreational activity."
"Why not?" he asked, looked up and seemed to be genuinely baffled.
"Well, because? I don't know. I do, by the way. I always found solving equations relaxing. It's clear, following a system, one and only one result – most of the times at least."
"Really?" he asked, still looking at her. "Maybe you should start again."
For a moment she did nothing else but looking back at him, as if everything else suddenly was unimportant. Not only that, she also remembered that he had gotten a rather detailed glimpse of the chaos in her mind. It took some effort to focus on the problems at hand again. "Engine," she finally replied and pointed at the mess in front of them. "Broken."
He looked at her for one more moment, then continued with his attempts to fix the engine.
"Oh, and," he then added, turning his head to the intercom, "Martha, be careful. There may be something else on board this ship."
"Any time you want to unnerve me, feel free," Martha replied.
"Will do, thanks."
"Impact in thirty fifty," the computer announced.
He stopped and looked up and around him again. "We need a backup in case they don't reach the auxiliary engines in time. Come on, think. Resources. What have we got?"
But before anyone could reply, Martha's voice came over the intercom again, "Doctor?"
"What is it now?" he asked.
"Who had the most number ones, Elvis or the Beatles. That's pre-download."
"Elvis," the Doctor replied, but then corrected himself, "No! The Beatles!" Only to change his mind again not a second later. "No! Wait! Er, er. Oh, what was that remix? Er, I don't know. I am a bit busy."
"Fine. I'll ask someone else," Martha replied indignantly.
"Now, where was I?" the Doctor continued, seemingly lost in thoughts. "Here comes the sun. No, resources. So, the power's still working, the generator's going. If we can harness that. Ah!"
"I don't think the Beatles were thinking about a situation like that when making that song," she murmured, but no one reacted.
"Use the generator to jump-start the ship," McDonnell said eventually.
"Exactly," the Doctor said. "At the very least, it'll buy us some more time."
"That is brilliant," McDonnell said, still looking a bit disbelievingly.
"I know. See? Tiny glimmer of hope," he replied and smiled at McDonnell.
"If it works," Scannell threw in.
"Oh, believe me," McDonnell said to him, "You're going to make it work."
"Impact in twenty nine forty six," the Computer announced.
Doctor
Mira was right. He wouldn't surrender to a failing drive-system and a sun pulling them closer with every passing second. And certainly not to some entity or being possessing a crew member. Although, he wondered what it might be. He shot Mira, who was standing opposite of him, a quick look. It was really hot in here by now, and he could see little pearls of sweat on her forehead, and the short hairs around her face were wet and curly. As he drew his attention back to the engine, he heard Abi's voice over the intercom.
"Doctor, these readings are starting to scare me."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Well, Korwin's body's changing. His whole biological make-up. It's impossible."
He thought about it for a moment. If his biology was changing, then-
"Maybe it actually is some sort of infection," Mira spoke out what he was thinking. "At least it's not merely possessed in a psychic way."
"Maybe...," he said, looking at her.
"But there definitely was something alien to him. Within him. Something almost conscious."
"Well, could be both-" he started to say, but got interrupted by Abi.
"This is Med-centre," he heard her say, panic in her voice. "Urgent assistance requested!"
He didn't hesitate as he turned to McDonnell and Scannell, "Stay here! Keep working!"
Then he rushed out, Mira close behind him, and, he should have known, also McDonnell. It was her ship after all, so she wanted to know what was going on – he just would have rather seen her fixing the engine.
"Captain?" he suddenly heard Scannell's voice from behind.
Great, so only two people were left in engineering, trying to fix this ship now?
"I told you to stay in Engineering!" he said without turning around.
"I only take orders form one person round here," Scannell replied.
"Oh, is he always this cheery?" he asked, turning his head to McDonnell.
"Med-centre," Abi's voice came over the intercom again, "Urgent assistance requested!"
And then, shortly after her, there was another voice. "Burn with me!" Korwin? Although it sounded slightly different.
Next thing he heard was a bloodcurdling scream.
The scream seemed to last forever, and he ran even faster. But he didn't make it in time. The scream suddenly stopped before he could even see the doorway leading to the sickbay.
"Doctor, what were those screams?" he heard Martha asking over the intercom.
"Concentrate on those doors," he replied without even thinking about telling her the truth. "You've got to keep moving forward."
No need to tell her that Abi most likely had just died.
"Impact in twenty seven o six," the computer announced.
Finally, the arrived at the sickbay. But, to his dismay, it was empty.
"Korwin's gone," McDonnell pointed out the obvious.
Indeed, the stasis chamber was empty, and he was quite certain that Korwin wasn't hiding somewhere. But that was not his primary concern anyway. He had spotted something else. On the x-ray shield was an image of a figure, almost like a shadow. But there was no one standing next to it to cast such a shadow, and of course he knew already what it was – even though he really wished he would be wrong this time.
"Tell me that's not Abi," he heard Scannell behind him.
"Endothermic vaporisation," he replied quietly, touching the shadow which actually was ash – human ash – with his finger. "I've never seen one this ferocious. Burn with me."
"Korwin did that?" Mira asked next to him.
"What?" McDonnell asked, rather shocked. "Do you think? No way. Scannell, tell them. Korwin is not a killer. He can't vaporise people. He's human!"
"He was," Mira replied quietly as he walked over to the table with sheet with the bioscan results. "But I'm not so sure about that now – we don't know what he turned-"
"His bioscan results," he interrupted her, even though she clearly was on the right track. "Internal temperature, one hundred degrees! Body oxygen replaced by hydrogen. Your husband hasn't been infected, he's been overwhelmed."
"Celsius? One hundred degrees Celsius?" Mira asked.
Instead of answering, he just looked at her with a raised eyebrow. Fahrenheit wouldn't be that bad, would it?
"The test results are wrong," McDonnell said stubbornly.
"But what is it, though?" he kept on thinking aloud. "A parasite? A mutagenic virus? Something that needs a host body, but how did it get inside him?"
"Stop talking like he's some kind of experiment!" McDonnell stood in front of him, looking at him intently.
"Where's the ship been?" he asked, essentially ignoring her protests. They didn't have time for that now. "Have you made planet-fall recently? Docked with any other vessels? Any kind of external contact at all?"
"What is this, an interrogation?" she asked.
"We've got to stop him before he kills again."
"We're just a cargo ship."
"Doctor, if you give her a minute," Scannell tried to intervene.
"I'm fine," McDonnell replied, obviously getting herself together again. At least a little bit. "I need to warn the crew." She walked over to the intercom. "Everybody, listen to me. Something has infected Korwin. We think he killed Abi Lerner. None of you must go anywhere near him, is that clear?"
Then she turned around to him again.
"Is the infection permanent?" she asked. "Can you cure him?"
"I don't know," he replied, holding the sheet with the results against the light.
Well, most likely he couldn't, but she would find that out soon enough. No need to tell her the bad news right now.
But she seemed to know it anyway. Since when had he become such a bad liar?
"Don't lie to me, Doctor," she said. "Eleven years we've been married. We chose this ship together. He keeps me honest, so I don't want false hope."
"The parasite's too aggressive. Your husband's gone. There's no way back," he said quietly and looked at her. "I'm sorry."
"Thank you," she said quietly, visibly trying to retain her self-composure.
"Are you certain nothing happened to provoke this?" he asked again. "Nobody's working on anything secret? Because it's vital that you tell me."
"I know every inch of this ship. I know every detail of my crew's lives. There is nothing."
"You know what, Captain, you should really tell us. Even though you might think it's not related," Mira suddenly fell in, after she had brooded in silence the last minutes. "What are you hiding?"
"We're not hiding anything!" Scannell hurried to say.
"Really?" Mira asked. "You were thinking we're police. Why?"
"Well, they sometimes- Well, do inspections," Scannell replied, but stopped as McDonnell looked at him and slightly shook her head.
"So what is it then," Mira asked. "Is it your cargo?"
"No," McDonnell said after a moment of silence. "Guess it doesn't matter now anyway. We were trying to stock up fuel."
Mira looked at them, obviously quite clueless, shaking her head in incomprehension.
"It is illegal-" he started to say.
"Yes, I know," McDonnell hissed, wiping sweat off her forehead with an angry movement. "It is forbidden, but do you know how expensive fuel is these days? Anyway, I don't think it's related to what's happening. We only would have been a bit further from the sun, if..."
"Yeah, the sun," he said quietly, thinking about it. "The sun... Burn with me.."
"Is just a sun," Mira said. "Guess we're close enough to see that." She turned to McDonnell. "Why is it forbidden?"
"Doctor, we're through to area seventeen," Martha interrupted them via intercom before McDonnell could answer, finally pulling him out of his thoughts.
"Keep going," he replied. "You've got to get to area one and reboot those engines."
"Heat shields failing. At twenty percent," the computer announced.
Martha
Despite everything she had seen since travelling with the Doctor, the whole situation seemed to be quite surreal. Surely they wouldn't crash into the sun. No way. The Doctor would come up with something. How much time was left anyway? The computer was constantly announcing it, but somehow she was unable to really remember it. Was it the adrenalin flooding her body? Probably. She turned to Riley, who was furiously hitting the portable computer.
"Everything on this ship is so cheap!" he said in frustration.
Suddenly she heard the bulkhead behind her opening. It was the one leading to area eighteen, and it should be no one down here with them. Who could it be?
"Who's there?" Riley asked and turned away from the computer.
She stood behind him, and slowly she could make out a figure through the smoke.
"Is that Korwin?" she asked quietly.
The man was wearing a helmet, so it was hard to say who it was.
"No," Riley said, "Wait a minute. Oh, Ashton, what're you doing?"
"Burn with me."
Martha felt a chill down her spine as Ashton replied. It was something in his voice. It sounded just like...
"Well, if you want to help," Riley asked, seemingly completely clueless.
"Burn with me. Burn with me!" Ashton repeated whilst coming closer.
Finally, he started to open the filter of the helmet. That was enough for her.
"Move! Come on!" she yelled and dragged Riley with her, hitting on the open-button to a door, leading to a small adjacent area. Could be a storage room, but she didn't care much right now. The door shut just in time behind them, and a moment later Ashton was looking through the glass in the door.
Riley opened another, smaller hatch, and the both climbed through. Well, she thought, one more door between them and Ashton basically was a good thing. A moment later the door slides closed over the hatch. Had Ashton done that?
"What is happening on this ship?" Riley asked.
"Never mind that, where are we?"
"Airlock sealed. Jettison escape pod," the computer announced before Riley could answer.
"That doesn't mean us?" she asked and looked around in panic. "Doctor!"
"Pod jettison initiated," the computer said.
Okay, it was getting serious. She finally spotted an intercom and hit the speak-button, "Doctor! We're stuck in an escape pod off the area seventeen airlock. One of the crew's trying to jettison us! You've got to help us!"
Then she turned her head to Riley, who was hacking frantically on a keyboard.
"Tell me you can stop it," she breathed.
"Jettison held," the computer announced a second later.
"Thank you," Riley said, sounding quite pleased with his work.
But, just seconds later, the computer destroyed their hope, "Jettison reactivated."
She couldn't help but to scream in utter terror, hammering against the window in the hatch. It took only little imagination to picture what would happen to the escape pod so close to the sun.
"Come on," Riley said between gritted teeth as he was trying to revert whatever Ashton had done. "Tsilpinski sequence. This'll get him."
"Jettison held. Escape pod stabilised."
"You're pretty good," she said and leaned with her head against his shoulder. But Ashton was still outside...
Doctor
Martha's call reached him as they were halfway to the engineering.
"Doctor! We're stuck in an escape pod off the area seventeen airlock. One of the crew's trying to jettison us! You've got to help us!"
"Why is this happening?" McDonnell asked.
"Stay here," he yelled instead of answering her. He started to run down to Martha as he stopped for one more moment and added, "I mean it this time! Jump start those engines!"
When he reached area seventeen, he saw a man standing at the hatch leading to the escape pod. For a moment he thought it was Korwin, but he was wearing different clothes. Ashton. He stopped so abruptly that he could feel Mira slightly bumping into his back.
"That's enough! What do you want? Why this ship? Tell me!" he yelled at what once had been Ashton.
He had no illusions – Ashton was gone, just as Korwin was. Ashton turned his head, and then, after a moment of staring at him, he violently hit his fist through the keypad.
"Jettison activated," the computer announced.
Ashton turned around and started to walk towards him. He grabbed behind him, to make sure Mira was still there – and, if so, to keep her there – but there was only empty space behind him. Then he saw a motion out of the corner of his eye, but he kept his eyes fixed on Ashton, who was standing barely a feed away from him now.
"Come on," he said. "Let's see you. I want to know what you really are."
For a long moment Ashton just stood there, staring at him. Well, at least it seems as if he was staring – he couldn't see his eyes. Then, slowly but surely, Ashton started to lift his hands, reaching for the visor on his helmet. But, just as he was about to open it, he doubled over in pain.
"Airlock sealed," the computer said.
As if he had only waited for that, Ashton walked right past him, brushing his shoulder with his. Then he also saw where Mira had been all the time. Right behind Ashton, and now she slowly lowered the massive metal bar she was holding firmly in both hands.
"Well," he said, looking her up and down, "Thanks I guess."
"I didn't hit him," she said, looking back at him in confusion.
"Yeah, I know, it was something else. But nevertheless, thanks," he replied and jumped over to the nearest intercom. "McDonnell? Ashton's heading in your direction!"
Sorry for the long time between the updates, some old issues came up and I essentially had the energy, but not quite the focus/peace of mind to really write something coherent. I think it's good again now, but just saying, in case this chapter seems a bit confused – I'm trying to get into it again :-)
OneWhoReadsToMuch, NeoMulder, Julia N SnowMiko, bored411, Emmisaryofthewolf, Pridia, DarknessShallSpreadXx: Thanks for reading and leaving a review :-)
Guest: Thank you for the offer. I have to admit, that particular chapter actually was full of typos. I knew it, and I always was too lazy to edit it – I've done it now. Sorry for that. Unfortunately your mail address got cut, it's not allowed to post links/anything with dots in it that might resemble a link. Apart from that, I'm thinking about editing the first chapters anyway, so it would be pointless to have them corrected and then me putting in errors again ;-) So maybe at a (much) later time, but not now. But thanks again for offering your help.
