The business of changing the planet, rescuing Martha, etc. has begun!
THINGS CHANGING FAST
As luck would have it, Donna had emerged from her state of Hypertensive Crisis, wanting to "freshen up" as they say. She had pulled on a fresh pair of jeans, a white tee-shirt and a black nylon hoodie that always made her feel clean and chic. It would've been completely inappropriate for an early-autumn holiday on a Portuguese beach, but fortunately, she had all of her belongings from the TARDIS at her disposal, even though her room was still a bit cold.
The advantage to a hoodie was, of course, the very handy front pockets where she had a habit of shoving things whenever she wore it.
This was lucky, because when Colin went into cardiac arrest in response to the planet Sercaton, like Martha before her, she realised she had absent-mindedly shoved her medication into her pocket before getting distracted by something.
"Don't move," Donna said, putting the little box of pills in Colin's shaking hand. "I'm going to go get you some water."
She ran down the hall faster than she can ever remember running (as an adult, anyway) and yanked open the fridge, grabbing a half-full bottle of water, and sprinting back. The TARDIS was keeping the necessary channels lit for her.
Colin promptly swallowed down one beta blocker, along with the rest of the bottle of water. Within just a few minutes, he felt calmer, with no tightening of the chest, nor shortness of breath.
"Jesus," he breathed. "That was terrifying."
"Oh, come on," she teased. "What's a little heart attack, really?"
He chuckled. "Blimey, this life has jaded you."
She kissed him, then her face shifted into something a bit more serious. "Now comes the hard part."
"Yeah," he said.
She peeked out the door of the TARDIS, and interestingly, saw mostly humanoids buzzing about, seemingly of all walks of life – literally all colours, all shapes and sizes, several genders (or so it seemed), various head-sizes and arm-lengths, all different manner of sensory perception. Some had eyes, some did not. Some had ears, some did not. They noticed a tall, gangly being walk past whose head seemed to be just a purple bulb with a lone antenna sticking out the top. The antenna moved about as though taking in the world around it… Donna assumed that this was how the being navigated life.
But most importantly, what this varied tableau demonstrated to them was, it seemed like they could move about freely without really being noticed.
"Let's go," she said, taking his hand.
Together, they exited the TARDIS onto a grassy green patch of land. Nearby, there was some sort of complex, where they could clearly see there was an opening to what looked like a sporting event. People were excited, filing in, most without handing over tickets, though a small handful did seem to have an entry pass of some sort.
Colin and Donna joined the "no tickets" line, and were promptly ushered past the threshold into a common area that reminded them a little of a much larger Globe Theatre. But this was not before they noticed that ticket-holders were being told to take their places in a specially designated area just in front of the stage, and that when they were called, they could go through a corridor off to their right.
"I wonder what that's all about," Colin mused. "Like VIP passes or something?"
"Dunno," Donna responded. "We should probably find out."
"How? Tell them we left ours at home, but we swear we bought them?"
"No…" she said, rather distractedly, now staring at a point beyond Colin's head. "But I think we should work out what that is all about first."
He turned and looked, and his breath hitched. He was very glad he'd taken something to keep his heartrate under control, or this sight would have killed him almost on the spot.
On the stage, to their right, they saw what their Earth eyes recognised as an implement of medieval torture, meant for strapping a person down, and breaking their bones against the hard, wooden structure. Surely enough, there was a three-foot-high bucket sitting beside it with a sledge hammer protruding from it.
"Holy shit, is that a breaking wheel?" Colin shouted.
"Shh!" Donna scolded. "And yes, that's what it looks like to me."
"And what the hell is all that rubbish on the table beside it?"
The surface gleamed with metal instruments, some of them sharp, some of them pointy, some of them blunt, some of them oddly inscrutable… all of them terrifying. There was also something that looked like it might shoot electric pulses, a steaming cube of dry ice, and a very large pitcher of water.
"I think we both know the answer to that question, Colin," she said, squeezing his hand.
"What…. what the… this is…"
"Shhh," she reminded him. "Don't worry. We'll get them out."
On the left side of the stage, there was an apparatus that looked like a dolly. It was a five-foot-high, concave metal structure on wheels, with a platform at the bottom. Down each side, there were straps, and the thing looked just about wide enough for a human (or Time Lord). It reminded Donna of the film The Silence of the Lambs, and the device the prison officials used to transport Hannibal Lecter, only there didn't seem to be a mask involved, or a gag of any sort.
They studied this, and Colin shook his head. "This is mad," he declared.
"You're not wrong," she agreed.
"How are they going to use that?" referring to the Lecter-style restraint.
"I don't know," Donna said. "Just… let's not give them a chance to do it."
"Don't we need a plan?" he asked
"Yeah," she sighed. "Which is so much harder without the Doctor. But, I reckon we just need more info about this place and what might happ…"
And that was when they heard a moderated, but penetrating voice nearby.
"What do you mean the calibration is changing? Why would they do that? How could they do that?"
They turned instinctively and saw two tall beings dressed in what seemed to them to be rubber wet-suits from head to toe, including rubber helmets, complete with goggles and a sharp-looking grate for the mouth.
They had seen beings that looked like this at the front gates, and had assumed (rightly, as it turned out) that these were the guards of the complex, and natives to Sercaton.
"I don't know," said the other guard. "But don't you feel it? Something in the air…"
"Now you mention it…"
"I have a highly-attuned sense of the planet's energies, ever since I was a child," said the second guard. "And something is off. It's been recalibrated… or maybe is in the process of recalibration."
"I don't know how that's even possible, but… do you think we should alert someone? See if they want us to check out the Rhythmistis room just in case?"
"I think we should, yeah. If someone's messing with the equipment, they're going to want to…"
And with that, the two guards made their way through the crowd out of Donna and Colin's hearing range.
But the humans had heard enough. They looked at each other, both knowing that the Doctor was at work.
And was about to be found out.
Donna trained her eyes on the guards, who had not quite yet disappeared into the crowd. She pulled Colin along with her, following the tall rubber-clad guys. It was their best bet at finding the Doctor.
The Doctor wondered lots of things in these moments.
He wondered if he was the first living, walking being to suffer the swarm of billions of nanobots – the noise, the weight, the general unpleasantness…
He wondered if he would ever be able to breathe again. By now, he was trying to hold his breath, because the nanobots were in his ears, mouth and nose, and any inhalation meant that he'd have tiny electronic sensors in his lungs, perhaps forever. He was hacking, coughing, expelling some bots, but inhaling others. He had already felt the respiratory bypass kick in, become overwhelmed, and fail.
Twistedly, he wondered what would happen now if he opened his eyes. Would he see the nanobots swarming his eyeballs, or would everything just go dark, and would there then be bots under his eyelids as well?
And he wondered morbidly if the gold glow had already begun…
His lungs burned, his hearts raced as much as they could under the thumb of the beta blockers, and he genuinely wasn't sure he would survive.
At least I went out trying to help. Trying to get the TARDIS back here, save Martha, and perhaps by extension, every oppressed citizen of Sercaton.
He was also aware that even if he regenerated here, he would wake up in a new body, still surrounded by nanobots, still choked, still horrified…
And can you imagine what the recalibration will look like if the bots use my regenerative process as a gauge? Whoa!
Well, I'd almost like to see that…
And then, something miraculous happened.
The bots withdrew from his mouth.
He even felt small wisps of something flying up and out of his oesophagus. This made him cough. But when he inhaled again, he breathed in clean air.
The bots left his nose and ears, and withdrew from the area between the fingers of his clenched fists.
He chanced to open his eyes now, and saw, without a doubt, billions of nanobots retreating from his person, and flying confusedly into the corner of the room. Evidently, they were still not sure quite what they were doing, and why they didn't have the whole planet available to them… but it didn't matter. Because, little by little, they disappeared, and the Doctor stood up, and could see the data on the screen changing.
There was, at the bottom, a clear representation of the planet's overall heartrate – a zigzag pattern, accompanied by some measurement of time passing, and beats per unit of time. A message popped up on the screen that said "Nanobot recalibration complete; please wait."
After about twenty seconds, the zigzag pattern changed dramatically, and read that the planet's average heartbeat was something like two hundred beats per minute.
In the past, all Sercatonian heartrates stayed below one hundred beats per minute. Whenever there was a recalibration, the average heartrate detected would become "the norm," and an acceptable standard deviation would be set as the maximum.
The data on the screen now reported that the maximum heartrate for Sercaton was now two-hundred-twenty beats per minute. Then, the machinery seemed to power down, and wait for further instructions.
Upon entering the room, the Doctor had reminded himself of two things: his heartrate couldn't really go above one hundred because of the beta blockers, and also, he has two hearts.
Because of the work he'd done to increase his BPM, and the panic that had ensued after that, and the fact that the bots had no idea he was a Time Lord, they'd read a double one-hundred BPM as two-hundred BPM. This was exactly what he'd been hoping would happen.
Heh. They think I'm a planet. No-one's ever thought that before – can't say it's not empowering.
He was satisfied now that he had some time and freedom to do what he needed to do, in order to rescue Martha. He still did not know the status of the TARDIS, but he had calmed somewhat, and was able to talk himself into worrying about only one thing at a time.
The place was dark, but Martha could hear a crowd outside. She knew without asking that she'd been transported to the place where she was to be executed, alongside the Doctor, and apparently, the TARDIS. She had no idea whether the Doctor was within their grasp or not, and had no real idea of whether the TARDIS could even come to Sercaton and survive, even without the execution…
Come on, love. Be impossible! Now's the time!
A guard came into the cold room where she was waiting with her arms bound behind her back, and said, "We're just waiting on a few logistics, and then you'll be escorted onto the stage."
"Wonderful."
He pushed a button on the side of his goggles, and said, "It looks like Judge Rabic himself wants to begin the torture proceedings first, and we will call for Partitive Passes."
She gulped. There was that word, torture. She'd been wondering if this would figure into the equation… of course it would. This was why she'd been given a drug to keep her heartrate low: so she could endure torture without dying of a Sercaton-induced heart-attack. It would keep her alive and in pain longer, which would drive the Doctor's heartrate up, and kill him. Probably more than once.
Now it was clear.
Except the Doctor had beta blockers in him, and wouldn't die the way they thought he would. She reckoned this was probably a good thing, but it would most definitely complicate things. It could, depending on the status of things, mean that they both suffered a lot longer…
But the matter-of-fact, professional, procedural way in which the guard discussed her torture… this enraged her. However, she managed to keep her emotions at bay for a moment, so she could ask, "Partitive Passes? What are those?"
"Hm? Oh, those are passes sold to spectators who want to participate in the... proceedings."
Her stomach hit the floor.
"I see," she said, her voice now quivering. "So… people in the audience who want to help torture me."
"Well, yes," agreed the guard. "Although, to be fair, it's more about their vendetta against the Doctor. And we haven't sold very many. If you ask me, they've been made prohibitively expensive."
"What a great comfort," she mused, sarcastically.
"Anyway, depending upon how things go with the Partitive Passes, an interrogator may or may not have to re-take the reins."
"So, if one of the spectators' sadistic whims doesn't cause my horrifying death, then a professional will have to finish me off."
"Sort of. Again, it's more about the Doctor. If he's still alive after all that, then a professional will continue the ministrations."
"I see."
"It's good politics to do it that way. I've been told you're exceedingly clever for a human – I'm sure you understand."
With that, the guard left the room again, and Martha slumped with her back to the wall, and wept.
Thank you, once again, for all the wonderful reviews. It really has been of help to me!
Keep 'em coming, please, and thanks for reading! :-)