A/N: Hey, it's me, the despicable human being! I've just had the worst time trying to write at all recently. But I managed to get this chapter done over the course of like six months by opening the document, writing four words, and then swearing at it profusely. Sorry for being such a bad updater! You guys are lovely, thank you for all your kind words, and for those of you still reading! It really means a lot!
-1925-
-The Lost City of Z-
The alarms continued to shriek at an alarming volume, despite Calypso's best efforts to mute them with her hands. The roof above them retreated and revealed a vibrant yellow sky, the brightness of it momentarily blinding her to anything save the light itself.
"Well," she heard the Doctor speak, barely audible above the alarms even as he shouted. "It'll be a bit of a climb I suppose, but we might as well get-" the floor beneath them suddenly lurched and they all struggled to keep their balance as it moved steadily toward the sky. The Doctor, after he had sufficiently pin wheeled his arms around to regain his balance, grinned at Calypso. "Well, that's one problem solved already. Let's hope our luck keeps."
"Is this lucky?" Calypso asked, lowering her hands. The alarms didn't grow any louder, but they were more numerous as they rose and she winced against the barrage. Around them was an open landscape, glittering gold as far as she could see. On the distant horizon she spotted taller structures, all shimmering just as brightly as the surface around them, but they were entirely exposed where they stood.
"Do you recall if this lost planet of yours was friendly, Doctor?" The Colonel seemed to share her concerns, though she noted that he wasn't nearly as unsettled by the sudden appearance of a whole new world as she would have thought. She had seen plenty of strange things with the Doctor, and even she was a little awestruck. His hand shielded his eyes from the tremendous amount of light, focusing on the buildings in the distance. Calypso's eyes continued to adjust and she looked up into the sky, finding not one, but two yellow suns above. She found it a little difficult to breathe for a moment.
"Of course," the Doctor shouted back. "The Aurean have always been a peaceful race-" the alarms stopped suddenly and the Doctor stretched his jaw in relief. "Blimey, that's much better. Impressive, isn't it?" He spoke to Calypso now, who had yet to tear her eyes away from the suns above, even as they began to water. "It's a binary system, two suns orbiting each other." She finally looked away, spots taking up most of her vision now. The Doctor grinned at her and squeezed her hand and she gave a nervous grin in return. She thought it was strange how her heart could begin to race from something as simple as a look from him, even when she found herself faced by such impossible circumstances as finding herself on another planet entirely. "It's actually quite common throughout the universe."
"Hope you're right about the 'peaceful' bit, old sport." The Colonel interrupted them with a sharp reminder that they might actually be in some trouble. "Because it looks as though they're on their way."
"Ah yes," the Doctor said with a smile as he pointed out to the horizon so Calypso could see what he meant. A platform hovered above the gold ground in the distance, rapidly approaching them. "The ambassadors. Not to worry, Colonel. They're actually considered one of the best negotiators in the galaxy." He paused and then shrugged. "Slightly…parasitic, but that's neither here nor there."
"Come again?" The Colonel asked with a scowl.
"Well," the Doctor released Calypso's hands to face the Colonel. "With their extreme noxious reactions to most planets, really, most elements beyond what they've adapted to here, they need host species to help bring in resources for them. Otherwise they'd die out entirely."
"And that's your idea of peaceful?" The Colonel took a furious step toward the Doctor.
"Don't worry, it's all agreed upon beforehand," the Doctor said with a dismissive wave. "The hosts are always willing participants."
"S'pose that's something," the Colonel grunted reluctantly.
"Well, nearly always. There was that ugly business with the Rynsang…"
"Doctor-" The Colonel said warningly.
"It'll have to wait." Calypso stepped between the two of them, her eyes had never really left the platform and she was once again finding it difficult to breathe now that she could see its passengers. "They're here."
"Excellent," the Doctor said as he turned away from the Colonel, the same ludicrous smile on his face.
The platform stopped mere feet away from them and slowly lowered itself to the ground. It wasn't the platform that was so alarming, or the fact that it seemed to have no visible means of hovering above the ground, but the creatures themselves. The most pressing feature, was their size. Even when they had stepped away from the platform, they still loomed over them all, massive as a bear. The other more concerning detail was that, save their jeweled blue coloring, they most resembled the beetles that had sent them fleeing here in the first place. Their eyes were jet black, and large as Calypso's fists. They focused squarely on the Doctor who had stepped forward.
"Hello!" He said cheerfully. "I'm the Doctor."
One of the three creatures stepped forward on four of its six legs, feet clicking sharply against the gold surface and making Calypso's hair stand on end. She fought the urge to step back, partly for the sake of the Doctor, and partly because she knew there was nowhere else for her to go. It stopped less than a foot from the Doctor, his smile never fading.
"These are my traveling companions," he continued, despite the creatures never acknowledging his first introduction. "Calypso and Colonel Fawcett." He nodded at them to make some attempt at a greeting. Calypso tried to contort her face into something resembling a smile, while the Colonel absently reached for the machete that was no longer attached to his hip.
The creature opened its beaked mouth and let out a series of gurgling clicks.
"Ah, right. That's brilliant!" The Doctor said, turning to Calypso with that same cheerful grin.
"Did you…understand that?" She asked, she couldn't honestly say she had picked up if the tone was threatening or not.
"Well, something about my head…it's…" the Doctor shrugged apologetically. "My Aurean is a bit rusty."
"Well that's bloody brilliant," the Colonel threw up his arms in disgust.
"Look out!" Calypso saw a moment too late that the creature had extended a claw, closing it over the Doctor's head before he could move.
"Gods man!" The Colonel leapt forward, clutching at the claw as it began to glow from a light within.
"It's alright!" The Doctor pushed him gently away. "It's alright Colonel, she's trying to communicate."
"Oh…" Calypso dropped her hands uselessly to the side. The creature made more clicking noises as it peered at her.
"She?" The Colonel blustered.
"Yes, yes. I do apologize. My friends here were just concerned you had an interest in removing my head from its present location. I'm assuring them that that particular urge isn't something you're keen on doing, since just above my shoulders is in fact one of my favorite spots for it." The creature made further noises and the Doctor sighed. "Well, yes. Rearranging it would mean my fairly imminent death. It was, however, intended to be a joke- You know what, don't worry about it. Caypso? Colonel? If you could-" he held his hands out for them to take.
Calypso stared at it for a moment, looking between him and the hulking creature before them. She finally decided that if they really intended to harm them, they would have done it already. She also realized that the odds of her being able to stop them if they chose to do so, was next to impossible. She reluctantly placed her hand in the Doctors and instantly her thoughts were flooded by the deep melodic voice of a stranger.
"-sense of humor is a bit beyond my people. We would like to know how you came to be here."
"Again, very sorry about that. Seems we arrived here quite by accident. We popped through the door," he shrugged over his shoulder as well as he could with the creatures arm still clamped down over his head.
"Door?" Even though the creature's features did not shift, Calypso still got the impression that it was frowning.
"Yes, seems there was a transference wormhole set up shop in the bottom of an old temple. Out in the middle of the Amazonian jungle. Earth," he clarified. "Bit strange, as the technology for that sort of thing is still a few centuries beyond the locals."
"Earth…" the voice repeated. The creature stood very still as it thought. "Ah, the Kayapo." It nodded with its short neck. "We harvested gold there. The Kayapo helped us to build a temple so that we could safely travel between worlds without contamination. But there was scourge, a slaughtering of their tribe. We saved those we could, but they could not remain there. So we severed the bridge."
"A scourge, eh?" The Colonel asked with a raised eyebrow. "Don't suppose they resembled a giant pack of bugs?" The Doctor shot him a look and he shrugged. "Not intending any offense."
"No," the creature did not look the least bit bothered, but Calypso wasn't sure if she'd be able to tell if she was. "They were men, armed with metal and greed."
"Idiots," the Doctor muttered. "It could have been any number of reckless explorers that came charging through the country." He shot the Colonel a look before continuing. "Did you leave behind guardians to keep the temples location protected? To ensure the Scourge would not follow you?"
"We did not. There was no reason to. The temple was invisible to them, and the link was severed."
"Did a bit of a shoddy job there," the Colonel muttered under his breath.
"Well that's strange," the Doctor's brow creased. "Because I distinctly remember being chased through the jungle by a rather aggressive pack of beetles."
The Aurean behind the first creature started to chitter and Calypso watched as they communicated with each other, no longer able to understand them.
"There was one creature that did not make the return to its vessel. We presumed that it perished with its original host as it was many centuries ago."
"If it didn't die, then what happened to it?" The Colonel asked with a frown.
"It survived." The Doctor spoke slowly, the conclusion forming itself in his mind before he needed to ask the Aurean. "It jumped to the most suitable host it could find. Common earth beetles, hoping it could find a way back home. But beetles are rather simple creatures, far too simple to host an Aurean mind."
"But just one beetle? How could one beetle convince the rest to…well, do beetles even communicate?" The Colonel asked, side eyeing the Aurean cautiously.
"It started with one beetle, but beetles are like most biological creatures. They breed incessantly. Over a thousand or so generations, that Aurean was fractured, over and over again. The poorly suited host along with the splintering of his mind caused them to change. It's not a colony of beetles any more, it's all one creature, split into many bodies." The Doctor glared at the Aurean. "Did you wonder what that kind of isolation would do? Did you even care?"
The creature in the front bowed her head and Calypso knew that it did care, deeply. "We were unaware there had been any survivors, especially after so long. We mourned the loss, there was no way we could have anticipated what happened. We only wish there was a way we could ease its passing."
"Ease its passing?" Calypso was shocked, both that the creature, who spoke so sincerely, would suggest it, and that the Doctor did not immediately shoot her down. "That's what you plan to do? Kill it?"
"There is nothing else that could be done. We cannot retrieve him as there is no physical form to host him and with his level of contaminate, he could not possibly survive in his natural form again. But we cannot kill him as we cannot make the journey back to earth. Things will have to reach their natural conclusion. We are sorry to have caused you such strife. We can open the door again for you to return home."
"But, if we go back, they'll just kill us." Calypso felt her chest tighten, it seemed cruel to have temporarily escaped their fate only to be thrown back into it. What was worse was that she feared she would somehow be torn away from that end, and have no way of knowing if the rest of them survived. No way of knowing if this adventure with the Doctor would truly be her last.
"We shall make an adjustment in the bridge, you will place you in a location far from the creatures. You will have to make your way from there."
"My son is in that damned bloody temple of yours, do you expect me to just leave them there to die?" The Colonel stepped forward threateningly and the Doctor restrained him, just barely.
"No," the Doctor spoke finally. "Can you place us just outside the temple? Far enough back so we might not get the immediate attention of the creatures in question."
"That can be arranged." The creature nodded.
"Doctor, what are you planning to do?" Calypso watched him carefully.
"The only thing I can do," There was no eagerness in his voice, just a tired resignation that aged his features. "Destroy it."
The door hummed to life behind them, the same swirling pattern of light glowing as they turned to face it. "We have opened the bridge once more, the bulk of the creature is focused elsewhere, but that does not mean you will be safe." She warned them.
"It never is," the Doctor said grimly. "Alright then," he said, ensuring both Calypso and the Colonel were ready to follow. "Let's be on our way."
"I don't mean to be a naysayer, Doctor." The Colonel said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. "But are you sure this is a good idea?"
They all stood on the small hill that they had tumbled down only hours earlier. Looking out over the river, Calypso's stomach did a few flips. It was all shimmering and black, the landscape itself looking as though it had become a living thing. She couldn't see the temple itself, only a giant dark mountain that pulsed and moved as though it were breathing.
"Not entirely," the Doctor admitted. "But I'm mostly certain it's going to work." He held up his sonic screwdriver as he fiddled with the dials, and it whirred at a few different pitches before he seemed satisfied. "That should do it."
"Do what exactly?" Calypso asked as she tried not to let her overwhelming nervousness become too apparent.
"Well, this precise pitch should aggravate the creatures shell enough to repel them to clear a path to the reflective perception generator."
"And that's… a good thing?"
"Yes, because once I reach that, I can adjust the energy converter to exponentially increase the output; which should make it less of a repellant and more of a…well, a permanent solution."
"So we're just going to walk into that?" Calypso asked, watching the swarm below them.
"No," the Doctor turned to her, a sad smile on his face. "We're not going to do anything. You and the Colonel both are heading back to the TARDIS. If I manage to botch this, there might still be time for you to rescue Jack and Raleigh with the ship."
"Might?" The Colonel asked sharply, but the Doctor could only shrug sympathetically. "Then I'm bloody well not going to wait around here." He said gruffly as he turned back to the path they had arrived on.
"Hold on, you'll need one of these." The Doctor stopped him, holding out a small key for the Colonel to take. "She'll know what to do."
The Colonel took the key and tucked it into his shirt. "Good luck," he said to the Doctor with a sharp nod. "If you see the boys before me, tell them to stay out of bloody trouble." The Doctor nodded and with that the Colonel took off, moving faster than Calypso would have thought for a man his age.
"You should probably catch up," the Doctor said as he turned back to the temple. "I get the feeling he'll probably leave you behind if it comes to that."
"No." Calypso said defiantly as she walked up to him. She met his gaze steadily as he looked down at her. "I'm not about to wait it out in the TARDIS while you try and get yourself killed."
"Callie-"
"Don't even try," she silenced him with a stern look. "It's not any more dangerous for you than it is for me. Neither of us is invincible. You say that the sonic will work as a repellant, so let's go."
"But I'm not-" she pressed her finger against his lips to quell his argument.
"We can waste time arguing or you can just agree and we can try and save Jack and Raleigh right now."
The Doctor looked as though he might argue further, but he finally rolled his eyes and let out a muffled "Alright"
She allowed herself a small smile for her victory, she knew those were difficult to come by with the Doctor. "Thank you," she removed her finger and placed a gentle kiss at the corner of his mouth. He held her there for a moment, lingering together in their closeness as he tried to smile. There was a sadness to him that she hadn't seen before. Destroying this lost creature was going to cost him more than she had expected.
"Alright," he said as he let her go. "I'm going to need you to test this though, it's important that it works for both of us, incase…something happens." She nodded, trying to ignore the clawing fear that something could happen as he fiddled with the sonic a moment and then handed it to her. "Press the button to make sure."
She did so and felt the pitch hum through her in a familiar way. "What was that?" She asked, it hadn't been the same sound from earlier, but she couldn't place what exactly it was. He took the sonic back from her and forced a smile.
"It's the frequency of the TARDIS drive." The Doctor said in a tight voice. "Which appears to have the same effect on your physiology as the real thing. I imagine it's because they both carry the same Huon particles."
"What do you-" her voice caught in her throat as she felt it, the same tingling sensation running through her body, hinting that she was about to leap forward to another unknown location and time. "Why?" She looked up and saw the Doctor had an equally miserable look on his face.
"I'm sorry Callie," he shook his head as he gently squeezed her hand. "You can't ask me to risk that. Not with you," he reached up to hold her face, but she was already fading and all she felt was the whisper of warmth from his hand before she felt herself being pulled away. "Safe travels."
