Blood spurted across the room.
Suffolk clawed with weakening hands at the Doctor's suit, desperate and hopeless. The needles which had severed the jugular and the voice box and had entered through the muscle at the back of the neck with incredible force, the points of the knitting implements puncturing the skin at the front making a V shape on exit.
Help me.
Suffolk's mouth moved but the only sound was a dying gurgle as he fell to the floor in a pool of his own blackened blood which was spreading thickly across the floor like treacle. Electricity pounded through the room, the walls now a consistent neon blue, the broken door spitting bolts of energy from hinge to frame. The blood was drawn to it, spreading across the floor, a river breaking its banks and flooding the flat lands around it.
Margaret was standing very still, her empty hand still raised in striking position, an unnerving calmness in her face. Without moving she watched the Doctor drag himself upright, examining the blood that had spattered his trousers. He staggered across the room avoiding the blood as best he could, dragging Margaret with him. The void was beginning to close, the edges turning in on itself, collapsing the gap between worlds.
"I've got to turn the power off!" he yelled at Margaret who had not spoken a word, "I need to cut the power to this building before that black liquid makes contact with one of you. It's developing. Merging with Suffolk made it more human. Before it could only absorb his DNA, now it knows how humans are made up it could take any one of you."
She was staring at the Doctor, a rabbit in the headlights, hands twitching nervously.
"Maggie, come on! If that blood touches the electricity it will produce enough power to destroy half of London. I've got to get the power off and contain it," the Doctor was looking for a way out, watching the hole in the wall shrink an inch at a time, "And I've got to get it back through that vortex before it closes."
"We all see things, Doctor," Margaret said suddenly, "Gareth's were the strongest but I had them too."
The Doctor caught her wrist in his hand, a fierce grip that turned his finger tips white, "No."
She smiled at him, "Oh Doctor, you aren't the only one who is cursed," she gestured to the hospital walls which were still electrified "You cannot save the world all the time, let me do it, just this once."
His grip on her wrist did not loosen but her hand was on his gently prizing away his fingers.
"Think of it as a gift," she said, her fingers now holding his hand softly, , "Besides, this void is not the one you are looking for and if you take this path you will miss the one you should be on."
He stared at her, feeling her fingers gently squeeze his hand then release him, "You know...?"
She stepped backwards, moving towards Suffolk's body and the closing void, "Goodbye Doctor."
Margaret's heal touched the sticky blood and, sensing her warmth, the creature began to climb up her leg. Dark and warm it moved quickly, covering her body. Stooping she cupped her hands and gathered a pool of the contaminated fluid. It seeped between her fingers running slowing down her clothes as she raised her hands hesitantly to her lips and with closed eyes drank the creature into her.
The transformation was swift and brutal. Margaret choked, clawing at her throat with blood stained hands and staggering back to hole in the wall which was closing faster. As the blackness took over her face she looked with inhuman eyes at the Doctor and threw herself into the void just as the blood touched the electrified wall.
The explosion rattled the foundations of the building. Dust and plaster fell from the ceiling and the electricity in the walls poured into the mouth of the void behind Margaret as she fell back through the vortex that was collapsing in on itself.
In the silence and the emptiness that followed the Doctor stared blindly at the brick wall. The electricity had gone. The world was silent, dark and still. All around him was the smell of human blood and burnt flesh. Suffolk clung to the threads of life on the floor, able only to blink. His red eyes sought the Doctor's, a single tear trickling down his bloodied face.
The Doctor knelt on the floor beside him and placed a hand gently on the man's head, "I'm sorry."
Suffolk's eyes closed heavily, he forced them open for the last time.
"You had so much potential. The first of a new breed of humans. You were the seed that could have grown into something greater, something so much greater. But it's all over now. All of it. For you anyway. No more drugs, no more nightmares... No more monsters," the Doctor smoothed Suffolk's matted hair, "I am so sorry."
But there was no one left to listen and Suffolk's remorseless dead eyes stared up into the darkness.
The End.