REVELATIONS
ELEVEN
The Doctor had been in some awful situations, but he couldn't recollect any that were as bad as the present.
First of all, they'd taken his clothes. All of them.
Second, they'd taken his sonic screwdriver and his glasses.
Third, they'd stunned him with some sort of device that had knocked him totally, terrifyingly, helplessly unconscious.
Fourth, they'd drugged him. He wasn't sure what they drugged him with or why, but under the circumstances it hadn't really been necessary because their stun weapon had clearly been extremely effective.
Fifth, they had stuck him in a tiny, over lit, completely empty cell that was freezing cold.
Sixth, and although this was not exclusively bad, they had given him a blanket that smelled terrible. The stench of it nearly made him sick and if he hadn't been so freezing cold he would've thrown it across the room – across all eight feet of it.
Seventh, he had no idea where he was or why he was there.
Having thus made an inventory of bad things, he was relieved to begin his inventory of the good.
Well, first, Rose was probably safe. He was pretty sure she was.
Second, he had left her a directive. Not normally paranoid, he was glad he'd listened to one of the lesser of his emotions and indulged it by providing instructions.
Third, he didn't seem to be badly injured, although he wasn't sure he'd tolerate being stunned again, and he didn't at all like being drugged. The substance seemed to increase his sensitivity to light and sound, and perhaps smell as well; plus his capacity to think lucidly was negatively impacted. He felt like his head was stuffed with rancid cotton.
'Seven to three,' he thought. 'Not so great.' He'd need to work on the 'good' category and try to control any further increase of the 'bad'.
His plan flew out the door as it opened with a loud clang and there appeared a being of a type he'd not encountered previously.
He was very accustomed to seeing aliens and felt quite immune to the effect of whatever might present itself to him. However, this alien was better than none and worse than most.
The Doctor swallowed back some bile. He'd never been particularly fond of insects, and what now intruded into his tiny, too-bright world looked unfortunately rather like a six foot tall praying mantis.
It had antennae, large compound eyes, several sets of mouthparts, long sticky-looking wings, and three pairs of 'appendages'. Four of the appendages were used as legs and the upper set seemed to be arms.
Worse, it smelled like the blanket, only multiplied by a zillion times. The Doctor suddenly felt nauseous and the room began to spin as he tried unsuccessfully to stifle his dry heaves.
But the stench was not the very worst thing. The creature had begun to make a loud, half-grating, half-buzzing noise by undulating its abdomen. Intellectually The Doctor knew it was called stridulation and was a form of communication, but with his increased sensitivity to sound he thought it would drive him insane.
As the sound and the stench continued, he fought to retain his reason but failed.
"What?!" he screamed. He scrabbled across the floor and pressed himself as tightly as he could into a far corner, pulling the putrid blanket around his body. "What is going on?! What am I doing here?! What do you want?!"
The thing paused for a moment, extracted a long thin needle from a pouch, and resumed its approach.
"No!" shrieked The Doctor as it drew near with the needle. "Rose!" he cried.
And then everything went black.