I still don't own Doctor Who. I won't even pretend so. And lots of thanks to those of you reading & reviewing~
"So, Mr. Lux," River said, straightening her stack of papers and sitting down across from the older, balding man in the dim conference room. "How are we today?" She set down her diary next to the papers. Her gaze lingered on it a little too long and she consciously tugged at her bottom lip.
Mr. Lux cleared his throat uncomfortably and laced his fingers on the table in front of him. The glasses in the center rattled softly. River's eyes caught every single movement. She'd taken him by surprise, and it didn't need someone skilled in analysis to see that. It'd been a week now, a whole one since the Doctor had dropped her here, and two days since she'd given up and called Mr. Lux to get some business done. She felt herself getting more nervous with each hour; she forced herself to stop tapping on the table and hold her composure. She was going to fidget herself to death.
"To be honest, Dr. Song, I wasn't expecting you to get back to me so quickly. Your friend…. He sounded hard to track down."
River pressed her lips into a pleasant smile, though it was far from her eyes. "Yes, well, I had a bit of trouble. I didn't exactly find the Doctor." She paused, thinking about that man. If he had gone and blown himself up on Krakatoa, she would have his head. Hopefully he had enough sense not to go during an erruption. "But that's no matter. We can manage without him, Mr. Lux, and besides, maybe if I send him a message, he'll meet us there." She flashed him another reassuring smile, though it was completely false.
The polished table seemed to stretch on between them. In the dark room, claustrophobia suddenly knelt in on River and she stood up, opening the blinds and flooding the room with sunlight. Mr. Lux cleared his throat again, now shilouetted by the suns, shifting in his chair and changed the order of his fingers clasped together. River turned away from the window. On the table, the glasses shook slightly. She raised an eyebrow at Lux's back. He was more than surprised, he was nervous. Afraid of her. She took her seat again in the small conference room and watched the light bounce up off the shiny table, waiting for Lux to speak.
"About the Doctor…" River met his gaze squarely. "And it's not that I don't trust you, Dr. Song, but my specialists did some research, and they were concerned about your, erm… you background, shall we say."
Oh, so there it was. Her 'background'. River softened her face and leaned forward with her palms up on the table. "Mr. Lux, trust me. I did receive a pardon, you know. And the circumstances surrounding the Doctor were… not exactly as you imagine them."
Lux nodded rapidly, "I know, I know. But it's my specialists who are worried. You remember of course, Miss Evangelista and the pilot, Dave Carver. They have no issues about working with you. I'm only trying to assuage the fears of the people on the expedition. The fact remains, non-negotiable, that you were indeed in prison, and not just any prison. For a murder, no less. Their words, not mine, but they believe you're dangerous."
River laughed shortly. She rested her chin in her palm, unable to avoid tracing her lips with a finger. The Doctor had kissed her. She kept telling herself that it didn't mean anything—he'd been trying to get rid of her. But that was extremely difficult task.
"If they have problems working with me, I know some people brilliant in their fields at the University. Anita Montoya and Dave Wilson. Probably better at what they do than your 'specialists'." Shock crossed Lux's face. He swallowed, evidently about to defend the specialists he'd spent unnecessary amounts of money on while she suggested that two university students could do a better job. The glasses on the table shook and River glared down them. They were starting to rumble, or rather the whole room was. The windows started to vibrate. River raised her head, eyes narrowing.
Lux stood up and slammed his fist against the table. "Are you suggesting that I drop the specialists that have been training for this expedition for months…"
The table shuddered and the room quaked seismically, rocking. The glasses clinked like bullet fire. The diary flipped open and River's eyes narrowed at the note scribbled in the pages, reading the unfamiliar scrawl. "Respectfully, Mr. Lux, I'm going to ask you to shut up now!"
The door slammed open. Both River and Lux shot around. Anita stood there, thoroughly looking shocked. "Dr. Song, we're getting some really strange temporal readings downstairs. 1883. What's going on?"
"And you expect me to trust you, when you won't even sign my intellectual property agreements?" Mr. Lux's face reddened. River stared down at the diary, not believing it.
"Will you just shut up?" River smacked her hands on the table. The note made no sense. The glasses were clattering together, the building swaying, the room bucking.
"What the hell is going on here?"
"Dave sent me up; we're all in the eights and nines down there. Dr. Song, what's going on?" Anita and Lux were clamoring over each other, voices raising, shouting, and River was yelling for them both to be quiet. The windows wavered, oscillated, straining in their frames. The Doctor had written her a message. And now he was getting himself killed.
"What happens in 1883?" Anita called over the rumble. "Dr. Song, what's changing time?"
"You want me to have grad students doing my work? My life's work? It's taken three generations, one hundred years, I'll have you know, and—" Lux fumed. The glasses on the table shattered with a burst of glass spraying everywhere. River dove forward to push Lux down.
"Away from the windows!"
Anita's eyes widened and she hit the ground just as the windows burst under the pressure. River covered her neck. Lux fell against the floor in a shower of glass. Pinpricks of pain echoed through River's skin with the thousand tiny cuts raining down on them. She pressed her eyes shut.
"What's going on here?" Lux bellowed.
"You really need to see this," Anita replied, pulling herself off the floor. River forced herself to her feet, shut the diary with trembling hands, and nodded to Anita.
"Okay, let's go." She looked with raised eyebrows on the mess in the conference room and muttered, "I swear I'll kill that man." Lux sat up with a groan, brushing glass shards off his clothing. He looked at River furiously.
"You leave this room now, Dr. Song, and our deal will be off. The most monumental expedition in history and you'll miss it. Don't you leave. Why would you sabotage the best opportunity you ever had?"
River shook her head, following Anita out the door. "Because, Mr. Lux," she replied. "Frankly, I don't like you."
She stormed out and down the halls, sweeping down the grand university staircases. Anita struggled to keep up with River's long strides down to the laboratory. The two women turned a corner and Anita asked again what was happening. "I don't understand, Dr. Song. What's changing? What's so important about 1883?"
River shook her head and didn't meet Anita's eyes. "If I'm right, and I know I'm right, it's the year Krakatoa exploded. What was the month?"
Anita shrugged. "August, I think."
"He did it right down to the day, no doubt. Oh, I'm going to kill that man if he isn't already! Stone dead!" River marched into the lab and Dave spun around, gesturing at the screen.
"Have you seen these?" he cried incredulously. "Eights and nines. We're headed for total temporal meltdown!" The alarms on the computers were blaring sharply. "If I didn't know better, I'd say… paradox." And what says it isn't? River thought in reply. "Shockwaves all the way into the present, probably beyond. It's huge."
"Who do you keep talking about?" Anita asked. She flipped some switches on her computer.
"A very good man is doing something very, very stupid." River peered at the graphs, clutching the side of a desk. The rumbling had quieted slightly, but the building was still rocking, like a ship on the ocean. Anita pulled up a different set of graphs and pointed to them in confusion.
"And there's nothing at all for 1912. I mean, what's that? What do we do?"
River barked a bitter laugh. Things were going from bad to worse. The note was running through her head. Her students stared at her, waiting on answers. River rubbed her eyes. "Um… put out a notice to all time travelers that 1883 and anywhere around then is off limits, no excuses. No one is to enter into that time zone, and put it under archeological preservation. If nothing else it'll hold the conditions already there stable enough to keep things from getting worse. Other than that… nothing we can do." River wrapped her fingers around the diary and unhooked her blaster from her belt. "Call me if the readings hit ten. Whenever, day or night, understand? Keep an eye on it. We can't let that happen."
"Where are you going?" Dave asked.
"Oh, I've got a date I can't miss," River muttered, hooking a finger through her blaster and in between the pages where the note was in her diary. She rolled her eyes at Anita. "It's always a man, isn't it?"
Anita blinked, and for a spilt second flickered over at Dave. River smiled. She'd had her suspicions. She headed for the door, trying to keep her balance with the building shaking in violent waves. "Anyway," she said, "I have to go save the world."
