Chapter 3
Looking For Answers
The young man could run fast and was even giving the Doctor a hard time in catching up. He almost lost him when he turned up a side street, but luckily he had continued down the main road on the other side of the alley, remaining out in the open to be seen. Ashley was struggling to keep up with the Doctor, let alone the young man. She ran along, panting heavily.
She wasn't built for this amount of running.
'Get those knees up!' the Doctor called back to her. 'We're losing him!'
Ashley scowled and tried running harder. The Doctor caught sight of the man slow to a trot, and then push his way into one of the houses. He followed quickly, pausing outside of the house to allow Ashley to catch up.
'I… hate… running…' she panted, hands on her knees.
'No time for that.' The Doctor told her. 'Come on.'
He pushed the stiff door open and went inside. Ashley stumbled after him, trying to slow her racing heart and blink away the black spots that were threatening her vision. To her bewilderment, the Doctor didn't even look out of breath.
'Hello?' the Doctor called out. The house was in similar condition to the records office. It certainly didn't look like anyone lived here. 'Is anyone here?'
There was a shuffle and a thud from somewhere above, and then footsteps. Ashley grimaced, pushing her hair from her face. 'If he runs again…'
'We followed you up the street,' the Doctor called. 'We just want to ask you a few things.'
More shuffling. Another bang. Then footsteps. A moment later the young man appeared at the top of the stairs in front of them, looking surprised. He walked halfway down, his blue eyes flicking between the two of them in bewilderment.
'Who are you?' he asked.
He looked no older than twenty-five, with light brown hair that was parted in the middle and messily covered one of his eyes. He was handsome, but looked run down.
The Doctor smiled. 'I'm the Doctor and this is Ashley.'
Ashley, taken aback by the young mans good looks, smiled goofily and waved. 'Hi.'
'Where is everyone?' the Doctor asked, getting straight to the point. 'This place looks like its been abandoned.'
The young man looked even more confused. 'How did you both get here? This colony hasn't been open for visitors for nearly ten years now.'
The Doctor shrugged. 'Ah, we were just passing through and noticed that there didn't seem to be anyone around. Which we thought was odd, the way it seemed like everyone just upped and left. And it was also strange that we checked the population records and there are over 300,000 people living here, right now.'
The young man blinked. 'It's down to that many, huh?'
'What do you mean, down?'
The young man glanced back up the stairs. 'Look, I'm kind of in the middle of a job and I'm already running late. Can you just hang on a minute?' Without waiting for a response, he turned and went back up the stairs.
'What do you think?' Ashley whispered.
'I'm thinking the answer to whatever is going on here is up those stairs.' The Doctor replied, and headed up.
Ashley went to follow, but caught sight of her reflection in a dusty mirror on the wall. She paused, straightened her hair with her fingers, and then continued after the Doctor. Upstairs, the floor was thick with dust and a few plants had managed to make their way onto the landing. The Doctor and Ashley followed the sound of the young man moving around in one of the rooms, and then came to a pause outside the door.
'All the wires are going in here.' Ashley pointed out.
The Doctor knelt down to inspect the bunch of black wires that ran through the wall. They were all bound together with string and the hole in the wall didn't exactly look like it had been made with care. Ashley put her hand on the door handle and looked to the Doctor. He nodded in response and she pulled it open.
At first the young man was invisible amongst the wires and electronic equipment, but at the sound of the door opening his head popped up on the other side of the room and he frowned. 'When I said hang on a minute, I meant wait downstairs.'
The Doctor ignored the young man's irritation and moved inside the room, curiously looking around. 'Did you set up all of this?'
'Me?' The young man laughed. 'No. No, I'm nowhere near that handy.'
'This is all very crudely done,' the Doctor continued, examining a batch of wires that hung down from the ceiling. 'The wires look like they're from a range of things. All soldered together.'
Ashley headed across the room, pushing wires aside and stepping over others, towards the young man. He was now standing with his back to them, fiddling with something out of sight.
'You're acting like you really don't know what's going on here.' He said. 'Where did you say you were from?'
'We didn't.' the Doctor replied.
The young man half frowned. 'Oh. Right.'
'So who built all of this then?' the Doctor enquired, frowning at a stretch of cable.
'Harrison Cartwright.' The young man replied. 'Took him one hell of a long time too. If what he had created wasn't so awful, I would call him a genius.'
'Awful?' This caught the Doctor's attention.
Ashley reached the young man's side and looked to see what he was doing. When she registered what she was looking at, she gasped and put her hand to her mouth. 'Oh my God… Doctor.'
The Doctor made his way over through the jungle of wires. His eyes widened. The woman who lay on the bed was barely recognisable with the amount of wires that were attached to her, the majority of them attached to her shaved head. Her eyes were covered with thick, blacked out goggles. She was surrounded by various machines, one of them showing her life signs and giving off a low, monotonous beep. The young man was in the middle of putting up a drip beside the bed, the other end of it attached to the back of the woman's hand.
'What is this?' the Doctor frowned.
The young man sighed. 'This is improved life.' He replied. 'Virtually improved.'