Okay, it's short but sweet, and has a quality cliffhanger, so please forgive. Besides brevity is the soul of wit. :-)
CHAPTER VIII
The Doctor came out through the back door, and went around a corner to find Martha staring sadly at a pile of broken, splintered stone. As he got closer, he could see the shape of a frightened little angel face, split in half, lying amid a thousand other pieces.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Martha," he said, pulling her in close.
"Is it dead?" she asked, hiding her eyes from it against the Doctor's lapels.
"I should think so," he said. "Its molecular integrity will have been totally compromised."
"Couldn't we fix it?"
"Fix the covalent bonds between the atoms?" he asked. "I'd need a hundred years and a sonic screwdriver about five times more powerful and ten times more precise."
Martha made a noise against his chest in protest, but she didn't say anymore.
He looked up. He was not surprised at what he saw, but his hearts began to pound anyway. "Martha, I think we need to move out of the way," he said, stepping carefully, guiding her back toward the door he'd just come through.
"Why?"
"Look up."
And then she saw what he'd seen. Another little angel was poised in the seventeeth story window, ready to fly.
She opened her mouth and squeaked, but nothing articulate came out.
They looked at each other meaningfully, and then realised at exactly the same time that they had taken their eyes away from it. In a few seconds, another explosion of stone sounded at their feet, forcing them to jump back, to avoid being hit.
"Oh my God!" Martha shrieked, looking away again. It was, to her, almost as bad as seeing soft guts and gore all over the pavement. These things were alive – and now they were splattering themselves from seventeen stories up. "Doctor, what are they doing?"
"Blimey, they weren't trying to get us," the Doctor hissed. "All that time, they were trying to escape! We were just getting in their way!"
"Escape? From us?"
He nodded. "I was just about to tell you, in Nicolette's flat, well, I went in there because I saw five angels in there, gathered round the window, having smashed it. One of them must have been behind the door because it got me before could stop the others, or explain to Nicolette that I wasn't a sex offender."
Martha was breathing hard now. She moved away from the building and looked up. "Stop!" she cried out, seeing the next angel poised to jump. "This isn't the way!"
He joined her. "Let us help you!" he called. "Stay where you are, and let us help! No more death, no more time shifts! Just give us a chance to help!"
Martha stood frozen, looking up, trying not to blink. He put his hands on her shoulders tried to push her toward the door. "Doctor…" she whined.
"Look away, Martha," he whispered.
"I can't," she insisted.
"Just look away," he said. "If it doesn't jump, then we'll know it heard me."
"But what if it does?"
"Then we'll try again," he said. "But we can't just stand here forever. And we can't go back upstairs until we know for sure whether they're going to listen to us. They're desperate now – the risk is too great. Either they'll destroy themselves or they'll start getting violent against us."
"What? How?"
"They can start swallowing bigger chunks of time and sending us further away, and turn this whole thing into an even bigger problem for us than it already is."
Reluctantly, and with a deep breath, she took her eyes from the seventeenth story window and allowed the Doctor to lead her away from the area. They waited for another explosion of stone, but none came. They looked at each other for a few seconds. "That's a good sign," he said.
She nodded, tears in her eyes. "Doctor, we can't just lock them up in the basement. It's too cruel."
"I know, you're right," he said. "We need the TARDIS."
The time travellers hopped back on the Métro (not all travelling requires vortex manipulation), as the blue box was still parked just off Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle.
"But what are you going to do?" Martha wanted to know as they stepped through the turnstyle and immediately onto the train.
"Well, get them out of here, find them a home," he shrugged, looking over her head distractedly.
"Where?"
"I'm working on it," he said, mumbling. "Patience, Miss Jones."
They materialised in the basement of the building, and the Doctor looked very earnest as he asked Martha to bring the four original cherubs aboard. They put them inside the TARDIS facing one another, and then he went back to the console and began to fire it up.
"Er, do you have a plan that I don't know about?" she asked.
"I'm starting to have one."
She waited, but he didn't say anything. She could see the wheels turning, so, irritating as it was, she chose to continue to wait.
"Martha!" he exclaimed at last, almost startling her. "Let me borrow your mobile!"
She frowned and extracted it from her pocket, handing it to him.
As he dialled, he said to her, "Go ahead and start bringing the others in here. I'll catch up with you in a few minutes."
"Okay," she agreed, still frowning.
As she walked out of the TARDIS, she heard the Doctor say, "Jack! It's me! I need your help."
