First, I must say how sorry I am that this has taken so long. I have been sick, I have had heaps of homework, and my beta has been really busy. But I must say sorry to all of you who have been waiting for this chapter. And thanks for the reviews! They really helped!
So, read, enjoy, and please review!
Chapter 4 ~ of vinegar and blood
The TARDIS materialised with its customary whistling and grating noise in an alleyway, between two crumbling buildings. The door opened and banged against the inside of the machine as the Doctor burst out of the police box, his eyes fixed on the device in his hand. He was closely followed by Cora and a far less energetic Donna, who turned quickly to lock the door behind her. The Doctor spun several times on the spot, looking up at the building they had landed next to. It was an old one, clearly unused for several years, and by the look of it had once been a storage warehouse, if you judged by the worn sign hanging from the roof. The Doctor glanced down at the device again and nodded, 'this is the place'.
Donna looked around at the crumbling bricks and scatted rubbish and said with some distaste, 'are you sure? This doesn't really look like a place for experiments'.
The Doctor smiled tightly, 'never judge a book by its cover, Donna'. He stopped moving suddenly and sniffed, his nostrils flaring to twice their size, making him look very comical. He sniffed several more times then turned back to Donna, 'do you smell that?'
Donna sniffed then shook her head as her nose was filled with the rank smell of rotten garbage. She coughed and spluttered and flapped her hands before she managed to choke out, 'well—' she coughed 'I don't know what's so interesting about the stink of rubbish, but yes I can smell that'.
'No not that' the Doctor sniffed again then moved quickly towards the corner of the building, some several metres away, his nose lifted to the sky. He looked back over his shoulder at Donna, his mouth open to say something and then frowned, 'where's Cora?'
Donna spun around and then turned back to the Doctor, her forehead suddenly creased with concern, 'I've no idea, she was here a moment ago'.
The pair moved quickly down the alley and turned the corner. They were in a large courtyard encircled by high crumbling walls and rusty barbed wire, with cracked concrete floors. There was a walkway leading off it to the left, which had once been cut off by a gate that now hung loosely on its hinges against the brick wall. There was a heavy vale of mist in the air that settled on their hair and clothes. As they moved forward quietly, sticking to the edge of the wall. They paused at another alley and peered down it, only to find that it was so full of fog they couldn't see the end of it. They turned to keep moving along the wall when Cora suddenly burst out of the mist and skidded to a stop in front of them. Donna opened her mouth to say something when Cora grabbed her by the arm and the Doctor by his tie and yanked them into the alley, slamming the three of them against the wall, using her arms to keep them pressed against the wall. Before Donna could do more than glare at Cora, her nose was abruptly assaulted by the sour smell of vinegar. Out of the corner of her right eye she saw Cora bite her lip and the Doctor stiffen sharply. Then she heard a strange noise, like someone breathing heavily, accompanied by a strange shuffling sound. She pushed herself against the wall instinctively and held her breath. The heavy breathing grew closer and closer until the creature making it was right on top of them. And as it passed the alley, going back the way they had come, Donna saw what it was. It was a hunched creature with a head that resembled something like a gigantic fly. A strange leathery hide covered it like a cloak and a liquid substance oozed from a long dropping snout. Donna watched in disgust as the liquid hit the concrete, and as the creature moved on she saw that the liquid had started to rot the concrete away.
They waited for it to move away before Cora dropped her arms and they stepped away from the wall. Donna turned to the two time travellers and whispered, 'what the bleeding hell was that?'
The Doctor waved his hand, 'it doesn't matter much, all you need to know is that if it raises its snout up then its going to spit at you. Its spit is acid, so don't stand still'.
Donna folded her arms, 'was that the smell you were talking about before?' at the Doctor's nod she continued, 'so what's it doing here?'
It was Cora who answered, her gaze distant as if she was recalling a long forgotten memory, 'you once told me that they were often hired as mercenaries'.
The Doctor nodded, 'unfortunately they usually travel in pairs, or with other mercenaries, so there is a good chance that there will be more than one of them lurking around here, or some other sort of alien species'.
Donna threw up her hands and turned her back in exasperation, 'of course!'
The Doctor smiled slightly and then turned to Cora, 'where did you go?'
The mist had collected on Cora's face. she wiped it off with the back of her hand, 'I thought I could smell something, and as you two seemed busy I thought I would go check it out. I nearly ran into it, and when I realised what it was I came back'.
'Just in time too' said Donna dryly, flicking her damp hair over her shoulder. The three of them were covered in small points of moisture and it was starting to seep through their clothes.
Cora smiled slightly then said, 'come on, I think I saw a possible entrance to the building just before it came along'.
They stepped cautiously out of the alley and made their way slowly along the wall of the warehouse, keeping their eyes open this time, and peering into the opaque fog. Cora whispered, 'its in an alley over here somewhere, its not much of an entrance, I only saw it because that thing climbed out of it'.
She led them along the wall until they reached another alley, which she turned into. After a moment longer she stopped and pointed. The 'entrance' as she called it, was no more than a semi-circle grate set into the bottom of the wall. The Doctor crouched down in front of it and peered through the close fitting bars. He couldn't see much, only that he seemed to be looking into a dim lit cellar. He turned his head to the two waiting women and shrugged, 'its worth a shot, but I want you two to stay out here okay?'
'Not a chance spaceman, we're coming with you' snapped Donna, her temper made worse by the cold wet fog.
The Doctor looked from one determined face to the other and sighed heavily, 'just let me go first okay? Just to check that its clear'.
The two women shared a glance then nodded. They then crouched down in front of the grating and helped the Doctor to pry it away from the wall. It had been moved recently so they had no difficulty pulling it out. The Doctor peered down into the room with a slight frown before he turned around and dropped down into the dark. Cora and Donna glanced at each other as they heard the Doctor land with loud scuffling sound.
The Doctor looked around with some trepidation, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He found himself in a very long, dimly lit cellar, more of a tunnel in fact. There was an odd smell, aside from the left over smell of vinegar and the rank smell of damp, something unpleasant that seemed to settle thickly on his tongue. The thought of Martha chained somewhere in a corner of this damp smelly place, most likely badly injured, and being somehow experimented on made him feel sick.
He looked back up through the grating and called softly, 'seems clear'.
Donna came first, turning on her front and shuffling backwards on her stomach until she dropped down to join the Doctor in the cellar. Cora followed, dragging the grate in front of the hole as she went. She hung awkwardly for a moment as she wiggled the grate roughly into place before she let go and landed lightly beside Donna.
They moved deeper down the cellar tunnel in a silent agreement, every sense they had alert for the slightest sound. Their footsteps seemed to echo far too loudly in the dark. They had been walking for only a few minutes before they suddenly reached a branch in the corridor. They looked down both but neither gave any indication as to where they led. The three glanced at each other. 'Time to split up?' asked Donna with some trepidation. She hated splitting up, something bad always happened.
The Doctor nodded, 'I'll go this way, can you two stick together?'
Cora and Donna nodded. They parted with great reluctance, each of them having a different previous experience in mind, and it wasn't long before the Doctor could hear no longer hear their muffled footsteps, and was left alone in the silence with nothing but his thoughts.
That was until he heard the screaming. It came from further down the corridor, from around a bend that spilled bright fluorescent light, and made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. As he moved closer to the sound he realised that it was actually more than one person screaming, by the sounds of it, and he could now tell that some were women and some were men.
Readying himself for the worst, the Doctor moved slowly towards the curve in the tunnel, keeping his eyes on the fluorescent light leaking into the otherwise dim corridor. The screaming and shouting was ringing in his ears as he took a deep breath and rounded the corner. But he hadn't prepared himself enough. He was in a long corridor lined with cells made of bars that extended from the wall to the ceiling, and almost every single one held a human being. Or, in some cases, what had once been a human being. Men with twisted faces and women with disfigured bodies screeched and jumped around in their cells. He stared down the corridor, feeling the bile rise in his throat along with his disgust and horror. The place was rank with the smell of fear and blood.
It was a while before he could force himself to keep moving, the screams and shouts having riveted him in place. But he did manage to move in the end, creeping slowly along the corridor, trying not to let his gaze linger too much on the disfigured men and women cowering in the corners of the cells, or the ones jumping around shrieking their heads off with wild deranged looks on their faces.
As he walked he suddenly realised how angry he was. The thought that some one could take these innocent men and women and experiment on them, change them and drive them mad, and then just leave them to rot in these cells made him feel a mixture of disgust and rage. And then there were his thoughts about Martha; was she down here somewhere? Had she been experimented on so much that she had been driven mad?
The corridor felt almost endless and his neck was soon sore from constantly turning his head from left to right as his eyes searched desperately for her familiar figure. He eventually came to a section of the corridor with cells that were not inhabited by screaming people. Moving closer to the bars, the Doctor could see that the empty cells had clear signs of habitation, but that some of them hadn't been touched for a while. He hated to think what that meant.
He was walking past a cell half obscured by semi darkness when he stopped and quickly back peddled. What had attracted his attention was a very small movement coming from the back of the cell, close to where two walls met. It was a small cell, and the back wall was only about a metre or so away from the cell bars. He moved forward so that his forehead was pressed against the cold cool bars and peered with keen eyes at the figure crouching in the corner of the cell. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light he saw that the figure was crouching with its knees pulled up to its chest, hunched over so that they were protecting their stomach and their face was hidden in their knees and that they were rocking backwards and forwards slightly. But he knew, he just knew that he had finally found her.
He almost wasn't aware of pulling the sonic out of his pocket, of opening the door; he just kept his eyes fixed on her, feeling that if he looked away she would vanish. She didn't look up as he entered the cell, but her shoulders started to shake and he was hit by such a strong wave of fear that he stopped, his feet routed to the ground.
He could see her more clearly now, and there was no doubt that it was her but he still couldn't force his body to move, feeling assaulted by the emotions she was giving off, emotions that were causing his own fear and worry to rise to the surface, the images of what could have been done to her, his nightmares. Finally the Doctor managed to choke out, 'Martha?' it was a question none the less, a desperate plea for her to not be his imagination.
It seemed like an age before she lifted her head. When she did, he saw that her beautiful face, so familiar to him, was streaked with dirt and blood and creased with lines of pain and fear. He nearly burst into tears then, his relief on finding her was so great. Martha stared at him for a moment, her eyes unfocused and confused, before they suddenly widened and she jerked away from him, scrambling back across the floor until her back hit the wall, her hands raised in front of her to protect her self, her large eyes full of fear and anger.
Her expression startled him into action, his legs taking him across the dirty floor as he stretched his hands out towards her, 'Martha? Martha what's wrong?' All he wanted to do was to take her in his arms and reassure himself that she was real, but the look of horror and fear that crossed her face again was enough to stop him in his tracks once more.
The woman who he had spent so long travelling with, the woman that he loved, gazed at him for a moment before hissing four words that turned his blood cold, 'get away from me'.
The Doctor sat down on the damp floor, realising that his knees had started shaking so badly that he would have soon collapsed anyway. He stared into her dark eyes, gazing into their depths, searching for any sign that she hadn't just uttered those words. But he found nothing, and as his hearts cracked in several places he realised with horror that his worst fears had been confirmed.
She didn't know him.
Ok, so I realise how cruel it is to leave you on this note in the story, so don't worry I will try and finish the next chapter as quickly as possible!
Please review!