A/N: While writing this chapter, I had what I refer to as an "Oh dear. Chronology." moment, where I picked out a particular day and then checked it against a day offered at random in an earlier chapter, and realised that at some critical stage the characters had wandered into some sort of time muck-up that would have had the Doctor scratching his head for weeks.
So now Chapter Five, Chapter Six and the earlier portions of Chapter Seven have been slightly amended to take place on a Friday, rather than a Sunday as was originally written. I hope this might clear up any confusion (or at least avoid creating new confusion.) We now return you to your regularly scheduled fic.
With Sunday came, of all things, sunshine. The past morass of iron-grey clouds had been shouldered aside during the night, and now Washington DC shone as if burnished. The light glanced off metal and warmed concrete and poked its way past windows. The last day of March was making up for lost time.
One window in particular posed a problem for the sun, as the blinds running down it had been closed. Only the thinnest strips of light filtered past to illuminate the small room and the table and few shelves therein, as well as the sleeping form of Coraline at the table. Her head lay on her arms, which were folded on top of a spread stack of paper.
There wasn't a sound, apart from the gentle ticking of a clock and the faint sound of Coraline's snores.
Then there was a sudden creak and bang as the door was flung open, spilling in light from the corridor, silhouetting the shape of Sayid. He stood with one arm behind his back, a whistle on his lips, and he stepped briskly inside, kicking a wedge against the door as he went. Coraline stirred and made a sound somewhere between a befuddled groan and a threatening growl.
"Shame to leave this room dark," commented Sayid brightly, stepping around the table and reaching to pull the blinds open, loosing a tidal wave of too-bright light into the room. Coraline's growl intensified, and her hands strained against the table to push herself up. "There. Much better, don't you agree?"
Coraline sat upright, and clawed blearily at her eyes while blinking around her. She looked from the clock on one wall to Sayid to the clock again, her gaze skipping painfully past any especially bright parts.
"Didn't that clock used to say four o'clock?" she said at length.
"Now it says eight o'clock," said Sayid, one hand still behind his back. "You see, time is a linear concept that we use to define the progression of …"
"Sayid," said Coraline, deciding on the most diplomatic terms she felt capable of mustering, "There is nothing in the world I hate more than you at the moment. Go and die in a hole."
"Is that any sort of way to greet your dutiful intern?" asked Sayid, crooking one eyebrow. "Your dutiful intern, who did nothing but ensure you wouldn't miss any part of your exciting day of work?"
"Die in a feculent hole."
"Doesn't all this sunshine make you feel alive? Doesn't it just make you want to spread your arms wide and dance out into the streets, singing of life and happiness, filling you with cheer and energy and a zest for the new day…"
"You are being deliberately aggravating."
"Am I? Hardly. I'm only spreading cheer and joy to wherever it'll be accepted. Maybe you'd like…"
"I have a gun under my desk."
Sayid quickly drew his hand from behind his back and proffered a cup of coffee as a peace offering. Coraline stared owlishly at it, and then wordlessly took it.
"This," she started, taking a quick drag on the steaming dark liquid, "This, and this alone, gets you a stay of execution."
"I just went out and got a batch. Ms Ortega phoned to say she'd be in soon. Mr Lovat's … been preoccupied."
"Preoccupied how?" Coraline took another sip, the initial scalding insulating her from this one. "Since when?"
"Since last night. He's been working the night away in his lab."
"That's … damn," said Coraline. "He's been that committed? I should check in on him."
"When you see him, tell him it's a trifle rude to just snatch coffee out of someone's hands," said Sayid, backing out the door. "I'm just going to get some dissertation work done. If there's nothing else…?"
"Nothing else. Dissert away." Sayid left, and Coraline finished the coffee in silence, looking over the papers she'd compiled all last night.
First, she'd clean up. Then she'd go and file the papers with whichever nameless functionary needed them for the entire system of government to not collapse. And then she'd check on Wybie. From all sounds of it, progress was being made.
Some short time later, Maria was walking briskly through the streets back to the complex. The sun beat down across her shoulders, unhindered by the city's modest skyline, and lightened the load of her bag at her side as she walked, humming idly.
She'd just been at church, and had made confession for good measure. (The priest had often advised her to seek psychological counselling, but had never pressed the matter.) The nature of her job meant that she often made up for lost time on the days when she was busy, and she felt it never hurt to keep herself on reasonable terms with God when her job was as potentially lethal as it was.
Besides, the Monday tomorrow would be Easter Monday. It was an auspicious date.
She hoped this weather would persist for it.
As she walked past another long corridor of parked cars and large houses, and turned a corner onto a street lined with rustling trees, she noticed, whether openly or only in the corner of her mind, three things.
First, that a small grey-white tuft of cloud had clung on for dear life in the middle of the skyline, and only slightly besmirched the view. It was small, but it annoyed her.
Secondly, that Coraline was at the far end of the street, and heading in a different direction. Maria considered calling out, but didn't. She wasn't a natural shouter, and Coraline was too far away. Besides, they'd meet in the complex soon enough anyway.
Thirdly, and this wasn't carried to the front of Maria's mind, that a helmeted driver atop an electric motorcycle was beside her in the road in her peripheral vision, a motorcycle that she had seen several other times over the past few days.
The driver kept along at a gentle pace, their motorcycle's electric engine reduced to a near-silent purr.
At one corner of the complex in Nebraska Avenue, James Malinois stepped out onto the street at the same moment that Coraline crossed his path. The man was accompanied by a somber-looking agent, a bulge evident under his coat. Malinois looked up in surprised recognition.
"Ms Jones? Good to meet you again."
"…Malinois, was it? Nice to see you as well." Coraline waved the much-diminished stack of paper. "I didn't get a chance to talk to you yesterday. What have you heard about a move to shut down my department?"
"Shut down your department?" Malinois frowned. "I haven't heard … anything about that. What's happened? Is it Skirving who's started it?"
"I assumed you'd know," said Coraline, fixing him with a look. "You came over to my department a couple of days ago at his behest, didn't you?"
"No. I came at my own behest," said Malinois, who looked hurt. "I spoke to the scientist attached to your department, and I never knew about anything else happening to you beyond that. Why would I work with Skirving?"
"Currying favour?" said Coraline, only partially convinced. There was nothing like paperwork to sour her mood.
"Skirving's not the person to give favour," said Malinois. "He doesn't like waste. He doesn't like small departments doing jobs that could easily fall under the purview of larger departments. If he had his way, Homeland Security would be folded back into Defence and the CIA. I'm at as much risk from him as you."
"If you say so."
"He's kept me in the dark about your department as well," protested Malinois. He checked his watch. "Look, I've got to go. I'm due to arrive at the official compound in Maryland soon. There's reports about Iranian saboteurs I've got to handle, and more talk about incitement against our embassies, and a hundred other things."
"So I take it you're not attending the Easter Egg Roll tomorrow?" Coraline asked with a wry smile. Malinois responded with a wryer one.
"I'll leave that to others. But look, for what my advice is worth, stay here so you can stay on top of things. Keep close to Skirving so he doesn't have room to breathe."
"That was already my plan," responded Coraline. Malinois shrugged, almost apologetically, before moving past her to a security car. He opened the back door, beating the agent to the punch, and stopped only to wave at Coraline before closing the door. The car started moving away with a gentle throttle from the engine, and picked up speed as it went.
Coraline watched him go, and then dismissed him from mind and continued along the street. She wanted to get back to the Thaddeus Complex, and to check on Wybie before something inevitably went on fire.
"That joke's been done," said Wybie as she entered and opined as such.
"Not enough, judging by the scorch marks on the walls," she said to his back, his entire form crouched over something on the floor. He wore a blast helmet and thick gloves, and a sharp hissing and fierce light came from a blowtorch before him.
"Those are old scorch marks. And it was only two times. I don't see why that should make it a running gag." His voice was slightly hesitant and slurred, as if fatigue was only now starting to kick in and impede him. Coraline regarded the trailing cable of the blowtorch with some alarm.
"Indulge me," she said, stepping closer, to just within easy grabbing distance. Wybie clicked the blowtorch off, and set it down gently on the floor before reaching for a small set of pliers on the ground. To his front, Coraline saw two long wire-tendrils leading off to either side.
"Are you making progress? Can you tell at whatever stage you're at?"
"Don't ask me to answer that," retorted Wybie, his back still turned. "If I openly speculate on No. Twenty, then it's automatically doomed to horrible failure. It's been proven by science."
"Is that true?"
"Who's the scientist?"
"Right. How long until you're free of this thing's spell?"
"Um…" Wybie stuck out a hand and waggled it vaguely. "About that long."
"Tell you what, I'll come back in a few hours. If you're done by then, all well and good. If you're not done and you're still working on it, because I'm such a good friend, I'm going to knock you out and make sure you get some sort of sleep."
"Sure," he said, still vague.
"And if you touch anything sharp or which produces fire, I'm going to be obliged to break your arms for your own good."
Wybie made another vague noise of assent, his concentration muted by fatigue and focused on the machine.
It was a few hours later.
"Well?" said Coraline from the doorway. Maria stood beside her, arms folded behind her back.
Wybie looked up and gave them a tired smile. He sat reclined against one wall, one leg flat and the other folded, one hand holding a cup of by-now frozen coffee, the other stroking Tripod's back, who lay beside him soaking up the attention and the dimming light from the skylight.
"Done," he said. "Finished piecing it together just half-an-hour ago. And I put it through its first and second tests, so once I've finished this cup, all we need to do is check it with this fuzzy little sociopath-"
Tripod, his eyes closed and back flat, idly flicked his tail by way of acknowledgement.
"-And if he starts talking, then I can heave a sigh of relief, and we … we can get the acknowledgement we finally need."
"If it works," said Coraline, crouching down and looking at No. Twenty. It was of similar design to the others, a chrome cuboid of metal plates and coiled wires, smaller and somehow more contained than its predecessors. A lid on top was open, revealing an aperture into which a sample could be placed.
"Why so confident about this one?" asked Coraline. "What was your insight yesterday?"
Wybie didn't answer immediately, but stopped to put down his coffee and pick up a small glass jar and a small, sharp knife from the floor beside him. He stood up laboriously, idly spinning the knife in his grasp.
"I was doing the wrong thing before," he said. "I was on the right track. I knew that the Sur-real energy bound up within our samples could resonate with the Sur-real overlapping the area around the Eroder. But I wasn't taking into account one thing. How do Sur-real places overlap with the real world in the first place?"
"Enlighten us, Mr Scientist."
"Mr Scientist. I like the sound of that. I should put it on business cards." Wybie paused for effect, and was rewarded with a sharp cough from Coraline.
"There's a reason the Sur-real bleeds over in old or important buildings. There's a reason psychephages haunt these buildings and flourish there. It's because we're there."
He unscrewed the top of the jar.
"It's not a one-way transfer of energy. Psychephages feed on us. They need our energy for their own. They exist in a cycle with us and reality." Wybie paused to hold the knife's handle with his mouth while he took off a glove. "Ehhgwo, if w' mixth t'g'r pfkifage n' … excuse me, if we produce an eroding effect from a combination of Sur-real and real matter, it actually works. I've tested it with two different samples, mixed with a drop or two of my own blood, and each time it's produced a much greater effect than it did before."
"Blood ritual," said Coraline lightly, masking her own surprise at the insight. "What the hell, the fundamentalists never liked us much anyway."
"Not much blood. Only a drop at most, and I think you could safely substitute hair or spit or anything." Coraline looked at his hand while he spoke, and saw a small cut in the ball of his thumb.
"Well, then what are we waiting for? Let's give it a third try."
"Twentieth time's the charm." Wybie applied pressure to his thumb tip just above the jar, and after a little coaxing, a small drop fell down into the tarry mix in the bottom of the jar. He then knelt to place it into the aperture at the top of the machine, and closed the lid.
"Everyone in the circle?" he asked. "Tripod in the circle?"
"Got him," said Maria, reaching out and picking up the cat and gently depositing him next to the Eroder, which he regarded with a haughty look.
"Then let's go."
Wybie pressed down a switch on the Eroder's side, and the world shifted.
The air briefly buzzed with static electricity, a pulse that swept through the air and stood Coraline's hair on end. The very texture of the air shifted to something alien yet oddly familiar, a tone akin to the feel of the Sur-real lairs they had entered many a time. The scent of honeysuckle rose at once, initially overpowering and quickly fading to a background smell, and making the air somehow old, into a medium thick with history and potential and power.
It was exhilarating and foreboding, eldritch and uncanny, a brief moment of transition for the world in the circle.
Then it passed. The scent of honeysuckle remained, and the air was yet buzzing faintly with new, agitated power.
All three watched the three-legged cat with taut anticipation, watching Tripod glance around at the room, at the Eroder, at the three expectant humans.
Then his mouth opened, and words came forth.
"Well, hell. Turns out you tin-openers are actually good for a few other things. I may have to upgrade my opinion of you a notch."