Chapter 8

The Time of Angels

The Doctor ambled between the display cases in his usual brown pinstriped suit and long brown coat. Instead of a tie though, he had an open necked denim shirt and white T-shirt underneath.

'Wrong. Wrong. Bit right, mostly wrong. I love museums,' he said as he commented on the labelling of the various exhibits in the glass cases.

'Another asteroid, another museum,' Rose said as she pushed Andrea in her buggy around the cathedral like museum. She was wearing a pink hoodie over a grey T-shirt, with a denim mini skirt and black boots.

'Rose, this isn't any old asteroid. It's the Delerium Archive, the final resting place of the headless monks,' he said with an enthusiastic grin. 'The biggest museum ever.'

'You've got a time machine. What do you need museums for anyway?'

The Doctor continued his inspection. 'Wrong. Very wrong. Ooh, one of mine. Also one of mine.'

'Oh, I see. It's how you keep score,' Rose said with her teasing smile.

The Doctor circled a display case that contained a square box, and rested his arms on top of it as he contemplated the ancient artefact.

Rose rolled her eyes. She felt like she was on a school trip. 'Oh great, an old box.'

'It's from one of the old starliners,' he told her.

'What is it?'

'A Home Box.'

'What's a Home Box?'

'Like a black box on a plane, except it homes.' He gave her his open mouthed smile. 'The Home Box homes in on the home. Anything happens to the ship, the Home Box flies home with all the flight data. Does what it says on the tin, except . . .'

'What?'

The Doctor pointed at the box. 'This one says something different on the tin.'

Rose stood by his shoulder and looked at the exhibit. 'Hang on. Is that Gallifreyan?'

'Old High Gallifreyan,' he told her. 'A bit like the Old English that Will used to write in. The lost language of the Time Lords. There were days, there were many days, these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple gods.'

'What does it say?'

'Have a try, see if you can read it.' The TARDIS didn't translate its own language, so she had to practice what the Doctor had taught her.

'Er, confectionary greeting,' she said uncertainly.

'Ooh, good effort. Try changing the order of the words and extrapolating the meaning.'

'Greeting confectionary?'

'What do you say when you greet someone?'

'Hello.'

'And what does a confectioner make?'

'Sweets . . . Oh, I've got it . . . Hello, sweetie.' She frowned as she remembered that phrase. 'You are kiddin', right? The woman in The Library who died. River Song . . . she said hello sweetie when she met you,' she remembered.

'Yes, she did,' he agreed as he ran his fingers through his sticky up hair. 'So, are you ready?'

Rose frowned. 'Ready for what?'

Rose knew the look on his face, and also knew what was coming next. He took his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket pocket and sonicked the display case. An alarm started to wail as he snatched the Home Box.

'Ready to run!' he said and ran down the nave of the cathedral museum towards the TARDIS with the box under his arm. Rose, who was pushing Andrea in the hover buggy, was close behind him, followed by two security staff.

They made it safely into the TARDIS, and the Doctor started the Time Rotor before putting the Home Box on the console.

'I can't believe you just did that!' Rose said. 'In fact, why are we doin' this?' she asked as he tried to access the data in the box.

'Because someone on a spaceship twelve thousand years ago is trying to attract my attention. Let's see if we can get the security playback working.'

He got the Home Box to display the CCTV footage on the console view screen. The playback showed River Song in a glamorous evening gown, looking at the camera over a pair of stylish sunglasses and winking.

'That's not someone,' Rose said. 'That's River Song.'

A man's voice came out of the speaker as they saw River standing at an airlock door. ['The party's over, Doctor Song, yet still you're on board.']

['Sorry, Alistair. I needed to see what was in your vault,'] River told the man. ['Do you all know what's down there? Any of you? Because I'll tell you something. This ship won't reach its destination.']

['Wait till she runs. Don't make it look like an execution,'] the man called Alistair said.

River lifted her arm and talked to her watch. ['Triple seven five, slash three four nine by ten, zero twelve slash acorn . . . Oh, and I could do with an air corridor.']

The Doctor moved around the console and started adjusting the controls.

'What was that? What did she say? Were those coordinates?' Rose asked recognising the format from her limited experience of flying the TARDIS. 'They sounded like coordinates to me.'

The Doctor looked at his wife with pride and grabbed a quick kiss. 'Coordinates,' he confirmed as the Time Rotor pumped up and down.

['Like I said on the dance floor, you might want to find something to hang on to,'] River said saucily on the screen. They watched as she blew a kiss before the airlock opened, sucking her out, backwards.

'Oh my God!' Rose gasped. 'She committed suicide!'

'Whoo!' The Doctor hurried to the doors and opened them, holding his arm out for some reason.

As Rose reached the doors, the woman they had seen on the screen came sailing through the doors, into the Doctor's arms, and onto the floor on top of him.

'River?' the Doctor said in greeting.

'A-hem,' Rose deliberately cleared her throat with her arms crossed and a disapproving look on her face.

River climbed off him without comment and looked out of the doors. 'Follow that ship.'

The Doctor went to the console and started the Time Rotor.

'Why are we followin' that ship?' Rose asked her, but River was too focussed on the console to answer.

'They've gone into warp drive. We're losing them. Stay close,' River said.

'I'm trying.' the Doctor told her.

'Why?' Rose asked again.

'Use the stabilisers,' River said over Rose's question.

'There aren't any stabilisers.'

'The blue switches.'

'Oh, the blue ones don't do anything, they're just blue.'

'Yes, they're blue. Look, they're the blue stabilisers.' She pressed the blue buttons, and the TARDIS stopped shaking. 'See?'

'Yeah. Well, it's just boring now, isn't it?' he sulked. 'They're boring-ers. They're blue . . . boring-ers.'

'Doctor, how come she can fly the TARDIS?' Rose asked.

'You call that flying the TARDIS? Ha!' he replied.

Rose raised an eyebrow. 'Actually, that was pretty good,' she said begrudgingly.

'Okay. I've mapped the probability vectors, done a fold-back on the temporal isometry, charted the ship to its destination, and parked us right along side,' River said with a satisfied smile.

'Parked us?' Rose asked.

'We haven't landed,' the Doctor said.

'Of course we've landed. I just landed her.'

'But . . . it didn't make the noise,' Rose observed.

'What noise?' River asked.

The Doctor gesticulated towards the console. 'You know, the "vrwoorp, vrwoorp".'

'It's not supposed to make that noise. You leave the brakes on,' River told him.

The Doctor was definitely miffed. 'Yeah, well, it's a brilliant noise.'

'I love that noise,' Rose said.

The Doctor nodded in agreement. 'Come on, Rose. Let's have a look.'

'No, wait. Environment checks,' River called out.

'Oh yes, sorry. Quite right. Environment checks,' he said. He went to the TARDIS door, opened it and looked outside. He looked at River. 'Nice out.'

Rose snorted a laugh as he grinned and winked at her.

River was looking at the view screen. 'We're somewhere in the Garn Belt. There's an atmosphere. Early indications suggest that . . .'

The Doctor interrupted her with a lecturing tone to his voice. 'We're on Alfava Metraxis, the seventh planet of the Dundra System. Oxygen rich atmosphere, all toxins in the soft band, eleven hour day and . . .' He looked outside again. 'Chances of rain later.'

Rose had a satisfied smile on her face as River looked irritated. 'He thinks he's so hot when he does that.'

'How come you can fly the TARDIS?' Rose asked her.

'Oh, I had lessons from the very best,' she replied.

The Doctor had a smug look on his face. 'Well . . . yeah.'

River wiped the smug look off his face. 'It's a shame you were busy that day.' Although Rose found River irritating, she couldn't help but laugh. 'Right then, why did they land here?' she said as she headed for the doors.

'They didn't land,' he said from the jump seat.

'Sorry?' River said, turning back to look at him.

'You should've checked the Home Box . . . It crashed.'

River left the TARDIS and the Doctor closed the door after her before walking back to the console where Rose and Andrea were waiting for him. 'So, how did she do that museum thing?'

'It's a long story and I don't know most of it,' he told her. 'Off we go.'

'What are you doin'?' she asked, hoping they were getting as far away from River as possible.

'Leaving. She's got where she wants to go, let's go where we want to go,' he said as he started to set the coordinates.

'Yes!' Rose whispered with a fist pull.

He started the Time Rotor and put them into the Vortex, and then moved around the console as he made adjustments to the controls. The trim phone started to ring, and he picked it up.

['Leaving so soon Sweetie?'] River said.

He looked at Rose, who was looking suspicious. 'Er, yeah. Things to do. Places to go. You know how it is.'

['Aren't you a teensy bit curious about what I found in the hold?']

Before he could tell her that he wasn't the slightest bit interested, she hung up. He frowned at the phone before putting it down. Who ever she was, she knew how to get his attention.

'So, who was that?' Rose asked, knowing that look on his face.

'Ah, well, um . . . There was this one thing . . . on the playback. Do you remember? She asked them if they knew what was in the hold. She told them the ship wouldn't reach its destination.'

'That was her, wasn't it? You want to know what was in the hold of that ship?'

'Five minutes, I promise. Just a quick look and then we go. Leave her to it. What do you say?' he said giving her his cheekiest smile with his puppy dog eyes.

'What do I say? Don't make promises you can't deliver on is what I say,' she told him, and then looked at the hurt expression on his face. She rolled her eyes and grabbed his lapels, pulling him into a kiss. 'Five minutes. No longer!'

The TARDIS had landed on a rocky beach, in front of a cliff which had an ancient building carved into it. There was a once sleek spaceship, which was now a burning wreck, sticking out of the top of the edifice.

'What caused it to crash? Not me,' River said as they stood beside her.

'Nah, the airlock would've sealed seconds after you blew it,' the Doctor said. 'According to the Home Box, the warp engines had a phase shift. No survivors.'

'A phase shift would have to be sabotage. I did warn them,' River said.

'About what?' Rose asked, but once again, River seemed to ignore her. It was getting very annoying.

River took a futuristic flat screen device out of her purse. 'Well, at least the building was empty. Aplan temple. Unoccupied for centuries.'

River looked over her shoulder at Rose and Andrea and smiled. 'I see you two are still travelling with him then.'

Rose suddenly realised that this River hadn't met her yet, but when she'd seen her in The Library, River had said she never thought she would have the honour to meet Rose Tyler, the woman who saved him from himself. What Rose didn't know, was that River Song was protecting her from knowledge of her own future.

The Doctor on the other hand, was fully aware that this version of River Song hadn't met Rose, and was reluctant to introduce his present wife to his future wife. It had been awkward enough in The Library, and it was all a bit too domestic for him.

['Bear with me on this Love. Spoilers and all that,'] he thought to Rose. 'Er . . . this is Rose and her daughter Andrea.'

River smiled. 'Hello.'

'You do realise that I'm not your taxi service, don't you?' the Doctor said to River in annoyance. 'I'm not going to be there to catch you every time you feel like jumping out of a space ship.'

'And you are so wrong,' River said teasingly.

She scanned the wrecked ship with her tablet device. 'There's one survivor. There's a thing in the belly of that ship that can't ever die.' She looked at Rose. 'Now he's listening.'

River then used the tablet as a communicator. 'You lot in orbit yet? Yeah, I saw it land. I'm at the crash site. Try and home in on my signal.' She held up the tablet and called over to the Doctor. 'Doctor, can you sonic me? I need to boost the signal so we can use it as a beacon.'

He grudgingly took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and sonicked the tablet from a distance.

'Why do you let her do that?' Rose whispered. 'Boss you about like that?'

'Because the sooner whoever is up there gets here, the sooner we can get out of here.'

Rose felt a bit guilty about questioning her husband's motives, and looked down at their daughter in the carry sling and stroked her head. 'Ah, yeah. Fair enough . . . Sorry.'

River had walked back towards them. 'We have a minute. Shall we?'

She took out her TARDIS-style diary that Rose remembered from The Library. 'Where are we up to? Have we done the Bone Meadows?'

'No, he hasn't done the Bone Meadows!' Rose told her sharply.

River looked at her with raised eyebrows, and then turned to the Doctor. 'She's feisty. She acts as though she's your wife.'

'As do you,' he replied, unfazed by her attempt to goad him.

'Touche,' she said. 'Anyway, it's the wrong face for the Bone Meadows.'

At that moment, four small tornadoes kicked up the dust and turned into four soldiers.

'You promised me an army, Doctor Song,' one of the soldiers said.

No, I promised you the equivalent of an army,' River corrected him. 'This is the Doctor.'

The soldier held out his hand. 'Father Octavian, Sir. Bishop, second class. Twenty clerics at my command. The troops are already in the drop ship and landing shortly. Doctor Song was helping us with a covert investigation. Has Doctor Song explained what we're dealing with?'

River looked at the Doctor. 'Doctor, what do you know of the Weeping Angels?'

'You said five minutes!' Rose reminded her husband in hushed tones. 'And now you want us to go into a "maze of the dead" to capture a Weepin' Angel.'

'No I don't,' he said defensively. 'I want you and Andrea and to go into the TARDIS and wait for me.'

'Have you gone completely daft? What happened to Shiver and Shake?'

Father Octavian approached with some of his soldiers from the drop ship. 'Is there a problem Doctor?'

'Er, no. Just some domestic issues to be ironed out,' he said with a charming smile.

'Then perhaps I can be of assistance,' Father Octavian said, indicating a female soldier by his side. 'This is Sister Joan, a nun from the Sandhurst Convent. Not only is she a highly trained soldier who has taken an oath to serve and protect, but she is also an experienced child care assistant with a family of her own.'

'You have a family?' Rose said in surprise. 'Aren't nun's supposed to be celibate?'

'Fifty first century church,' the Doctor told her. 'They've moved on.'

Rose's interest was piqued by the nun-soldier. 'So how do you cope, bein' a mum and a soldier.'

'It's hard,' she said with a wistful smile. 'I have a boy, four, and a girl who's two, and I miss them something rotten. But I know they are being well looked after by my sisters back at the convent.'

'So, what do you think Doctor, Rose? Will you agree to Sister Joan looking after your daughter while you help us capture this Lonely Assassin?' Octavian asked them.

The Doctor looked at Rose for her approval. 'What do you think? I'm game if you are.'

Rose knew that they would be able to feel Andrea's thoughts, and send their own thoughts to her if she became upset. 'Okay. I'd better show you where the nursery is in the TARDIS . . . Oh, and you'd better prepare yourself for a bit of a shock,' she warned her, referring to the transdimensional interior.

Outside the Dropship, River was showing the Doctor a book. 'I found this. Definitive work on the Angels. Well, the only one. Written by a madman. It's barely readable, but I've marked a few passages.'

The Doctor riffled through the pages of the book. 'Not bad. Bit slow in the middle. Didn't you hate his girlfriend? No. No, hang on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.' He sniffed the book. 'This book is wrong. What's wrong with this book? It's wrong.'

'It's so strange when you go all baby face. How early is this for you?' River asked the Doctor.

'Very early.'

'So you don't know who I am yet?'

'How do you know who I am?' he asked her. 'I don't always look the same.'

'I've got pictures of all your faces. You never show up in the right order, though. I need the spotter's guide.'

That was what was wrong with the book he realised. 'Pictures. Why aren't there pictures?'

'Doctor?' Rose called from inside the Dropship Module. 'Doctor!'

'This whole book, it's a warning about the Weeping Angels, so why no pictures? Why not show us what to look out for?' he asked.

'There was a bit about images,' River remembered. 'What was that?'

The Doctor flicked through the pages. 'Yes. Hang on. "That which holds the image of an angel becomes itself an angel",' he read.

'Doctor!' Rose called again more urgently.

River frowned. 'What does that mean? An image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel?'

'DOCTOR! IT'S IN THE ROOM!' they heard Rose shout.

'ROSE!' The Doctor shouted and ran to the Dropship.

'Doctor!'

'Are you all right? What's happening?'

'Doctor? Doctor, it's comin' out of the television,' she told him. 'The Angel is here.'

He sonicked the keypad lock. 'Don't take your eyes off it. Keep looking. It can't move if you're looking.'

'Yeah, I know. I remember Wester Drumlin.'

'What's wrong?' River asked him.

'Deadlocked.'

'There is no deadlock,' she told him.

'Don't blink, Rose. Don't even blink.'

'I know!' she said sharply. She didn't fancy being dumped in the past just yet.

'What are you doing?' River asked.

'Cutting the power. It's using the screen, I'm turning the screen off . . . No good, it's deadlocked the whole system.'

'There's no deadlock,' she told him again.

'There is now.'

'Help me!' Rose called to her husband.

'Can you turn it off?' he asked her.

'Doctor?'

'The screen. Can you turn it off?'

'I tried.'

'Try again, but don't take your eyes off the Angel.'

'I'm not.'

'Each time it moves, it'll move faster. Don't even blink.'

'Will you shut up about the blinkin' and concentrate on gettin' me outta here,' Rose said angrily.

Meanwhile, River was trying to cut through the door with her pistol torch. 'I'm not blinkin'. Have you ever tried not blinkin'?' Rose said, closing one eye at a time as she felt for the remote control.

She tried to switch the screen off. 'It just keeps switchin' it back on.'

'Yeah, it's the Angel,' he told her.

'But it's just a recordin'.'

'No, anything that takes the image of an Angel is an Angel.' He noticed River using her cutting torch. 'What are you doing?'

'I'm trying to cut through. It's not even warm.'

'There is no way in. It's not physically possible.'

Rose called from inside. 'Doctor, is it gonna zap me into the past?'

'If it does, I'll find you. But it's not going to come to that. Just keep looking at it. Don't stop looking.' He ran to get the book and checked on something he had read.

'Rose, not the eyes. Look at the Angel but don't look at the eyes,' he told her.

'Why?'

'What is it?' River asked.

The Doctor read from the book again. "The eyes are not the windows of the soul. They are the doors. Beware what may enter there".

'Doctor, what did you say?' Rose queried.

'Don't look at the eyes!'

'No, about images. What did you say about images?'

River answered. 'Whatever holds the image of an Angel, is an Angel.'

"Hold the image" Rose thought. That was it! 'Okay, hold this,' she said to the Angel. 'One, two, three, four.' She pressed pause on the remote just as the tape loop returned to the start. The image turned to static, and the Doctor and River burst in as the monitor turned off.

The Doctor pulled her into a hug. 'I froze it. There was a sort of blip on the tape and I froze it on the blip. It wasn't the image of an Angel any more. That was good, yeah? It was, wasn't it? That was pretty good.'

'That was amazing,' River said.

He released her from the hug and held her shoulders. 'You okay?'

'I'm fine,' she said with a smile.

'You're brilliant,' River told her.

Rose thought that was praise indeed from this bossy, but capable woman. 'Thanks . . . Yeah, I kind of creamed it, didn't I?'

'So it was here? That was the Angel?' River asked the Doctor.

'That was a projection of the Angel. It's reaching out, getting a good look at us. It's no longer dormant.'

There was an explosion outside as the assault team blew a hole in the wall, and entered the Aplan temple. It was huge inside, with a number of terraces containing Aplan statues. There was gunfire from behind them, and the Doctor, Rose, and River ran back to the main group. A young Cleric had shot up a statue.

'Sorry . . . sorry. I thought . . . I thought it looked at me,' the Cleric confessed.

'We know what the Angel looks like,' Octavian said. 'Is that the Angel?'

'No, sir,' the Cleric said sheepishly.

Octavian gave him a stern look. 'No, sir, it is not. According to the Doctor, we are facing an enemy of unknowable power and infinite evil, so it would be good, it would be very good, if we could all remain calm in the presence of decor.'

The Doctor took pity on the young man. 'What's your name?'

'Bob, sir.'

'Ah, that's a great name. I love Bob.'

'It's a Sacred Name. We all have Sacred Names,' Octavian told the Doctor. 'They're given to us in the service of the Church.'

'Sacred Bob. More like Scared Bob now, eh?' the Doctor said cheerfully, trying to make Sacred Bob feel better.

'Yes, sir.'

'Ah, good. Scared keeps you fast. Anyone in this room who isn't scared is a moron. Carry on.'

Rose leaned close. 'That was very nice of ya.' She kissed him on the cheek. 'I love you.'

'We'll be moving into the maze in two minutes. You stay with Christian and Angelo. Guard the approach,' Octavian told Bob.

'Isn't there a chance this lot's just going to collapse? There's a whole ship up there,' Rose said.

'Incredible builders, the Aplans,' River remembered.

'Had dinner with their Chief Architect once,' the Doctor told them.

'Really?' Rose asked.

He nodded. 'Two heads are better than one.'

'What, you mean you helped him?'

'No, like I said earlier, he had two heads. That book, the very end, what did it say?'

River took out the book. 'Hang on.'

'Read it to me.'

'What if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if one day our dreams no longer needed us? When these things occur and are held to be true, the time will be upon us. The time of Angels.'

'What the hell is that supposed to mean?' Rose asked him. 'Is that from a Robbie Williams song?'

'I'm not sure what it means yet. But I hope it's not as bad as I think it could be.'

Rose looked up at the temple. 'Are we there yet? It's a hell of a climb.'

'The Maze is on six levels, representing the ascent of the soul. Only two levels to go,' River explained.

'Lovely species, the Aplans. We should visit them some time,' the Doctor suggested. 'They were very relaxed, sort of cheerful. Well, that's having two heads, of course. You're never short of a snog with an extra head.'

River was looking around the temple. 'Doctor, there's something. I don't know what it is.'

'Yeah, there's something wrong. Don't know what it is yet, either. Working on it. Of course, then they started having laws against self-marrying. I mean, what was that about? But that's the Church for you . . . Er, no offence, Bishop.'

'Quite a lot taken, if that's all right, Doctor,' Octavian said in an annoyed tone. 'Lowest point in the wreckage is only about fifty feet up from here. That way.'

'The Church had a point, if you think about it,' Rose mused. 'The divorces must have been messy.' She laughed at her own joke as they continued on through the forest of statues. 'I haven't seen this many statues since we were in the British Museum,' she said. 'There's a statue of me in there y'know.'

'Seriously,' River asked her.

'Yeah. The Goddess Fortuna . . .'

'Oh!' the Doctor exclaimed as he suddenly realised what he'd been missing.

'What's wrong?' Rose asked.

'Oh!' River echoed.

'Exactly,' the Doctor said.

'How could we have not noticed that?'

'Low level perception filter, or maybe we're thick.'

'What's wrong, sir?' Octavian asked.

'Nobody move. Nobody move. Everyone stay exactly where they are. Bishop, I am truly sorry. I've made a mistake and we are all in terrible danger.'

'What danger?' he enquired.

'The Aplans,' River said.

Octavian frowned in confusion. 'The Aplans?'

'They've got two heads,' River told him.

'Yes, I get that. So?' Rose said, and then the penny dropped. 'Oh God! Sorry, no offence,' she whispered to the bishop.

'So why don't the statues?' the Doctor asked. 'Everyone, over there. Just move. Don't ask questions, don't speak.'

The soldiers moved into an alcove away from the statues.

'Okay, I want you all to switch off your torches,' the Doctor told them.

'Sir?' Cleric Marco queried.

'Just do it. Okay. I'm going to turn off this one too, just for a moment.'

Rose remembered the Angels from before. 'But we won't be able to see them, and it takes them less than a moment to get you.'

River looked at him. 'Are you sure about this?'

'No,' he admitted, but it was the only way to prove the statues were actually Angels.

He flashed his torch off and on in an instant. 'Oh, my God. They've moved,' Rose gasped.

The Doctor ran down the passage, and it was filled with statues coming towards them. 'They're Angels. All of them.'

'But they can't be,' River claimed.

'Clerics, keep watching them,' the Doctor ordered.

He ran back to a vantage point of the main cavern, and saw all the statues were climbing up towards them. 'Every statue in this Maze, every single one, is a Weeping Angel. They're coming after us.'

'But there was only one Angel on the ship. Just the one, I swear,' River told him.

'Could they have been here already?' Rose asked.

The Doctor turned to River. 'The Aplans. What happened? How did they die out?'

'Nobody knows.'

He looked at Rose. 'We know.'

'They don't look like Angels,' Octavian noticed.

'And they're not as fast as they were before,' Rose said. 'They should have had us by now.'

'Look at them,' the Doctor said. 'They're dying, losing their form. They must have been down here for centuries, starving.'

'Losing their image,' Rose said.

'And their image is their power,' the Doctor explained. 'Power . . . POWER!'

'Doctor?' Rose called to him quietly, but he was in full lecture mode.

'Don't you see? All that radiation spilling out the drive burn. The crash of the Byzantium wasn't an accident, it was a rescue mission for the Angels. We're in the middle of an army, and it's waking up.'

'We need to get out of here fast,' River said.

Octavian took out his communicator. 'Bob, Angelo, Christian, come in, please. Any of you, come in.'

['It's Bob, sir. Sorry, sir,'] the young, scared Cleric said.

'Bob, are Angelo and Christian with you? All the statues are active. I repeat, all the statues are active.'

['I know, sir. Angelo and Christian are dead, sir. The statues killed them, sir.']

The Doctor grabbed Octavian's communicator. 'Bob, Sacred Bob, it's me, the Doctor.'

'I'm talking to . . .' Octavian protested.

'Where are you now?' the Doctor asked Bob.

Octavian was still protesting at the Doctor's complete disregard for protocol. 'I'm talking to my . . .'

'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up.'

['I'm on my way up to you, sir. I'm homing in on your signal.']

'Ah, well done, Bob. Scared keeps you fast. Told you, didn't I. Your friends, Bob. What did the Angel do to them?'

['Snapped their necks, sir.']

'What?!' Rose exclaimed.

'That's odd. That's not how the Angels kill you,' the Doctor told them.

'They kill you nicely,' Rose explained.

'They displace you in time . . . Unless they needed the bodies for something,' the Doctor theorised.

Octavian took his communicator back. 'Bob, did you check their data packs for vital signs? We may be able to initiate a rescue plan.'

The Doctor took it back again. 'Oh, don't be an idiot. The Angels don't leave you alive. Bob, keep running. But tell me, how did you escape?'

['I didn't escape, sir. The Angel killed me, too.']

'What do you mean, the Angel killed you?' the Doctor asked.

['Snapped my neck, sir. Wasn't as painless as I expected, but it was pretty quick, so that was something.']

'If you're dead, how can I be talking to you?'

['You're not talking to me, sir. The Angel has no voice. It stripped my cerebral cortex from my body and re-animated a version of my consciousness to communicate with you. Sorry about the confusion.']

'So when you say you're on your way up to us . . .'

['It's the Angel that's coming, sir, yes. No way out.']

'Then we get out through the wreckage,' Octavian said. 'Go! Go, go, go. All of you run.'

'Doctor,' Rose called again.

'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm coming,' he told her, and then spoke to the bishop. 'Just go. Go, go, go. Yeah. Called you an idiot. Sorry, but there's no way we could have rescued your men.'

'I know that, sir. And when you've flown away in your little blue box, I'll explain that to their families.'

The Doctor still had the communicator. 'Angel Bob. Which Angel am I talking to? The one from the ship?'

['Yes, sir. And the other Angels are still restoring.']

'Ah, so the Angel is not in the wreckage. Thank you.' In its arrogance, the Angel had given him vital information. He ran along the passage, passing Rose as he went.

'Don't wait for me. Go, run.'

'I can't . . . No, really, I can't,' she said.

'Why not?' He asked her.

'Look at it. Look at my hand. It's stone,' Rose told him, looking at her hand holding a handrail.

'You looked into the eyes of an Angel, didn't you?' the Doctor said.

'I couldn't stop myself . . . I tried.'

The Doctor looked at her intensely. 'Listen to me. It's messing with your head. Your hand is not made of stone.'

'It is. Look at it.'

'Rose, its flesh and blood,' he told her. 'It's in your mind, I promise you. You can move that hand. You can let go.'

'I can't, okay? I've tried and I can't. It's stone.'

The Doctor talked in a calm, quiet voice. 'The Angel is going to come and it's going to turn this light off, and then there's nothing I can do to stop it, so do it. Concentrate. Move your hand.'

'I can't.'

'Then we're both going to die.'

'You're not going to die.'

'They'll kill the lights,' he told her.

'You've got to go. You know you have. You've got Andrea to think about . . . and all that stuff in River's diary, that's all got to happen. You know you can't die here.'

'Time can be re-written. It doesn't work like that.'

The statue arrived in the passageway. 'Keep your eyes on it. Don't blink.'

'Don't worry, I remember,' she told him. 'Run!'

'You see, I'm not going. I'm not leaving you here.'

'I don't need you to die for me Love. I need you to live for our daughter.'

'You can move your hand,' he told her.

'It's stone.'

'No it isn't.'

'You've got to go. Those people up there will die without you. If you stay here with me, you'll have as good as killed them.'

['Rose? let me in,'] he thought to her.

She realised what he was thinking. ['Okay, I'll try.'] She replied.

As they kept their eyes fixed on the Angel, he gently eased himself into her consciousness. She let him take over her senses, and when she looked at her hand, it was flesh and blood.

'See? Not stone. Now run,' he commanded.

As they made their way through the tunnel, they heard voices from up ahead.

'The statues are advancing along all corridors. And, sir, my torch keeps flickering,' Cleric Marco said.

'They all do,' Octavian replied.

'So does the gravity globe,' River added.

Octavian called to his soldiers. 'Clerics, we're down to four men. Expect incoming.'

The Doctor entered the chamber. 'Yeah, it's the Angels. They're coming. And they're draining the power for themselves.'

'Which means we won't be able to see them,' Octavian realised.

'Which means we can't stay here,' the Doctor told him.

'Two more incoming,' Octavian announced.

'Any suggestions?' River asked.

'The statues are advancing on all sides. We don't have the climbing equipment to reach the Byzantium,' Octavian said, looking up to the wrecked ship thirty feet above them.

River turned to the Doctor. 'There's no way up, no way back, no way out. No pressure, but this is usually when you have a really good idea.'

'There's always a way out,' he told her, and it echoed around the chamber. 'There's always a way out.'

['Doctor? Can I speak to the Doctor, please?'] The Angel who used to be Bob called over the communicator.

'Hello, Angels. What's your problem?'

['Your power will not last much longer, and the Angels will be with you shortly. Sorry, sir.']

'Why are you telling me this?' the Doctor asked, although he already knew they wanted to scare the group.

['There's something the Angels are very keen you should know before the end.']

'Which is?'

['I died in fear.']

'I'm sorry?'

['You told me my fear would keep me alive, but I died afraid, in pain and alone. You made me trust you, and when it mattered, you let me down.']

'Liar!' Rose called out. 'He told Bob it would keep him fast. He never said it would keep him alive.'

'They're trying to make him angry,' River said.

'No, they're tryin' to distract him by makin' him feel responsible for Bob's death,' Rose told her. She remembered when she had first met him, and how he had been wracked with guilt and remorse.

['I'm sorry, sir. The Angels were very keen for you to know that.']

'Well then, the Angels have made their second mistake because I'm not going to let that pass. I'm sorry you're dead, Bob, but I swear to whatever is left of you, they will be sorrier.'

['But you're trapped, sir, and about to die.']

'Yeah. I'm trapped. And you know what? Speaking of traps, this trap has got a great big mistake in it. A great big, whopping mistake.'

['What mistake, sir?']

The Doctor looked at Rose. 'Trust me?'

'Always have, always will,' she replied.

He looked at River. 'Trust me?'

'Always.'

He called over to the soldiers. 'You lot, trust me?'

'Sir, two more incoming,' Cleric Marco announced.

Octavian nodded. 'We have faith, sir.'

'Then give me your gun,' the Doctor said.

'But you don't use guns,' Rose said.

'That's when you use them to shoot people,' he said cryptically. 'I'm about to do something incredibly stupid and dangerous. When I do, jump!'

'Jump where?' Octavian asked.

'Just jump, high as you can. Come on, leap of faith, Bishop. On my signal.'

'What signal?'

'You won't miss it.'

['Sorry, can I ask again? You mentioned a mistake we made.']

The Doctor pointed the pistol at the hull of the Byzantium. 'Oh, big mistake. Huge. Didn't anyone ever tell you there's one thing you never put in a trap? If you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow, there is one thing you never, ever put in a trap.'

['And what would that be, sir?']

'Me!' he said and fired at the gravity globe that was floating below the hull of the Byzantium.