Chapter 5
"Gssh." There was radio noise, coming from my coat pocket. "Gssh. Hello? Hello? May? Can you hear me? May, it's the Doctor."
I pulled the radio device out of my pocket and found a button to press.
"Doctor? Where am I? When am I?!"
"Errr.. You're back in 2014. In Edinburgh."
"Edinburgh? I've never been to Edinburgh!"
"Well, you have actually, as one of your other selves. Which is good news! It means you can meet one of yourselves in person. Have an ally since I can't be there."
"Where are you, then?"
"I'm still on the Tardis. The Angel's gone. Gravity got the better of it. But I can't come help you, not until right at the end. They know we're up to something."
I liked the sound of 'we.' "And they'll be waiting for me if I turn up any time now. I'll be with you, May, right at the end. But you'll have to do the rest on your own."
I swallowed hard. I felt I might cry, with the weight of what was being asked of me. I had to save myself and my other selves from the Weeping Angels, without help from the magical man in the box. He was certainly strange, but I thought he was going to fix everything.
"Gssh. You'll have to fix this on your own."
I swallowed again.
"Okay," I said. "Okay. Where's Edinburgh me?"
Surprisingly it didn't take long to explain to Jessica (That was Edinburgh me's name.) Being blind, your sense of hearing gets a lot sharper and everyone has a unique voice.
"Urgh. I still can't believe I sound like that. It's worse than listening to yourself on an answering machine."
Jess and I were walking down Oxford Street in London now, looking for Emma, the Londoner me. She hadn't replied to the email The Doctor sent, so Jess and I were going to tag team her and persuade her to come with us to the rendezvous point. It was strange and wonderful spending time with my other selves. We were all different. Circumstances and up bringing had made us different people but we still shared some personality.
We were in a boutique shop. Jess rang the bell. She was fun, had a flare to her movements. She was confident as she lent on the counter. (She just exuded confidence) Then I heard my own voice. "Can I help you?"
"Yes," said Jess me. "From your voice, I'm guessing you're Emma. A man sent you an email yesterday and you haven't replied. You need to come with us. Oh yes, this is May, she's also you. You've been taken back in time by some stone angels and we're want to end the loop by luring them to a paradox."
"What?"
"Just come with us, " I piped up. "We can explain afterwards." Jess grabbed for her arm and we frog marched her out of the shop. She wasn't happy but she was the last piece of the puzzle we needed for the Doctor's plan to work.
"Err, May," said Jess. "I think we have company."
"What?" I turned my head, trying to hear something coming.
"I can sense it, too," said Emma. "Okay, I'm thinking you're both less crazy now."
"Oxford Street," said Jess, "It's old architecture. Angels can hide in plain sight…so to speak," she quipped.
"We've got to run, get a tube," I said.
"No," Emma said, "It's dark, they can hide there."
"Guess we'll just have to run then."
Luckily the Doctor's rendezvous point was just between Oxford Street and Regents. There was a building site going on where an old office block was being knocked down.
"Gssh! May? Are you there yet?"
"Yes, Doctor. We're here. Where are you?"
"Not until the very end, May. I can't risk them guessing."
"Okay, right, well.."
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
I heard my own voice again. The forth and fifth me were close by. All of us had arrived.
Jess filled the others in quickly while I paced around, marking out the office room we were in, feeling the walls.
"Now, we have to draw them all together, the Doctor said," Jess was telling them. "So we need to stay central, together. I suggest we stand in the middle, hold hands. That way if they try to send one of us back, or kill one of us…"
"Kill us?!" Piped up Mary me.
"Yes, kill us," Emma replied.
"They won't be able to do it to just one of us. They can't risk that sort of paradox."
"When is this Doctor person going to arrive?" Asked Connie me, from South Wales.
"Right at the very.." I couldn't finish my sentence. A stone hand was gripped around my arm. This was what an Angel's touch felt like. It was hard and painful, claws digging into my skin, drawing blood. I didn't need to see a menacing scowl to feel the rage coming from the Angel. But it wouldn't kill me. Why wouldn't it kill me? I was the ring leader. I was the one who was causing the paradox. Eliminate me and they could take one of the others and carry on their renewable energy source.
"May!" The others shouted! "May, hold on!."
And then I realized. I lifted my communicator, "Gssh. Doctor, I think they're taking me hostage. I wouldn't come here if I were you. I think they wanted this all along. They want to trap you."
"Gssh. But the alternative is to leave you in a stalemate, May and co. I wouldn't do that."
"But, Doctor. You said it yourself! The Tardis is too precious. With that sort of time energy they could feed forever. I won't let you."
"Well, it's a good thing I'm not coming in the Tardis then, isn't it?"
I winced. The claws sharpened. The Angel was angry at being thwarted. Her hostage situation wasn't going to work. Would she kill me now? Now that her plan had failed?
"Look," I said, my voice shaking slightly. "You Angels have dominated my lives for years. You've created so many versions of me that us meeting is a huge paradox. You stupid creatures, could've ended time by doing this, I'm sure. You're committing your own murders."
The Angel tightened her grip again. I prayed she didn't touch an artery with her claws.
"But it's no good killing me. There are four other versions of me now. Four other people who know what you are and know that you're coming. We can warn the others. We can stop you." I said.
"I may be blind but I see you, now. I know what you are. You are scavengers, picking on the bones of a potential existence, but you've run out of dinner. Touch any one of us, kill any of us or send us back again, and you'll have caused a big enough paradox to end yourselves. And no amount of time lord is going to stop you from your fate. So, I suggest you run."
"Pretty good, May," a booming speaker rang out, a megaphone, "for a first time speech against an alien monster. But that's my gig."
"You pompous.."
"Now! Angels! You have me exactly where you want me, don't you? You can sap on all the energy you like if you take me! But I have seen fourteen thousand years of history. I have seen the creation of this planet and it's destruction. I have seen the birth of stars and the fall of empires. I have caused galaxies and parallel worlds and time lines to collapse. I think the important question is do you think you can handle that kind of buffet?"
"They're circling us now, May. I can feel it," called Emma.
"We're trapped," said Connie.
"I wouldn't count on it," I replied.
"But then you'd be missing something quite big. Oh, yes, it's a grand statement and it's true, " The Doctor continued, "But you're all missing something much more important. I'm looking at you. And so are a load of builders who've just turned up to work! So, what do you think is going to happen, when I do this?"
I heard the whirring, handbrake grinding sound again. The Tardis was back! My heart leapt into my throat at that sound. I was so glad to have it back.
"Gssh. May, tell everyone to get into the Tardis, she's programmed to let them in."
"Everyone into the box!" I shouted. And then there was a great boom, a crashing and crumbling. A crane had come through the ceiling to lift up the Tardis and in the same moment a wrecking ball flew at the spot the Tardis had been in before. The Doctor was bulldozing the statues! In that moment, the Angel holding me loosened its grip and I twisted to get out the way. I threw myself on the floor, just in time for the next hit of the wrecking ball, wiping out the Angel that had held me captive. I laughed in relief at it.
The wrecking ball gave one last pendulum swing, which crumbled the floor beneath me. I fell: twenty feet at least. I threw my arms out before me and felt the panic rising up to engulf me. After all that, I was going to die anyway?
A hand grasped mine: a rough adult hand, belonging to a boy. The doctor was holding me safe.
"Hold on, May! I've got you. Just pull yourself up." I felt weak. I felt like I'd been running a marathon with no end. I didn't think I could do it.
"Come on, May. Come on! You can do it, just pull yourself up." I heaved as hard as I could, and flailed my legs, trying to feel for leverage. I found a crumbling edge of concrete and pushed upwards, to feel the Doctor's arms around me, hauling me up the last part until I landed on him in a heap on the broken floor of the office block.
"Where did everyone go?" I asked, as we strolled back into the Tardis.
"They're gone," The Doctor said casually.
"Gone?"
"Yep." They never existed now. I wasn't sure which one of you would survive, but without the Angels influence, it's broken their hold over you. They couldn't hold onto that time energy, plus the Tardis helped to stabilize the paradox. It really is dangerous having multiple versions of yourself around."
"But what's going to happen to their families? Will they remember them?" I asked, as The Doctor fiddled around with dials on the console.
"They're your families now. How lucky. An orphaned girl now has five families to call her own. You can't cancel out that sort of familial love. It will be strange and difficult for them. But they remember you, in a way. Now, they just remember the five of you put together."
I was sad for a moment. I had liked meeting all of myselves. They were all different and yet the same. I'd wanted to get to know them.
"Don't you feel it?" the Doctor asked, "All your memories?"
"I concentrated for a second, and I did. I did feel it. I could remember all of myselves as one person. All the friends I had, all the families: all of the knowledge as well. I had five degrees! That was pretty cool. English and Maths and Physics and Philosophy and Law.
"Can we go see them?" I asked.
"Of course," the Doctor replied, a smile in his voice.
"And then, after we've done that, how would you like to get your sight back?" He asked.
He pulled a lever and the handbrake groan began again.