The Satan Pit Part 1
The Doctor and Ida inched towards the now open trapdoor, looking to one another uncomfortably. Ida shone her torch down into the never ending darkness, circling the rim of the pit as she got her breath back. Frowning, she made her way back to the Doctor, who was also looking down into the deep, black abyss that greeted them. "Can't see anything," Ida told him when she returned to his side. "But what do you think that was? That voice?" she asked. The Doctor bit back a smile, finding it inappropriate for what just happened, but he had to admire her courage.
Looking down to the pit, the Doctor sighed. He'd been brought up to believe things like devils and gods didn't exists, that it was all some sort of made up human fantasy, like the boogieman or the tooth fairy, but now, as he looked down into the endless colourless cylinder, he wasn't so sure. Sure, he'd met gods, at least people pretending to be gods, but this one was different, more life like and real. Or at least it sounded real.
Before he could answer, there was a worried voice that came over the comm. "I can't get any reply, just... NOTHING, I keep trying, but it's..."
The Doctor fiddled with the comm on his helmet at the sound of Rose's voice, replying hastily, "No! Sorry, I'm fine. Still here!"
He heard Rose give s digh of relief, then snapped back with, "You could've said, you stupid b-"
The communication device gave a loud screech, blocking out what Rose had said, for which the Doctor was thankful for. True, she didn't curse often, but that didn't mean he liked it when she did. The Doctor winced at the sound. "WHOA! Careful! Anyway, it's both of us, me and Ida. Hello! But the seal opened up. It's gone. All we've got left is this chasm," he reported as he looked down into the pit again, shinning his torch down the edge.
"How deep is it?" Zach asked.
"Can't tell. It looks like it goes on forever."
"'The pit is open'," Rose quoted the voice that spoke when the trapdoor began to slide open. "That's what the voice said."
"There's nothing coming out?" Zach asked.
"No, no," the Doctor shook his head. "No sign of 'the Beast'."
There was a long pause after, Rose muttering weakly, "It said 'Satan'."
The Doctor's hearts leaped when she said this. She was never really the type to believe in such things, but he supposed it was practically human nature, to be scared of things you can't see. But then again, they were stuck on an impossible planet which should have been destroyed by a black hole the moment the star died, so he didn't really know what she thought anymore. "Come on, Rose. Keep it together," the Doctor encouraged.
"Is there no such thing?" Rose asked testily. The Doctor gave her no reply as he turned his back on the pit. "Doctor, tell me there's no such thing," Rose said, nearly in a begging tone.
"Ida?" came Zach's voice. "I recommend that you withdraw. Immediately."
"But we've come all this way!" Ida exclaimed.
"Okay, I lied, that was an order. WITH-DRAW," Zach commanded, "With that thing open, the whole planet's shifted. One more inch and we fall into the black hole. So this thing stops right now."
"But it's not much better up there with the Ood," Ida protested.
"I'm initiating Strategy Nine, so I need the two of you back up top immediately, no ar-" Zach's voice was cut off due to Ida switching her communicator off. She looking over to the Doctor, who was thinking deeply. "What do you think?" she asked him, snapping him out of his train of thought.
"I think they gave an order," the Doctor commented.
"Yeah," Ida trailed off. "But... what do you think?" The Doctor turned back to the pit, putting one foot on the edge as he stared down into it. "It said "I am the temptation"," he repeated her.
"If... if there's something in there... why's it still hiding?" she reasoned shakily.
"Maybe... we opened the prison but not the cell," he suggested.
"We should go down," Ida nodded confidently. "I'd go. What about you?"
"Oh! Oh, in a second, but then again..." he turned to her giving her a half laugh. "That is so human. Where angels fear to tread. Even now, standing on the edge. It's that feeling you get. Yeah? Right at the back of your head. That impulse... that strange little impulse... that mad little voice saying "go on... go on... go on... go over, go on..." maybe it's relying on that," the Doctor said in wonder. He'd been following that mad little voice ever since he was born and had never once turned against it. Maybe it was time to listen to reason? "For once in my life... Officer Scott... I'm going to say..." he trailed off, tied between doing what he wanted and doing what he knew was the right decision. "Retreat," he said finally, giving a face and a frustrated sigh. He pulled a foot back from the pit, standing next to Ida. "Now I know I'm getting old," he complained. He turned the comm back on, speaking into it. "Rose, we're coming back."
"Best news I've heard all day!" Rose replied, the Doctor hearing the smile in her voice, making the Doctor feel a tad guilty. Going down that hole might have given him the answers to why they were still there, possibly to where his TARDIS was. No, hang on... no, the pit was closed when the TARDIS fell, the Doctor thought. He and Ida walked back to the capsule slowly, the Doctor painfully ignoring his mind telling him to fly down that hole. "What's Strategy Nine?" he asked Ida as the capsule came into their sight.
"Open the airlocks," Ida told him. "We'll be safe inside the lockdown, the Ood will get thrown out into the vacuum."
"So we're going back to a slaughter?" the Doctor asked darkly. They reached the capsule, Ida turning to him. "The devil's work," she stated, opening the capsule and walking in, the Doctor raising his eyebrows and following after her. "Okay, we're in. Bring us up," Ida told the people ten miles about their heads.
There was a slight rumble from the capsule, the lights flickering until they eventually turned themselves off. There was silence for a few long moments, an eeiry, disturbing voice taking its place. "This is the Darkness. This is my domain," said the voice of the Beast. "You little things that live in the light... clinging to your feeble Suns... only the Darkness remains."
"This is Captain Zachary Cross Flane of Sanctury Base Six representing the Torchwood archive," Zach introduced. "You will identify yourself."
"You know my name," the voice stated.
"What do you want?"
"You will die here. All of you," the voice told them coldly. "This planet is your grave."
"If you are the Beast, then answer me this: which one? Hmm?" the Doctor asked testily. "'Cos the universe has been busy since you've been gone. There's more religions than there are planets in the sky. The Archivits... Pordonity, Christianity... Pash-Pash, New Judaism... Sanclar... Church of the Tin Vagabond - which devil are you?"
"All of them," the voice claimed.
"What, then you're the truth behind the myth?" the Doctor asked, leaning on the inside of the capsule.
"This one knows me," the voice said. "As I know him. The killer of his own kind." The Doctor frowned darkly at this, choosing quickly not to acknowledge his comment. "How did you end up on this rock?" he asked.
"The disciples of the Light rose up against me, and chained me in the pit for all eternity."
"When was this?"
"Before time."
"What does 'before time' mean?" the Doctor demanded. If the voice meant before the Universe, that was impossible... wasn't it?
"Before light and time and space and matter," the voice replied. "Before the cataclysm. Before this Universe was created."
The Doctor shook his head in denial. The Universe was the start of everything, everyone knew that. Or at least he thought they did, at sime point or other... maybe. "That's impossible," he said, getting back on track. "No life could have existed back then."
"Is that your religion?" the voice asked. "You know nothing. All of you. So small. The Captain, so scared of command," the voice said mockingly, the first thing coming to his head was Zach. "The soldier, haunted by the eyes of his wife," the only soldier the Doctor knew who was up there was Jefferson, but the Doctor hadn't known he had a wife. "The scientist, still running from daddy," the voice continued, Ida shifting uncomfortably beside him in the capsule. "The little boy who lied, the virgin," the voice added the Doctor giving a toss up between Danny and Toby. "The lost girl, so far away from home. The valiant child who will die in battle so very soon," the voice added. The Doctor felt a pit of worry in his stomach at the comment, or was is prediction? The lost girl, who else must it have been? "Doctor, what does it mean?" Rose asked worriedly.
"Rose, don't listen," the Doctor told her quietly, trying not to dwell on the voice's description of Rose for too long. However, the voice didn't stop there. "And the little Cub, so anxious to protect and change her past, hiding in the shadows; the liar." The Doctor's mind switched to Eliza then. She was here, hiding in the darkness. That was her, no doubt about it. The voice of the Beast disappeared, causing an eruption of questions from up on the Deck. Unable to get a word in due to their frantic voices, the Doctor held his communication device close to the speaker, a loud screech running through the deck, the voices stopping immediately. "If you want voices in the dark, then listen to mine," the Doctor told them. "That thing is playing on very basic fears. Darkness - childhood nightmares, all that stuff."
"But that's how the devil works," Danny protested.
"Or a good psychologist," the Doctor counted.
"But..." Ida started, losing her voice, regaining it when the Doctor looked at her expectantly. "How did it know about my father?" she asked quietly.
There was a brief pause for a moment after her question, but he wouldn't allow himself to believe what he'd said about Ida's father was true. Then there was a possibility what he said about Rose... "Okay, but what makes his version of the truth any better than mine? Hmm? Cos I'll tell you what I can see: humans. Brilliant humans. Humans who travel all the way across space. Flying in a tiny little rocket into the orbit of a black hole! Just for the sake of discovery, that's amazing! Do you hear me? Amazing. All of you. The captain - his officer - his elder - his genius - his friends. All with one advantage. The Beast is alone. We are not. If we can use that to fight against him-" the Doctor was cut off quickly by a loud bang coming from over his and Ida's heads, both of them looking up at the sound of something large and heavy rushing towards them.
"The cable's snapped!" Ida exclaimed in realisation.
"Get out!" the Doctor shouted, grabbing Ida's suit as he pulled her out of the capsule, the loud explosion making him cover his head with his arms, Ida doing the same. After there was silence once again, the Doctor lifted his head, immediately taking note of the dust that was surrounding him and Ida. "You alright?" he asked, nudging the woman beside him. She gave a nod of her head, looking behind them. "Oh no..." she muttered. The Doctor looked to where she was indicating, a feel of dread washing over him. The capsule, their only way back up to the Base, was completely obliterated, nothing there beside a few bits of the wall, floor and the loooooooong cable.
The Doctor got into a sitting position , his arms coming around his legs. "Now what're we gonna do?" he asked Ida, who'd gotten to her feet and inched toward the rubble. She lent down and tested the cable's weight, picking a small amount up in her arms. "Well, we've got all this cable, we might as well use it. The drum's disconnected - we could adapt it," she explained, picking up more of the cable and dragging it away from the capsule. "Feed it through."
"And then what?" the Doctor asked, getting up to help her.
"Abseil," she replied. "Into the pit," she said, looking over uncomfortably toward the abyss. Whatever had known about her and her family was without a doubt down there, and she wasn't sure she wanted to pay it a visit, but what other choice did they have?
"Abseil," the Doctor sighed. "Right."
"We're running out of air with no way back," Ida told him, half frustrated. "It's the only thing we can do. Even if it's the last thing we ever achieve."
"I'll get back," the Doctor promised confidently. "Rose is up there."
"Well, maybe the key to that is finding out what's in the pit," Ida told him reasonably, pulling the last bit of cable from under the ruins.
"Well... it's half of a good plan," the Doctor said in wonder.
"What's the other half?" Ida asked in confusion.
He looked towards the pit, then back at her. "I go down. Not you," he said. Not waiting for her reply, he took one end of the cable and began to drag it toward the pit, only when he was halfway there did Ida decide to help. The two were able to make something to unravel the cable so the Doctor could absail down into the pit, the Doctor attaching one end of the cable to his suit while Ida made sure the mechanism was secure. "That should hold it," Ida said, looking back up at the Doctor, who was eying the pit. "How's it going?" He took a step backwards, the cable unravelling. "Fine! Should work..." he said, edging back toward the pit. "Doesn't feel like such a good idea, now," he joked, giving a half hearted laugh as he balanced himself on the very edge of the crust. "There it is again. That itch," he told her, bobbing up and down on his feet. "Go down, go down, go down, go down, go down," he chanted, mimicking the voice in his head, urging him on and over.
"The urge to jump," Ida smiled knowingly, knowing the feel of adrenaline pumping through her body that woke the voice. "Do you know where it comes from, that sensation? Genetic heritage. Ever since we were primates in the trees. It's our body's way of testing us. Calculating whether or not we can reach the next branch."
"No, that's not it..." the Doctor protested thoughtfully. "That's too kind. It's not the urge to jump, it's deeper than that. It's the urge to fall!" he told her, jumping backwards, over the edge and into the first stages of the pit. Suddenly, his fall was cut short by Ida smashing the button on the machine, causing the Doctor to stop unexpectantly. "Are you okay?" Ida called through the comm.
"Not bad, thanks," the Doctor said, looking around the pit with his torch. "The wall of the pit... seems to be the same as the cavern, just... not much of it," he said as he shone the torch down, only to see more and more darkness, ready to eat him up. "There's a crust about twenty feet down and then... nothing. Just the pit," he took a breath and put the torch away. "Okay, then. Lower me down," he told her, the adrenaline running through his veins as he felt himself being lowered into the dark cavern. Although he was quite a long way from her by now, the Doctor could feel her nervousness, her anxiousness as he was being lowered. "You get representations of the Horned Beast right across the universe," he mentioned, attempting to keep her mind off the current situation. "In the myths and legends of a million worlds. Earth... Draconia, Velconsadine... Daemos... the Kaled God of War... it's the same image, over and over again. Maybe... that idea came from somewhere. Bleeding through... the thought at the back of every sentient mind."
"But if this is the original..." Ida started hesitantly. "Does that make it real? Does that make it the actual devil, though?"
"Well, if that's what you want to believe," the Doctor shrugged. "Maybe that's what the devil is, in the end. An id-" he was cut off as the cable gave a sudden jerk, indicating to both of them that there was no more cable left.
"That's all we've got," Ida informed him. "You getting any sort of readout?"
"Nothing," the Doctor reported as he looked down at his wrist watch. "Could be miles to go, yet. Or... could be thirty feet," he murmured thoughtfully. "No way of telling... I could survive thirty feet..."
"Oh no you don't," Ida chastised him. "I'm pulling you back up." The Doctor felt himself being lifted back into the air, his arm snapping back up to his chest to stop the machine. "What're you doing?" she exclaimed, stomping to the edge.
"You bring me back, then we're just gonna sit there and run out of air," he told her reasonably. "I've gotta go down."
"But you can't," Ida battled weakly. "Doctor, you can't."
"Call it an act of faith," he murmured, unclipping one of the hooks that secured him to the cable.
"But..." Ida started, her voice cracking. "I don't want to die on my own."
The Doctor looked back up to the edge of the pit, a small amount of guilt filling him as he was still determined to leave her. Not like there was much of a choice, mind. "I know," he said lowly, releasing another hook. "I didn't ask - have you got any sort of faith, or...?"
Ida took a breath as she sat down on the edge of the pit, looking up and around her at the designs that had lingered there for who knows how long. "Not really. I was brought up Neo Classic, congregational... because of my mum, she was..." she trailed off, reminiscing. "My old mum... But no, I never believed."
"Neo Classic," the Doctor repeated, not hearing the religion or cult before now. "Have they got a devil?"
"No, not as such," Ida said dismissively. "Just the things that men do. What about you?"
The Doctor paused, his finger just about to release another hook as he thought. "I believe..." he said, not really knowing what to say. He didn't really have any sort of religious upbringing, not like anyone on his home planet did, he didn't believe there were any gods or deities. "I believe I haven't seen everything, I don't know... it's funny, isn't it? The things you make up - the rules. If that thing had said it came from beyond the universe, I'd believe it, but before the universe... impossible. Doesn't fit my rule. Still, that's why I keep travelling," he said in wonder."To be proved wrong," he said, releasing the second to last hook. "Thank you, Ida."
There was a short pause, Ida quickly exclaiming, "Don't go!" as she stood up from her seat.
"If they get back in touch..." the Doctor started, looking down at the darkness. "If you talk to Rose... just tell her..." he stopped himself. This really shouldn't be a way she should hear it, from someone else. But in reality, this might be his last chance... "Tell her I..." he paused again, taking a breath. He shook his head softy as the young blonde ran through his head, the way she smiled or whenever her face lit up when she saw him. The way she looked at him after a kiss... "Oh, she knows," the Doctor said to himself in realisation. Taking a quick breath, he released the last hook, wincing at the uncomfortable feel of air rushing passed him as he raced toward the bottom of the pit, the hallucination of Rose's voice screaming, "Doctor? Are you there? Doctor, Ida? Can you hear me?"
