Chapter Nine
"No!" Martha screamed, taking an involuntary step forward, throat tightening in a valiant attempt to stop her heart from leaping out. The Doctor held her back, however, his face set grimly.
"You really shouldn't have done that," he said solemnly, "I tried to warn you, I really did… I'm so sorry, I truly am. But you left me no choice."
"What are you prattling about?" hissed Isis, eyes narrowing on the device in her clawed hands. "Why won't this blasted thing work?" she roared in consternation, rounding on her cohort Anubis, "You! If our engineers have failed…!"
The Doctor stepped firmly between the two of them, face dark, eyes piercing into hers. "They haven't," he assured her, voice low and chilling, "the augmenter works perfectly… I just lied about what this little beauty does," he produced his sonic screwdriver once again with a flourish, sidestepping the 'goddess's violent swipe as he held it high above his head, "Which is to say, it does quite a lot more than scanning."
"What did you do?!" roared Anubis, hackles rising.
"Back off, Scooby," growled the Time Lord, swinging the sonic in the alien's direction, "because for what you four just tried to do, I'm awfully tempted to see what this does to your genetic makeup." Anubis snarled, but backed away. "Right – if you really want to know what's happened, it's simple; I set my sonic device to reverse the signal of that augmenter. Basically, it went up instead of down. As a result, your mothership not only amplified the transmutation process, but became the reception point…"
"…For all that water," gasped Isis, all venom and colour draining from her face, to be replaced with ghostly fear. "No… Doctor, surely you wouldn't be…"
"Wouldn't be what? So cruel?" spat the Doctor, voice dripping with contempt. "Funny that, isn't it?" You could've happily condemned the entire human race to a horrific watery death without a second thought. And yet, here we are, roles slightly reversed, and suddenly I'm the cruel monster. Kinda puts everything into perspective, doesn't it?"
"Our mothership was the last of our fleet!" howled Isis.
"You seem to forget, they were going to let you die anyway," Martha retorted wryly, arms crossed.
"Human simpleton! You don't understand! We were the very last of our kind!" the hooked beak of Horus clicked fearfully. "We're the last of the Braxlavax now, just us five…!"
"Who's mass-murderer now, Doctor?" Isis' query wasn't even attempting to conceal the accusation it carried.
"I…I didn't know," the Doctor couldn't think of anything more to say, but the horror in his eyes spoke volumes. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry…but you left me no choice. I gave you a chance, I really did…"
"We five are all that remains of our race," repeated Isis, her tone darkening as her four fearsome cohorts gathered tightly by her sides, a green light enshrouding them all, "and I swear, for the honour and memory of the slaughtered, that you shall not live to rue your actions! Shall die here, Doctor!"
"Aaaaannd that's our cue to exit, stage any-way-but-that-one. Run, Martha!" he roared, hooking her arm as he took off back the way they'd come, skirting around the five Braxlavax as they began to merge, their visages fusing into an ink-blot-like form. "You, too, Rammy!" he called, grabbing the Pharaoh's arm as well.
"What-what happened?" spluttered Rameses II, life flickering back into his glazed eyes as he stumbled behind the pair of them. He looked back over his shoulder as the misshapen amalgamation of Braxlavax rose and took a more definitive shape. "What in the name of Ra's Light is that?!"
That, had either the Doctor or Martha chose to likewise glance back as they fled, now towered at a staggering twenty feet, had the alluring body of Isis, the canine head of Anubis, its muzzle stretched to take-on the hooked-beak of Horus, its maw filled with rows upon rows of Ammut's serrated crocodile teeth. When its transformation was complete, the behemoth rolled its head, eagle eyes the size of dishes scanning the room, a fearsome feral roar escaping its lips that shook the sand and dust from every crack and crevice in the room when it saw that its target had eluded it.
"Where are you going, Doctor?" it bellowed, its growling tones following the retreating party as they round the last corner of the winding corridor and arrived at the foot of the stairwell up to the surface. "You cannot escape our judgement now!"
"Just watch me," he muttered under his breath as he led Martha and the Pharaoh up the stairs two at a time. "I'm good at that, escaping judgement. Got the silver…"
They emerged from the flood house into the glaring sunlight only to be welcomed by a wall of spears. Stumbling to a halt, the Doctor laughed nervously and dropped the arm of Rameses. "Oh, boy…"
The royal guard were visibly spooked – doubtlessly they had heard the roaring and commotion echoing up from the building's bowels, and were so on edge they looked likely to do serious damage at the first scare.
Rameses strode out in front of the Doctor and his companion, arms raised with the authoritarian airs that demanded instant obedience whilst expertly hiding the fear he had been exhibiting only seconds before.
"Lower your weapons," he commanded sternly, "these outlanders are not our enemies. It is Mepheses! Our own Hem netjer – our High Priest – has betrayed us! He has sided with monsters masquerading as our gods! He – they – must be stopped: your Pharaoh Rameses commands it!"
"Oh, good ol' Rammy!" the Doctor cheered, flashing the bemused Pharaoh a winning smile. "I've always said you were the greatest Pharaoh! A bit…" he hesitated, face twisting in an awkward grimace, "shorter than I imagined, but then again I guess that's hieroglyphs for you, eh? But, oh, what a leader! You wouldn't know it from the air of command he's exuding that he was scared witless moments ago, and a mind-controlled zombie before that, would you?" he winked to Martha, keeping that last comment to a secretive whisper between the two of them. "Am I getting wet?"
Martha scowled. "You're nine hundred years old, Doctor – incontinence was bound to happen sooner or later."
He gave her a short, withering look. "Hold your hands out," he replied simply, throwing his own arms out to his sides, palms up. "Feel that!"
She followed his example tentatively, and was soon met with warm splashes of water as a shower began to descend upon Cairo. "I don't believe it!" she laughed, beaming. "Rain? Here?"
But the Doctor didn't share her joy, eyes cast ashamedly to his feet. "It's not rain, Martha," he sighed heavily, "look around you. Look up."
Balancing on her tiptoes, Martha scanned the streets beyond the royal guard, and gasped at what she saw. People were fleeing down the street, terrified as molten debris fell from the sky like meteorites, slamming into the sand and domiciles alike, exploding in a ball of fire and red-hot metal. Looking up, she saw a giant, acrid black cloud mushrooming overhead, from which the blazing debris was falling.
"Is that…?"
"The remains of the Braxlaxian mothership," the Doctor confirmed sullenly. "All that excess water suddenly appearing onboard, swelling through the decks, flooding everything until there was finally nowhere else for it to go. Then it was just a simple matter of what would give first – the water's un-abating tide, or the ship's integrity…"
"And water always wins," Martha found she was breathing hard, unable to tear her eyes away from the destruction in the sky.
"Actually, I was going to say it's pretty obvious which gave-out first, but that's much better," conceded the Time Lord, "I love that, Martha – might even use it in future. Oh, well…" he sighed, smiling bravely at his companion.
"Oh?" she repeated hesitantly.
"I guess it does rain in Africa!" the tight smile split into a wide grin, the guilt stored away – along with countless other accounts – in the deep recesses of his subconscious.
"Oh," Martha groaned inwardly at the terribly joke. "You're hopeless sometimes…"
"Yeah, but you love me," he agreed cheekily.
You have no idea how close you are, you mad man.
But before either adventurer could take another step, the ground beneath their feet shook and the surface of the Nile roiled violently. The Doctor looked to his companion, sharing a knowing look.
"Looks like the god-mashup got out of the flood house through those tunnels," he shouted over the roar of bubbling water.
"Oh, just great," groaned Martha, "more running?!"
"Don't be too sure…!"
The surface broke, exploding upwards as the hellish figure of the giant Braxlavax hybrid rose to its full height, Anubis' jaws snapping with a deafening crack, fish swallowed whole.
"There you are, Doctor!" it roared as it loomed over the humans (and Time Lord) gathered on the river's banks. "Witness the true power of the Braxlavax, murderer of our people, as it is used for vengeance against you!"
"Give it your best shot," growled the Doctor, not moving an inch as, all around him, terrified royal guards dropped their spears and fled. "I vowed to stop you, and that's exactly what I'm going to do."
End of Chapter Nine
A/N: Slight delay to my intended update schedule - a weak immune system is making food poisoning a common occurence, damn it all - but nevertheless this WILL be finished by the 24th! How can I be so sure, I hear you ask (or not?) Well, this is the penultimate chapter, followed by an epilogue that will hint towards greater and darker things in the Doctor's future should this story actually become a series...
Which, on a similar note, is all down to YOU, the readers/fans (of the show, not necessarily of me, lol). You've all been hanging on ever-so patiently, and I'm very grateful to have such a great, engrossed readership. The question is, do YOU want to read more of my planned DW stories? If you go back to the Note a few chapters back you'll see some of the adventures I have planned. But I can't promise a speedy update schedule right now, only that I'll try my very best to be more regular than I have been with this one. So, do YOU want more Who? Or should it all end in Egypt?
Dave