A/N - After this episode's done, there's gonna be a Meanwhile in the TARDIS segment and then Episode Four Part One should be up on December 1st - I hope you don't object to waiting a couple weeks, hehe *sweatdrops*
Cleric Ron was tired. He'd been on a training exercise the night before, and hadn't had a minute of sleep all day. Running around the forest on the outside of the Vatican's walls, blasting and avoiding laserbeams had left him bruised, slightly burnt, and exhausted, to the point that his mind had started playing tricks on him. Glimpses of shadows and flashing lights throughout the endless stone labyrinth of the Citadel.
"Miss Pond? Mr Hendrick?" he cried out, aiming his gun at the doors around him, nervously. "Callum? Amelia?"
In the distance he could swear he heard the scraping of stone on stone.
"Hello?" he called out.
No reply.
"It's alright, mate," he muttered to himself, "you've got a gun, that thing's made of stone, what can it really do?"
He didn't bother answering himself.
Then a burble of static seemed to come from a room down the passage. Red and gold wallpaper, with white marble pillars holding up the ceiling, lined the walls. The doors were of a rosewood texture, with golden handles, small room numbers were engraved in the handles.
He turned around to the source of the static – Room 653 – the 53rd room on the 6th floor. Hesitantly, he turned the handle and stepped into the room.
He was in a monitoring room, full of rows of computers and a large screen on the far off wall, with all the rows facing it. The Universal Broadcasts Room – usually manned by fifty-seven men and women, analysing every television, radio, computer, and bio-sphere transmission in the Universe to broadcast the progress or flight patterns of the Vatican, to communicate as to just where the floating city would orbit next.
The source of the static was from the large screen on the far wall. It was flickering wildly and as Ron drew closer, the sound of static got more and more deafening. He reached up and switched off the screen with the large command lever next to it.
As he turned away and began to leave the room, the screen switched itself back on. He frowned, walked back and yanked the lever back down again.
He turned away again and began walking up to the door, when the screen burst into life, and static burbled through the room.
"I used to be like you."
Ron swiveled around, eyes wide in fear, trying to find the source of Angel Bob's voice.
"Don't be scared, Ron, I was scared," Angel Bob said, as an image of the Angel appeared onscreen. "Just look at me, Ron. Can you see fear?"
"N-no, the Doctor said not to look in your eyes!"
"But you're already looking at me, Ron," said Bob. "And now you have two choices."
"Wh-what's that?" Ron replied.
"You can look away, and I'll come out of the screen and kill you," Bob replied, coolly. "Or you can look into my eyes and I'll let you live."
"D-d-do you promise?" Ron squeaked.
"Yes, Ron, I do. An Angel does not need to lie."
And then Ron forgot the world, and all he saw was the stone cold eyes of the Angel on the screen, and emptiness consumed him.
"Cleric Ron? Cleric Ron?" the Doctor called, as they entered the sixth floor passageway, with Amy, Callum and Marcus in tow. Having reunited on the stairwell, they had followed his life-sign on Marcus' machine up several floors.
"I'm here," Cleric Ron said, striding around the corner. He was no longer wearing his helmet and wasn't holding his gun anymore.
"Where is your weapon, Cleric?" Father Marcus asked, angrily.
"I must have dropped it," Ron replied, almost eerily. He tilted his head to the side. "I found something. This way."
He walked down the passage and turned the corner.
"Should we follow him? He seems a bit... weird?" Amy murmured.
"He's probably more of a danger to himself," Callum reasoned, "and he's unarmed. I think we should go see what he's found, and if he tries anything, um..."
"Good reasoning," the Doctor said. "Last part went a bit off, but I think it's best to make sure he's alright before we head up to the Balconies. Father?"
"Yes, yes, alright, I better see my Cleric is alright," Marcus replied, a hint of steel in his tone.
"Right, then. Come on."
They turned the corner to see another empty corridor with a single open door. The sound of crackling static was coming through the door.
"I'm not liking this," Callum whispered to Amy as the four of them tentatively approached the door.
Apprehensively, the Doctor pushed the door open wider.
"Ron?" he called out, quietly.
"I am in here, Doctor," Cleric Ron replied.
The Doctor pushed the door open widely and they stepped into a room full of banks of computer monitors, a larger screen on the far wall. All the screens were flickering wildly, and the speakers at the corners of the room were erupting the sound of white noise.
Cleric Ron stood by a large lever beside the larger screen.
"What are you doing in here, Cleric?" Marcus asked, loudly, trying to be heard over the noise.
"I am making a sacrifice, Father," Ron replied, tilting his head to the side, with a horribly strange child-like fascination.
"A sacrifice?" the Doctor echoed. "What do you mean a sacrifice?"
"A sacrifice to the Angels, Doctor. I am giving them freedom."
"Oh, this isn't good," Callum murmured.
Suddenly, the door behind them slammed shut, and the monitors began to bring a shape into focus. Callum and Amy ran to the door and began hammering on it, trying the handle desperately.
"What are you doing, Ron? Stop this, stop it now!" bellowed Marcus.
The monitors were going wild, and the Doctor was getting frustrated.
"What could he be doing? Why this room? Why not any other room?" he rambled, tapping the side of his head with his fingers. "Computer monitors... There's something I'm missing, something I've forgotten... Similar to before..."
"Doctor!" Amy cried, as suddenly the shapes on the monitor came into focus, and a multitude of Angels appeared on the screen, another appearing on the large screen.
"Angel Bob, again, yes?" the Doctor called out. "I know you can hear me, answer me."
"Hello, sirs, miss. Are you ready to die?" Angel Bob replied, coolly, through the speakers and Callum's phone simaltenously.
"Why are you doing this? What's the point?!" Callum yelled, gripping his phone tightly.
"Miss Pond can tell you. We crawled into her eyes."
Amy stepped back from the door in shock, grabbing a table to support her.
"That which holds the image of an Angel," she whispered, wide-eyed.
"Itself becomes an Angel," the Doctor finished, glaring at the screen. "So, you're going to multiply yourself using us? If we look at the screens, they stay where they are, but if we blink, or look away, and they come out after us?"
"Very good, sir," Angel Bob replied. "But the Angels will need voices. The Angels have been silent for so very long."
"So you're taking ours?" Callum cried. "You can't do that!"
"On the contrary, sir," Angel Bob said, "we can."
"Doctor, sonic the door, we need to get out of here!" Father Marcus roared.
"I can't! It's wood!" the Doctor cried. "This is getting to become such a nuisance!"
"None of you are looking at the screens," Amy cried, and the three of them turned to look at them.
A multitude of hologram-like Angels were coming out of the screens. The Doctor counted quickly.
"Fifty-six new Angels are going to come out of the screens, Angel Bob will come out the big screen, that's fifty-seven Angels to deal with. How do we get out of this?"
"Turn the power off?" Marcus suggested.
"It has no effect, they can keep enough energy flowing through the system to become corporeal."
"Oh, well, this is going great!" Amy groaned, trying not to blink, her eyes straining.
"Cover me, Father," Callum cried, "I've got an idea!"
"Don't do anything stupid, Callum!" the Doctor said, feeling his eyelids begin to strain as well.
"Doctor, I can completely and honestly tell you that there is a definite ninety-eight percent chance this is incredibly stupid," Callum found himself joking. The Doctor managed a weak smile.
"Oh, all right then," he croaked as he found himself blinking. The Angels from the screens around him moved closer and he stepped back a little.
"Covering me yet, Marcus?" Callum shouted.
"Yes! Hurry up!" Marcus roared back.
"Doing it now! You said you wanted culture earlier on, Doctor?" Callum shouted, jumping up onto the bank of monitors and running along them. He saw several of the Angels move behind him, and he kicked one of the monitors off of the desk. Finally reaching the end of the row he prepared to jump.
"Yes," the Doctor replied, puzzled, "but what's that got to do with anything?"
"Here's a taste of Glasgow culture!" Callum yelled, swinging his arm and punching Ron square in the jaw. Ron collapsed to the ground and Callum grabbed the lever and yanked on it.
The screens all switched off, and the hologram Angels froze.
"Try the door!" Callum shouted.
Amy ran to the door and turned the handle.
"Yes! It's open!" she beamed, opening the door.
"Right then, out, out, out! Good swing, Callum! Although, really, I should condone the violence," the Doctor grinned, stepping back through the door, Callum and Marcus behind him. Suddenly though, the lever dropped again and the screens switched back on, and the Angels flickered and began to become more solid. The Doctor slammed the door shut.
"What about Ron?" Callum asked.
"There's no chance for him now, Angel Bob already had him under his control by the looks of it. But now we have fifty-seven Angels to deal with instead of one, and bullets aren't going to stop them... And I don't suppose there's any cracks in the Universe to throw them down either. The one that Angel Bob came through must have been pretty small, or there would have been some sort of energy released."
The door began to shake.
"We should probably start running again," Amy suggested.
"Yes, good idea!" the Doctor agreed.
They reached the twelfth floor without any interruption, and then the gravity platform had taken them up fifty floors to the balcony. The Doctor sonicked the set of double doors that lead onto the balcony.
The balcony was polished, smooth stone, with ornate pillars and several large planters on the corners. It was freezing cold, and an icy wind was blowing, whistling through the gaps in between the pillars. The floor was a grey stone tile all the way across, and as they stood on the edge of the balcony, looking down, Callum realised just how enormous the Vatican was.
The Courtyards were like spaces on a chessboard – the Frozen Courtyard a large white-blue square, and another three Courtyards around the base of the Citadel. A large outer wall surrounded the Courtyards, then what seemed to be streets inside the massive walls, and then on the other side of the walls, a large expanse of forest, stretching on to the emptiness of space. But out there, so far below them, was the Earth. Callum loved seeing it, and he remembered the first time he had seen his own planet from space – when the Doctor had landed the TARDIS on top of a meteor that had currently been spiralling around the entire planet. They'd had cake that day.
"Right, you lot, we better get round this balcony," the Doctor said, locking the doors behind him. "Any word from your Clerics, Marcus?"
"I'm afraid not – the Angels must be manipulating communications. It's as if the only link is through to Angel Bob," Marcus replied.
"Oh," the Doctor whispered, a smile appearing on his face. He stepped back so he could face the other three.
"Yeah? What've you figured out?" Amy asked.
"A link!" cried the Doctor, snapping his fingers. "Angel Bob mentioned a link re-establishing after we were dead, but that was just how he was ranking things in level of importance. Right now, our deaths are more important than whatever that link is. And the Pope has that potential link. But how? Why?"
"Whoa, whoa, Doctor, you're going to have to slow down a bit here," Callum said. "So the Pope has some sort of link that can control something that'll help the Weeping Angels? But the Angels aren't going to do anything about it until we're dead?"
"Yes, that's it. Mainly me and Amy, because they're 'seeking revenge' – but they want voices as well..."
"Right, well, they want the right to speak, and they want the link that the Pope has to be re-established and do... do what?" Amy reasoned.
"Not too sure," the Doctor replied, "I have a theory, but it's a bit patchy. I think we're best finding the Pope and working it all out from there."
"Right then, sir," Marcus said, "do you have any idea how you're going to get into the Stone Tower?"
"Well, at the base of the Tower there'll definitely be some back up generators – because it would be silly having a deadlock seal without some sort of back up for the doors and emergency lighting, stuff like that."
"Um, Doctor, you might want to get a move on then," Callum gulped.
"Why? What is it?" Amy asked, turning round to face him.
Callum was pointing at the large double doors, which were beginning to shake wildly.
"Come on, we have to run!" Father Marcus cried, aiming his gun at the door.
"There's no point using a gun, Father, bullets can't stop them," the Doctor said. "Now, Callum, Amelia, come on, we're getting around the balconies."
"Doctor, I'll buy you some time – the doorway isn't too wide, so I should be able to keep them all in my line of vision. Go and get the Tower open, and I'll hold them back," Callum said.
"Callum!" the Doctor replied, "they will kill you. Come with u-"
"I'll stay with him, Doctor – we'll get out of here as soon as they get too close," Amy said.
"You too?" the Doctor sighed, accepting defeat. "Right, okay, you two can try and hold them back for a while, but don't stay for too long. Marcus and I will meet you at the base of the Stone Tower – just follow the balcony, and you'll see it."
"Okay," Callum nodded. Amy nodded too.
"Good luck," Father Marcus said, "may God be with you."
"Yeah, um, cheers," Callum replied awkwardly – not being particularly religious, "you too."
The Doctor quickly hugged his two friends.
"You better come running!" he ordered them, pointing to them both.
"Don't worry, we will," Amy laughed.
"Good," the Doctor smiled, and kissed her forehead.
"This happens all to often," Amy smiled back.
"Very true, Amelia Pond," laughed the Doctor, and he ran off, with Father Marcus in tow.
The doors gave one last pound, and they burst open, to reveal fifty-seven sinister Weeping Angels, eyes covered, with Angel Bob at the front of the group, pointing towards them, his eyes uncovered. A speaker in the corner of the wall crackled into life.
"You are both going to die."