A/N: Here's the concluding part to Episode Three - pls review!
Pope O'Klaxtaar the Fourth had been praying for several hours, and focusing his mind. He could see what was happening inside the Stone Citadel.
Weeping Angels, the Doctor and his friends, Father Marcus and his Clerics, and the Gateway – the Gateway that only he could open.
The Gateway was at the top of the Stone Tower. The Angel had killed his entourage, and used their blood to begin powering the Gateway – a Gateway to Earth.
If the Weeping Angels were to get through the Gateway, the results would be disastrous. And the only man who could stop it was on his way up to the Chambers.
But time was running out, and soon enough, the Doctor was going to have to make a choice – a choice that could threaten the entire world.
"Back up generators!" the Doctor cried, happily, rubbing his hands together. The run through the balconies hadn't taken much out of him and he hadn't waited on Marcus to catch up before launching into playing with the generators.
They were at the left hand side of the Tower, where three large generators were currently inactive.
"So what does each generator do?" the Doctor asked.
"First one here is for the emergency internal power," panted Marcus, "the second generator is for the primary deadlock system, and the third generator is for the secondary deadlock systems, deeper inside."
"Right then, I better get a move on then!" the Doctor beamed, flourishing his sonic screwdriver.
"You can't kill us if we're looking at you," said Callum. It had been two minutes since he'd last blinked – and he found himself thinking back to the last staring competition he'd had with his best friend, Keith. It seemed like months since he'd seen him last, and - as bad a moment as possible - he felt a tinge of guilt. He made a silent vow to ask the Doctor for a trip back to Glasgow, if he survived this.
"Correct, sir," Angel Bob replied, "but when you blink, the Angels will know. We will kill you."
"Bob, you're a numpty," Amy growled, trying to keep her eyes open.
"Try one eye at a time, Amy," Callum suggested, "if we can just hold them off for another minute or so."
"I'm sorry, sir, but the Angels would like to know what you hope to achieve? You're both going to die anyway," Angel Bob said. And then Callum felt himself blink. When he'd opened them again a split second later, the Angels had all advanced several feet through the doorway.
"Run!" Amy cried, grabbing Callum by the wrist and dragging him up the balcony backwards, so they were both facing the Weeping Angels, with Angel Bob still standing at the front of them all.
They fell back through archway upon archway, around the outer edge of the Citadel, the stone walls with other sets of double doors at regular intervals. The wind was cutting, but they took no notice of it, as they were more preoccupied about the deadly stone statues advancing after them.
They turned the corner, and began running forwards. Callum looked back over his shoulder and cried out as he saw the group of Angels already at the corner.
"Amy, I'm really not enjoying this!" he yelled.
"Join the club!" Amy panted.
The Doctor had finished getting one of the generators online, and several lights around and inside the Tower burst into life, casting an eerie red glow above the Citadel. It seemed to be getting stormy, and the gentle snowfall from earlier on had begun to get heavier, on top of the angry winds blowing down.
The Doctor had ducked underneath the second generator, and was doing some rewiring with the generator next to it.
"Saving us some time," he explained to Marcus, who wasn't even watching what he was doing. "Y'see, there's two generators powering the deadlock seals, which would take a good ten minutes to rewire both, so I'm going to rewire them both into the one generator and then loop the power into the door controls."
"Alright, well, I implore you to be as quick as possible, sir, the Angels will be here soon!"
"They're not a problem until Callum and Amy get here," the Doctor said, buzzing at a panel with the sonic screwdriver.
"What if the Angels got them?" Marcus replied.
"They won't have," the Doctor replied, definitely.
"But what if they have?"
"Then I make it my personal duty to wipe out every single Weeping Angel in the Universe," the Doctor said, poking his head up from under the generator. "Alright?"
"Y-yes," Marcus stuttered, taken aback.
"Good!" the Doctor replied, cheerily, ducking back under the generator.
"Doctor!" Amy's shout was muffled by the snow and the wind.
The generators both went online. The Doctor jumped up happily.
"Amelia! Callum!" he cried.
They were both running up the stairs that lead from the balconies to the Tower Entrance, looking behind them every second.
"They're coming!" Callum shouted.
"Yes, I'd guessed that," the Doctor shouted back, "I'll get the doors open!" He stepped up to the large stone double doors and pointed the sonic screwdriver at the gap in between. With a loud rumble, the doors parted to a gap just big enough for them to squeeze through.
"Right, hurry up and get in, I can seal the doors from inside and that should hold the Angels off for a few minutes!" the Doctor ordered, ushering the others in through the gap. He stepped in after them, just as the first few Angels reached the top of the stairs. The Doctor sonicked the doors and they slid shut behind him, before he ran off down the eerie red tunnel after his friends.
There was another gravity platform on the ground floor, and they used that to get up to the 17th floor, where there was a locked doorway leading into the Elevated Chambers.
"Right, now we have to work out a way to get in," the Doctor pondered.
"I don't suppose we could try an explosion?" Callum suggested, echoing his idea from earlier on in the lobby of the Citadel.
"No!" Marcus cried. "We are not causing an explosion in any part of the Vatican, and that is final!"
"Alright, alright, simmer down!" Callum replied. "Not like we've really got anything explosive anyway."
"What about a ventilation shaft?" Amy asked, leaping up onto a wooden table, and tugging at a metal grille on the wall. It fell down to the floor with a metal clang.
"I better check the schematics to see where it leads first," Marcus said, tapping away at his machine. After a few seconds, he turned back and nodded. "It seems to lead directly into the Elevated Chambers."
"Excellent!" the Doctor beamed, hopping up onto the table. "Let's go!"
Shuffling through a ventilation shaft had never really been one of Callum's top priorities, and now that he was shuffling through one, in the Vatican, on a mission to rescue the Pope from killer statues, he realised that he never really wanted to do it again.
Ventilation shafts in films were always spotlessly clean and shiny, with lots of light and space. But here he was, shuffling through a dusty, dirty, dark, cramped shaft with no source of light except the glowing tip of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
"How far are we going to have to go?" he coughed.
"I'd say just two more lefts and a right," the Doctor replied, seemingly not irritated by the mess in the shaft.
"I must say, this is certainly better than some of the training exercises I've ever went on," Father Marcus laughed.
"Oh, you can laugh! See, now you're getting it!" the Doctor beamed.
"Although how anyone can laugh when they're in a ventilation shaft like this, I will never know!" Amy commented, and Callum nodded – even though he knew nobody could see him.
Finally, they came to another grille and with a blast from the sonic screwdriver, it fell open and they slid out one behind the other.
"Oh," Amy said. "Now I understand why it's called the Elevated Chambers..."
They were on what appeared to be a system of floating platforms that rose and fell and linked to one another with the use of a small control panel. All around them were a multitude of doors.
"This is like one big video game!" Callum laughed. "But which door do we go to?"
"The double doors up the top, leading onto the Annex," Marcus said. "The machine traces the Pope's life-signs to be right behind that door."
The set of double doors in question were about fifty feet above their heads, and there was only one platform that went up that high – at the opposite side of the room.
"Well, this'll be fun!" the Doctor beamed.
Several minutes later, after the four of them had made their way to the set of double doors, they were faced with another slight problem.
The doors at the bottom of the room were being pounded, angrily.
"Ah, that's not good," the Doctor commented. He turned to the door. It was an average set of double doors, made of wood with some iron handles, and a large padlock binding them shut. Inspecting the padlock closer, the Doctor saw several symbols engraved into the lock, and they were glowing with a green, flickering light.
"Right, need to work out which symbols unlocks the door, basically?" he asked Marcus. His question was met with a nod for a reply.
"Better hurry up about it, Doctor," Amy said, pointing downwards. "I don't think that door's up to much."
"Especially from a bunch of angry stone statues," Callum added.
"Yes, yes, I get your point," the Doctor huffed. He turned to inspect the lock again, and buzzed it with the sonic screwdriver. A symbol changed colour to a blue colour. "Excellent."
He worked in silence for a minute or so, while Amy, Callum and Marcus tensely gazed downwards at the other set of double doors, until finally...
"Done!" The Doctor jumped up from the floor and stood back as the lock fell off of the door and the double doors swung open to reveal a cathedral-like room, with wall carvings and tapestries, and large pedestals at each corner of the room. There was a pedestal in the centre of the room too, and on this pedestal:
"The Pope!" cried Marcus, running into the room.
Pope O'Klaxtaar the Fourth had been in a trance-like state, imprisoned inside a large electric cage, but Marcus' cry had stirred him round.
"Ah, hello there – I assume you're going to rescue me from the Weeping Angels now, yes?" the Pope said, cheerily, almost as if he was day dreaming.
"Don't worry," the Doctor whispered, "he's always like this. Apparently. Hello, your Pope-ness, I'm the Doctor, this is Callum Hendrick and Amelia Pond! And I suppose you'll already know Father Marcus."
"Indeed, indeed," the Pope replied, nodding his reptilian head. "Hello there!"
"He reminds me of my granddad," Callum murmured to Amy, smiling as they both waved hello to the old reptile. The corners of Amy's mouth raised in a smile.
"Right then, seems to me you're in a Static Cage," the Doctor said.
"Probably," the Pope smiled, absent-mindedly, waving his hand casually.
"And he will stay there until the Gateway is opened," Angel Bob's voice echoed through the room. The five of them turned to face the doors that they had forgotten to close behind them.
"Ah," the Doctor said, unhelpfully, as they turned to face the group of Weeping Angels in the doorway. "And how exactly does that work, Bob?"
"He can open the Gateway, sir."
"The Gateway?"
"A passage to the closest geographical source that can support life," Father Marcus explained. "Security protocol Sigma 34."
"So you want to use the Gateway to get to Earth?" Callum realised.
"Correct, sir. The Angels will return to Earth and unite with our brothers and sisters encased in stone across the planet. We will rise. The time of Angels," Bob said.
"The time of Angels," the Doctor echoed, worriedly.
"And now you are here, sir, you can witness the Angel's re-genesis. Time to open the Gateway, your Holiness, sir."
"No!" cried Callum.
"You can't!" Amy said.
"Oh, don't worry, children, of course I won't!" the Pope said, cheerfully.
"They will all die if you do not, sir," Angel Bob said. "And I am afraid you have no choice."
The Static Cage began to crackle with energy and close in around the old reptile. He cried out in pain as the light became a bright purple orb that crackled and sparked.
"We have to help him!" Amy cried.
"I'm afraid... you cannot... child," the Pope wheezed.
Before Amy could reply, the orb of purple light blasted off up through the ceiling, and the Pope fell to the pedestal, breathing heavily. Father Marcus jumped up to him.
"Ah, now we have a slight problem," the Doctor said, as the lights flickered momentarily, and he found himself surrounded by Angels.
"We probably should have kept our eyes on them, shouldn't we?" Callum said, weakly, also surrounded.
"The Angels want you to know that they won't kill you yet, but you will die as part of the re-genesis of the Angels," Bob said. He was the Angel directly facing the Doctor.
And suddenly, a huge stone circle descended from the ceiling, held by metal rods that were lowering it gently towards the pedestal at the very front of the room, in front of the windows. It was spinning, and surrounded by the purple light that had been released from the Pope.
"The Gateway is online," Angel Bob said, and with every blink they each made, the Angels turned to face the Gateway.
Purple lightning was erupting from out of the centre of the circle, and it seemed to widen, as the purple energy made a tunnel in the centre of the stone circle. It spun faster and faster, lightning erupting from it. The Angels rabid monkey-like faces returned to more human features, and they gazed at the Gateway.
And the Doctor took this moment to act.
He ducked around the Angels surrounding him and ran up to the pedestal.
"Keep your eyes on them!" he roared back to Marcus, Amy and Callum, as he jumped up onto the platform.
"Don't know about them, but I'm trying my best!" cried Amy.
"Oh, trust me, I'm keeping my eyes on them!" shouted Callum in panic. "I hope you know what you're doing, Doctor!"
"Not a clue," the Doctor replied, too quietly to be heard over the crackling and spinning Gateway above him. "Think, think, think." And then... "Ah!"
He jumped up and grabbed the outer edge of the stone circle and hoisted himself up onto it, before waiting for an 180 degree turn before jumping up onto one of the metal rods holding the stone circle.
And sure enough, luckily, a control panel!
The Angels were getting closer, save for the ones surrounding the others – Angel Bob leading.
"There is no use, Doctor. Nothing you can do will stop the time of Angels."
The Doctor observed the control panel and tapped a few buttons, adjusted two or three control dials and then slumped, looking defeated.
"No, you're right."
Amy and Callum exchanged looks and gasps.
"No!" Marcus roared. "There must be something you can do!"
"I'm afraid not," the Doctor said, dropping down off of the stone circle.
"S-so, the Earth is..." started Callum, a lump appearing in his throat.
"I'm afraid so, yes," the Doctor said, defeatedly. "I've failed you all, I'm sorry."
"N-no. No."
"This can't be happening," Amy said, putting her hands to her face. The Angels around her weren't moving anyway – there was no point looking at them.
"The Gateway is at 96 per cent complete," Angel Bob said. "You can say goodbye to your friends, sir. Before the Angels kill you, of course."
"Y-yes," the Doctor said, jumping off of the pedestal and walking across back to his friends at the middle pedestal.
"I suppose this is it," Callum said.
"I'm sorry, Cal," the Doctor replied, "I should never have let this happen. Amelia, Callum, Father Marcus, Pope O'Klaxtaar, I apologise from the bottom of both my hearts."
"There is no need, Doctor," wheezed the Pope, propping himself up slowly on his elbow, a hand to his heart. The others nodded their agreement.
"The Gateway is complete," Angel Bob said, now standing directly below the spinning stone circle. It stopped spinning, and was now suspended vertically – making a purple tunnel fading into darkness. "And now you and your friends will die, sir."
"Yes, um, as for the whole 'revenge' part of the plan, I may have to ask you to reconsider," the Doctor smiled.
"What do you mean, sir? You are going to die."
"Really? Even if I do... this?" the Doctor asked, flourishing the sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the stone circle. There was a brilliant white flash and the purple light became a red whirlpool. Suddenly, there was a dull boom from deep inside the Gateway and tiny threads of red light blasted out of the Gateway, each latching onto an Angel.
"What have you done?" Angel Bob said, a hint of panic in his usually oh-so-calm voice.
"Oh, well, you see, you had already set the Gateway to only accept the Angels to cross through it, and really, it wasn't too hard to remember how to reverse the polarity of a Grade Seven transporter. Instead of going to the nearest place that can inhabit life, you're going to the furthest place that can't. Every single Angel. Destination: the black hole galaxies of Hades Four. Enjoy your journey!"
And with that, the Doctor sonicked the Gateway again. It boomed again, from deep inside, and the red threads latched to the Angels became thicker. A terrible screeching bounced through the room.
"Have mercy, sir. The Angels are pleading for mercy."
"Sorry Bob, not today," the Doctor said, solemnly. The Angels began to dissolve into the red light and the screeching became louder.
"Have... mercy, sir," Bob's voice croaked as the Angel was dragged right into the Gateway. The other Angels followed after it into the depths of the Gateway, tumbling forwards into oblivion, wind whipping the five other occupants of the room. The red light began to expel lightning, getting angrier and angrier.
"Get down!" the Doctor yelled, hitting the floor. The others followed suit, and as the last Angel fell into the Gateway, there was a final dull boom, and the stone circle exploded – the light fading away into nothing.
Rising from the rubble, coughing and covered in dust, the Doctor and his friends exchanged smiles.
"Cut that one bloody close!" Callum wheezed.
"More fun that way," the Doctor replied. "Had to make them think they had the upper hand or they'd no doubt have tried to send one of us through first."
"Well, that was a spot of fun," Pope O'Klaxtaar cheered. "But I think I could do with a cup of tea, and I assume I'll have to send some Clerics to do a clean-up. Shall we descend the Citadel?"
Back in the Entrance Courtyard, the Doctor, Callum and Amy stood in the TARDIS' doorway, still covered in patches of dust. The Pope, Father Marcus and the Clerics that had been in the Stone Citadel stood in front of them.
"Well, it was a pleasure meeting you, your Holiness!" the Doctor smiled, bowing to the old reptile.
"Yes, yes, about five past six," the Pope replied. Father Marcus gave him a strange look.
"We better be off then," Amy said. "Til the next time?"
"I very much look forward to it, young lady," the Pope said. "Good luck with you in your futures. Especially you, young man," he pointed to Callum, "I see strange things coming your way."
"No stranger than today," laughed Callum. "But thank you."
"Father Marcus," a Cleric cried, running out of the Golden Citadel, "the pond in the Frozen Courtyard. You should really see this."
"Well, we'd best be off! Goodbye!" the Doctor said, as the three travellers entered the TARDIS and waved their goodbyes. The Pope waved back.
As the TARDIS dematerialised, the Cleric that had ran out of the Citadel handed a photograph to Father Marcus.
"Doctor!" bellowed Marcus, dropping the photograph. "Doctor! DOCTOR!"
The Pope bent down and picked it up from the ground.
The triangular pond, that was usually completely frozen over in the Frozen Courtyard was now completely empty. Not a single drop of ice or water. Only a massive lightning bolt graffitied right across the centre. And the image of a blue box, directly in the middle of it.
"The Fallen Triangle," whispered the Pope, his eyes widening in shock.
A/N: Oooooh, cliffhanger! Meanwhile in the TARDIS up next!