.11. Revelations
Gasping, the Doctor raised his head to look at the creature, which had appeared in his cell. Slightly taller than an average human being, covered with armour resembling a chitin crust of an insect, it moved deceptively slow. Deceptively, because a moment ago, when the Doctor had tried to attack the creature, he got hit by one of its extremities and thrown against the wall with an impetus that left him breathless. He slammed the back of his head against the plastimetallic wall, momentarily close to loosing consciousness. He tried to get up, but his arms and legs would not listen. He had never been physically strong, but after many days of, well, let's say it – after many days of tortures – he had just enough strength to raise his head.
"I don't know you," he gasped. "I don't even know who you are."
"It's because I've changed," answered the insect-like creature. "You have changed since our last meeting as well. I've never thought you vain, but I've must been mistaken. A pretty face for a pretty companion. So, where's your Rosebud now? Lost behind a wall of a different garden, a different world, a different reality."
It crouched next to the Doctor, piercing him with human eyes looking out of the insect's face. Its eyes were old, blurred with milky cataracts.
"So, which incarnation is it?" it asked. "Tenth? Oh, you and your regeneration. How interesting."
The Doctor bit his lips. This creature had played with his life for so many days, bringing him to the brink of regeneration through injuries and pain, depriving him of food and water, light and air, injecting medicines and poisons, making fun of him. A lot had happened in the Doctor's lengthy life, but never had he felt a helpless prisoner. He was never a victim. Well, maybe except the times when... Forget it!
The worst of it was the fact that no one would help him. In desperate times he could always count on people or other entities, even those he had met just in passing. Rose, pulverising the Dalek Emperor's army into atoms; Mickey, at right moment using his mobile phone; Ian Chesterton, risking his life in the Aztec's tunnels; Martha, crossing the wastelands of the Master; even K9, sacrificing its metal existence for the Doctor. And now he was alone.
Alone, except...
"Just tell me who you are," he repeated. "If we have met in the past, tell me when?"
"A hundred years ago. In three years. Yesterday. What difference does it make, Time Lord?"
"I could name you."
"Ah!" The creature uttered an unpleasant laughter. "So important. Naming things. Taming the shadows."
It bent over the Doctor.
"You are predictable. You have named yourself the Doctor, because you are afraid of superstition, ignorance and darkness. You named yourself the Engineer, because you believe that you can fix anything."
It stretched again, tall and slightly scary, with its old, human eyes burning in the alien face.
"I didn't name myself; I was named by my parents, but I've decided that their choice was right. The First. The First created. The First banished. The First punished disproportionately to his crime."
For a long time the Doctor was starring at the creature with wide open eyes.
"Adam," he said at last, quietly, almost whispering.
The creature took a whistling breath.
"Congratulations! So you do remember. Geocomtex. Henry van Statten's underground base, Utah, 2012. Adam Mitchell."
"You have changed," said the Doctor cautiously. "You really have changed. Weeell, maybe not completely, not for the better in any case..."
"This?" The creature, which in the relative past of the Doctor's timeline used to be a young clever employee of the American multimillionaire, made a gesture as if presenting a new and posh piece of clothing. "This is just a costume. A physical shell that does not wear out as quickly as the plain human body. In a way I'm much like you, Doctor – I'm changing my costumes to cheat death. I live for so long now, so very long..."
"Your eyes," said the Doctor. "They are old."
"Many years have passed."
"But how is it possible?" The Doctor overcame the initial shock. He rested his back against the wall, then got up with effort and started circling his interlocutor, craning his neck and staring intently at Adam's insect-like face. He would put on his glasses, if they had not been taken away, alongside the sonic screwdriver and all the rest of indispensable gadgets usually filling his pockets. "I've left you at home, in 2012. You were supposed to keep quiet, make no fuss..."
"You did not leave me at home. Don't excuse yourself, don't pretend you cared," burst out Adam, pushing the Doctor against the wall again. "You disposed of me as if I were a pile of rubbish. I've made one mistake; I didn't mean any harm; I was just curious. I was young? Don't you make mistakes, Doctor?"
The Doctor raised a hand and tousled his mated, tangled hair.
"Apparently I do."
"You threw me away. You used me and you chucked me away. And you knew that my life was as good as finished; I had a bloody computer terminal in my forehead; my head would open at the snap of fingers; you could see my bloody brain! How was I supposed to live? How did you imagine my bloody life? How was I supposed to live?"
"Quietly?" mumbled the Doctor.
Adam laughed bitterly; inhuman, squeaky laughter of his insect form.
"Quietly? My mother got into hysterics, when she saw that. She's never recovered. My father denounced me to the authorities. He never looked at me twice. Never listened. I've lost everything, in an instant; just because you crossed my path, I've lost all I've ever had."
The Doctor stepped away. His momentary agitation disappeared, all colour washed away from his suddenly expressionless face, darkness crept into his eyes. He was staring at Adam with lips bit into a thin line.
"I was experimented on; my little tests on you are nothing compared to those I had to suffer. There are other organisations than Torchwood or UNIT. They have underground prisons, gigantic research facilities, extensive laboratories. For a year – a whole year – I was checked, tested, tortured," said Adam feverishly. "I've been turned into a Frankenstein's monster. There was no part of my body that wouldn't be furrowed with scars. There was no kind of pain I had not been exposed to. Whatever I said, however I tried to defend myself, nobody believed me."
The Doctor kept gloomy silence.
"I was saved by pure luck," continued Adam. "I'm not even sure what it was. I suspect one of reckless experiments of the institution imprisoning me at the moment. A time slide, just three seconds of a temporal rift... I found myself in the year 1996, where I was at least unknown. So I lived, quietly, amongst the other homeless freaks, grateful for the small blessing of anonymity; and I would probably continue living until the bitter and lonely death if not... Let's say that it happened last year, just for the sake of temporal continuity, because we both know that time is not in the least linear... So, last year I was captured by the Daleks. They took me onboard their ship, the Crucible, and since I had had a degree in hiding and covering my tracks already... well... I hid. I covered my tracks."
He stepped closer to the Doctor, pressing his chitin chest against him. Old pupils of his eyes burned with hate.
"You abandoned me, Doctor. You destroyed all the data I had transferred from the Satellite Five. But you've forgotten about one thing. I am able to connect with a computer. Any computer. I do not mean Earth's twenty first century calculators, but when the walls separating universes, dimensions and time crumbled..."
"The Crucible," said the Doctor.
Adam laughed again.
"Finally I have found a compatible computer. I have found a way to retain information. And all of it was there. All of it. Tranmats. A time jump. The temporal technology. Your history. The past and the future. Enough information to begin my own journey. Still gathering data. Still looking for you."
Slowly, slowly, the Doctor closed his eyes.
"But wherever I went, I was always alone, always a freak. There was always danger. You had destroyed my life, Doctor, and now I intend to pay you back," finished Adam.
There was silence. The Doctor kept quiet, standing with his back to the wall, his eyes closed and arms lowered.
"Aren't you going to say anything?" growled Adam at last.
"Your eyes are so old," the Doctor whispered. "And still all you want to do is destroy? You've seen the time, you've seen how all passes, how it ends. And still you want to destroy. I was right when I threw you out from the TARDIS. I travel only with the best, I said. And you're not..."
The blow forced the air out of his lungs. Chitin outgrowths on Adam's limb cut deep into the Doctor's skin above the solar plexus. He slid along the wall, hands desperately searching for something to hold on to.
"I will take the secret of regeneration from you." Adam leaned over him. "I will take the last shred of energy. I will take all your memories and secrets. And when I take it all, I will give you away to my Lords."
He trembled and vanished suddenly, with a muffled explosion of the transmat.
"Lords?" gasped the Doctor towards the little pile of ashes, which remained on the floor after the violent reaction of the teleport. "What Lords? What Lords?!"