CHAPTER FOUR

CHILD'S PLAY

The Doctor slowly shifted across the wooden floors, and knelt on his knees to peer over the Concierge Desk. The lobby remained empty, however the young boy next to him kept his eyes fixed on the elevator doors and stairwell entry.

"Get down, right now," warned the Doctor, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and crouching back down below the. "Sir, I must insist-" started the boy, but the Doctor put his sonic screwdriver to his lips. "Stay absolutely silent. You said Librarians, correct?" whispered the Doctor. The little boy nodded, sitting back down behind the desk. "How do you know they are coming?" asked the Doctor, looking around the room. "The televisions, Doctor! Look at them all! It happens every time when they are about to arrive!" explained the young boy. The Doctor peeked over the top of the counter and observed the televisions mounted across the atrium. Every screen featured the snow that he had caught on the computer monitor earlier, however the crack had nowhere to be seen.

"They're broadcasting some sort of disruption feed across the monitors," the Doctor mumbled to himself, squinting to see at the far side of the room, "something or someone's blocking the visual transmission to all of these screens."

Ding.

The Doctor dropped below the desk and covered his mouth. He looked from the young boy next to him, to his hand, and back again to indicate he should do the same. The boy nodded and covered his mouth.

Absolute silence fell across the room except for the sound of shoes slowly stepping across the lobby floor.

The Librarian had left the elevator and was standing in the room.

"You've met them before, having you?" the little boy said, his voice barely louder than the sound of his breath. The Doctor slowly nodded and whispered, "Centuries ago."

The footsteps suddenly stopped and the Doctor turned to the boy next to him and closed his eyes.

Clara jumped down the steps of Level Three and came to a sudden halt. At the bottom of Level Two was a little boy wearing denim jeans and a blue-white, long sleeve shirt. "Hello, there! What's your name?" piped Clara happily.

The young boy turned around to face Clara, "Please, don't scream," the little child placed his hands together and slowly took them apart. A red, buzzing bar of energy that looked like lightning zapped away between his hands as the boy widened the distance. Clara's eyes widened in disbelief as the boy's hands zapped and buzzed red-lightning from palm to palm.

"W-What is that?" Clara gulped, gripping the railing hard. Any second now she was going to take off back up the stairs. The boy looked up at Clara, this time his eyes were glowing red with little numbers flickering across his pupils. A red beam pierce out from the boy's hands, exactly like a barcode scanner, and quickly swiped Clara top-to-bottom. "Clara Oswald, age twenty-five, born in Lancashire, England. Current occupation: teacher, current residence: the TARDIS-"

The boy's head shuddered slightly and look to have been having a glitch. "T-TARDIS. Reviewing information – TARDIS in association to Time War. Time Lord in premise." Suddenly, the little boy's hands generated a sonic pulse. Clara was thrown up the staircase and slammed into the concrete wall of the stairwell before collapsing in a heap. Somewhere down below, there was loud bang and a man let out a yelp of fright, his voice slowly fading away from the echoing shaft. The little boy disappeared down the stairwell.

Clara remained still. She'd never felt a force like that before. It was like running at eighty miles an hour and suddenly slamming into a brick wall. Slowly, opening her eyes, a fuzzy blonde cloud appearing in front of her and a soft voice spoke to her.

"Don't move, Clara. Remain absolutely still. The Child has gone. I'm trying to hack the system but the only thing I can do at the moment is shut down all televisions and monitor connections. When your senses have stabilised, get out of the stairwell and take the elevator from Level Three down to the lobby. The Doctor is down there – he can figure out what is going on."

Clara closed her eyes and opened them again while slowly nodding. The blonde cloud that was once in front of her eyes had vanished and all that was left was a blurry outline of the shaft she was lying in.

Slowly, sitting up, Clara cringed in agony as she attempted to push herself up against the wall. Every bone and muscle screamed in pain as she slowly got to her feet. Walked down the steps one at a time, she pushed open the door to Level Three. She noticed the doorway had a sign hanging over it, reading The Pandorica Collections. The corridor she walked into was an almost replica of the corridor back up on Level Twenty-One. She found the elevators, and pressed the 'Down' button. A minute or so past and Clara slowly stepped into the elevator compartment and stood against the far corner, wishing every part of her body would stop aching.

She looked up and noticed the elevator was full of mirrors. Seeing the state of her hair was just another thing she added on the list of things that went horrible that day. Brushing loose strands off her forehead, she attempted to tidy it the best she could. "The one day," Clara mumbled, shaking her head angrily, "the one day I forget to bring my brush."

The elevator finally reached the atrium level and the doors slid graciously open. Clara slowly stepped out, watching every possible direction for the little boy with red glowing hands. Her shoes tapped lightly across the wooden floors as she walked further out into the lobby.

It was quiet … too quiet.

Clara closed her eyes, knowing what she was about to do might in fact give the young boy with glowing hands, her location in the building.

"Doctor!"

The Doctor suddenly jumped to his feet to see Clara, standing in the middle of the lobby. Her hair was a mess, thought it looked like she had attempted to fix it, and she looked like she was hurt in some way. "Clara!" he called.

Running out from the behind the Concierge Desk, the Doctor dashed to meet his companion, giving her a hug of relief. "You're okay! Oh, my. Are you all right? What happened?"

"Blasted up a set of stairs and thrown against a brick wall," Clara muttered, "messed up my hair for the day." The Doctor chuckled, "I can see that. Here you go," he pulled out a small brush from within his jacket and passed it on to Clara. "I had no idea he was going do what he was going to do," continued Clara, as she brushed her hair thoroughly.

"He?" asked the Doctor, suddenly becoming very alert.

"I was walking down the stair on Level Three and there was little boy at the bottom. He just turns around, puts his palms together and creates this red lightning bar-thing of energy between his hands," Clara explained, handing the brush back over, "and then he throws me back up the stairs and up against the wall."

Before Clara could continue, the Doctor suddenly turned around and stood in front of her in a protective way. He whispered quietly, "Don't move a muscle."

A shrill of laughter echoed from behind the Concierge Desk as the young boy stepped out in front of them. "Oh, my god," Clara covered her mouth. The boy's face was the one of a manic; the wide grin plastered across his face changed his entire appearance.

"What happened to you?" called the Doctor. "A Time War does things to you, Doctor. But you wouldn't know, because you weren't there," the boy chirped, as he placed his hands together. "Fought on the front line, thank you very much," the Doctor retorted, his hands turning into fists, "what's this then, got a bit sick of true form, huh?"

The boy laughed loudly again, opening his hands wide as a red bar of electrical energy connected them both, "It was the only way I could protect myself against the Time Winds. Kind of fits the title your lot gave me, does it not?"

"Doctor, what's he talking about?"

"Hello there, Clara Oswin Oswald. Are you still the Junior Entertainment Manager of Starship Alaska, or are you teaching at that boring school you work at?" chirped the little boy, "or better yet, are you still the Governess slash Barmaid of the Victorian Era? So many timelines, I can't imagine how busy you must be!"

"Doctor, what's he going on about?"

"He read you," replied the Doctor, "back in the stairwell, read your timelines – all your timelines. With the amount of paradoxes you created after jumping into my timestream, nearly overloaded his memory banks – created a sonic pulse, blasting you up the staircase and throwing me across this lobby just as I was heading over the threshold."

"But, I don't remember most of that," stuttered Clara, shaking her head.

"And best not to, love," chucked the boy, "Don't want to do a Donna Noble."

The Doctor stepped forward, his lip quivering with anger.

"Oooh, that struck a nerve," giggled the child.

"What happened to your Librarians, the ones you enslaved to rewrite people's timelines, or are you getting your hands dirty now?" the Doctor snarled, his two fists fusing as one behind his back.

"Didn't survive the trip, unfortunately, but this planet has a population of a few thousand so I'm sure they'll do fine as the next generation of Librarians," mused the child, twiddling his fingers.

"Doctor," Clara's quiet voice spoke from behind the Time Lord.

"Who's this? I'm assuming that's your question. The electrical reading beam gave it away," replied the Doctor, "this, Clara, is the abomination that gate-crashed the Time War. Chose no side and decided to help both armies slaughter each other. No idea how you could possibly be alive, let alone managing to escape the crossfire from all the Dalek ships surrounding Gallifrey."

"Don't you hate that there's a victor of the Time War, Doctor," sniggered the boy.

"Clara, this filth in front of us," sneered the Doctor, pointing at the little boy who had pulled the same horrifying smile as before, "is, what Time Lord called during the Time War, the Nightmare Child."