Hey gang! Time's a bit of a precious commodity at present so here's another shorter chapter but the plan is to be able to post more regularly, rather than long patches of nothing.
Thanks for everyone who's been reviewing, it's great to know what people think. Please keep R/R-ing as the story goes on!
It was a bizarre thing indeed to watch the keys on the keyboard moving with no visible assistance. By the Doctor's standards, very few things were bizarre and even fewer bizarre enough to spark his interest, but the ghostly typing of the message before him was definitely moving further up the list.
Do you know what's going on?
The Doctor paused for a moment. Then he began typing:
Only just got here. Still figuring it out. Give us a tick.
The Doctor leaned back in the seat as the keys began bobbing up and down once again.
Where have you come from? Are there others? The message was typed more quickly than the first, suggesting a certain amount of urgency in the questions.
There were others. Well, one other, but she's vanished. I don't suppose you'd know anything about that by the way?
There was a long span of nothing after this. The Doctor waited patiently until the keys moved once more.
You said you could help.
Well I'll certainly give it a go, The Doctor typed. Where are you? Are you alone?
Yes. Everyone just vanished. I'm sitting in my old office.
What's your name, and what is this ship here for?
Greg. It's a research ship. Something to do with physics and frequencies. I don't understand any of it. I work payroll.
The Doctor paused for just a moment to consider this and then promptly tapped a response.
Ok Greg, very important question now… When you're waiting for me to finish typing, do the keys on your keyboard move?
Yes.
The Doctor very delicately and very pointedly got up out of the chair.
Ok Greg here's what I think: We are in the same room. Not exactly the same place, but definitely the same room. Just think of me as being invisible. Ish.
I don't understand.
For some reason I can't see you. Or hear you. Or touch you. Bit like a ghost. Well not Ghost. More like a… spirit.
I'm a ghost?
No not a ghost.
You said ghost!
I meant spirit.
That still means ghost!
No, forget ghost. Totally wrong. My mistake.
As the Doctor leaned over the desk, continuing to type, facing towards the wall covered in notice boards and memos, he was unaware that something was creeping silently through the doorway behind him.
I need to know what's happening, said Greg.
Can you remember anything happening when everyone disappeared? The Doctor asked, racking his brain for an answer. Anything out of the ordinary, right before you were alone?
Nothing. I just looked up and suddenly everyone had vanished.
The beast, with its claws and drool-covered teeth, scaly back and vicious red eyes, moved between the desks, barely making a single sound as it padded across the carpet, eyes fixed on the man in front of him.
The researchers must have done something, was Greg's reply. The whole ship is deserted. And I've been seeing things.
The Doctor tilted his head, intrigued further. What kinds of things?
Things that can't be real. Hallucinations. People from my life… My girlfriend back home.
And what happened when you saw her?
She told me to fix the machine. But she couldn't be real. When I put my hand out to touch her, it just passed right through her cheek.
What machine?
The animal, as tall as a man, raised itself upright onto its hind legs, drawing back its hefty claw as the tapping of keys echoed around the otherwise empty room. There was the briefest whooshing sound of the beast's arm swinging through the air before it sank its jagged claws into the man's body.
Nobody heard him scream.
The Doctor leapt back in surprise as the desk chair suddenly flew across the room, scattering papers, pens and the computer monitor in the process. He looked at the screen that now lay sideways on the floor of the office, and the half-typed reply that he could only assume was the last he would hear from Greg from Payroll. It read:
The researchers were building a machine for whatever it is that they're out here to do. It's up in the lab, something to do with
The Doctor edged his way along the wall of the room, towards the door, waving the sonic screwdriver about as he went, though he more or less knew already that it wouldn't tell him anything. As he slipped out of the office and headed down the corridor, glancing behind him for any sign of a follower, he thought about what little he had learned.
He wasn't the sort to jump to conclusions, but one was forming in his mind regardless. Greg had been in the same room, typing on the same keyboard, but had at the same time been in another place altogether. He was still unsure exactly how this had happened, but he'd fill in that blank later. For some reason there were also hallucinations and something had definitely attacked him in that room - there was no way that a man alone could have scattered the furnishings about so easily - which altogether added up to some very bad times ahead if he couldn't figure it all out soon.
And there was a machine.
It was the Doctor's experience that where machines and researchers were involved, trouble was only a short circuit away and if the current state of things was anything to go by, he'd hazard a guess that the best place to start looking for answers would be wherever the science was going on.
Right, he thought. Time to visit the lab.