A/N: Hope you had a good Christmas! Back to the carnage here :D
Chapter 14 - Death by Worm
The Doctor led the motley group of convicts through security door after security door, towards the entrance of the prison without a hitch. All of the droids were busy searching for him and Jack as central figures in the death of the Jarxon, seemingly completely flummoxed by the fact none of their trackers were working, suppressed by Leya's meddling in the security systems. Not for long, though.
Finally after about seven doors, the Doctor heard a droid. He quickly dived into an alcove. The others followed without question, and they waited for the hiss of air and clangs of metal on metal to pass. Once it had gone, they got up and kept moving until they ended up at another fingerprint scanner. He pressed his forefinger to the device, and it politely beeped, flashed green, and the door slid open. The group moved though.
They were now in the prisoner processing area – a huge room populated exclusively by droids filled with machinery. They had to quickly duck behind some steps as a particularly large droid rolled by, much bigger than its counterparts, with wheels and a gun built into its arm. A sentry.
'What now?' Spleen wanted to know.
Everyone ignored him. The Doctor peered around the steps, watching the droids. He took in their movements and any pattern they repeated. One sentry would roll by where they were, and then there would be a five second period where they weren't being watched. Originally the Doctor had planned to leave when the new prisoner intake arrived, but since their plan had been moved forward they'd have to do it without the aid of the crowd. Which made things just a little more dangerous.
I know you can't talk but please, please don't get caught.
He wasn't planning to, the Doctor mused, checking the droids again. They were still exhibiting the same movement pattern. He looked back at his group. Spleen looked impatient, Todran was shaking slightly and Jack was gazing at him, his eyes full of trust. He looked at Jack.
'We have to run, Master Jack,' the Doctor informed him. 'We'll have to time our run behind the closest sentry, to get to possession storage to retrieve our items.'
'Is he insane?' Spleen whispered, somewhat high-pitched.
'If he says that's what we've gotta do, then that's what we've gotta do,' Jack replied simply. 'When do we run, Doctor?'
The Doctor pointed at the nearest patrolling sentry. 'As soon as this sentry is past us, Master Jack. We will have to go one by one.'
He made a point of removing his prison issues shoes, and they all followed. The least noise as possible. He then checked the sentry again.
'Follow my lead, Master Jack,' he said, before he took a deep breath, poised. He waited until the first possible moment... and ran.
With his bare feet skipping across the metal, he sprinted with every modicum of speed he had to possession storage across the room, his Follow-Me whizzing along behind him. He reached the doorway, jabbed a finger on the lock, bouncing from foot to foot impatiently until the door opened and he jumped through.
He waited a few moments, almost expecting the loud din of alarms to start up. It was ten seconds until he breathed out, straightening up. There were no droids in here.
Oh my god, I'm so scared.
'We're okay,' he assured her. 'We've got time.'
He looked across the room at the other three, clearly astonished by the fact he'd made it. He waited for the sentry to roll around again, before waving his hand. Jack bolted across the room next, stumbling to a halt next to the Time Lord.
'Shit,' he breathed. 'Don't like this.'
The Doctor just nodded, checking the sentry again. He waved his arm, and Spleen came bolting across. Just Todran left.
'Where next?' Spleen asked.
'Wait for Todran,' Jack replied.
Spleen scoffed. 'Why?' He shoved the Doctor. 'Let's fulaking go, Time Lord.'
Jack quickly intervened. 'Doctor, we want the silurian. Get him across.'
'Yes, Master Jack,' the Doctor replied, checking the sentry again.
'Oh, come on, what's he paying you? I'll double it for you to leave him behind,' Spleen insisted.
The Doctor gestured for Todran. Todran immediately ran, but he was obviously so terrified he was barely looking where he was going, and two seconds later he caught his foot and went plummeting to the floor.
'Fulaking idiot!' Spleen hissed under his breath. The Doctor ran out immediately, grabbing Todran's arm and hauling him to his feet, half-dragging him to safety. They only just made it into the room, where the Doctor quickly sealed the door closed.
'By Janos,' Spleen blasphemed. 'You piece of…'
'Master Jack,' the Doctor interrupted, trying not to let his irritation show. 'We need to get our possessions.'
Jack nodded, stepping aside to allow the Doctor to finally look at the room they were in. To his complete surprise, he realised the room was very small, apart from a terminal in the centre. He'd taken extensive notes when he'd been brought in ﹘ this was definitely the place they'd taken his clothes.
He stepped through the group to the terminal monitor and entered his prisoner identification number on the keypad. The terminal turned, and seconds later he saw his clothes folded neatly into the space. He took them, pausing to consider this. There was only one explanation for this, and he wasn't sure he liked it.
Ain't that Time Lord technology? Bigger on the inside?
The Doctor couldn't reply verbally as the terminal automatically turned back to the monitor.
… Don't get mad, okay? Just escape.
He paused, biting his lip. He then did as she ordered, entering in Jack's ID, and then Spleen's and Todran's from the number on their uniforms. He handed out the clothes and other possessions, retaining Jack's manipulator for a moment. He experimentally tested it, but as he'd supposed, there was a vortex-power suppression field. More Time Lord technology.
He handed it to Jack with a look that he hoped conveyed a serious undertone. There was only one man who could possibly have the knowledge to replicate this technology. The Master. Not that Jack would know that. He seemed to register something was wrong anyway, nodding as he took his manipulator back.
Worry about it later, yeah? We gotta get out. Don't get caught.
The Doctor subtly nodded as everyone quickly got changed into their old clothes, dispensing with the prison uniforms in a pile on the floor. Soon they were ready, the Doctor feeling a bit more comfortable back in his usual suit, coat and converse.
'What now?' Spleen urged.
The Doctor took hold of his Follow-Me bot, patting it affectionately before he reached for the override switch. The bot beeped, and deactivated. He quickly got down to sit cross-legged, upturning the bot and prising open the casing with his fingernails. He fiddled with the electronics for a moment, before refixing the casing and reactivating it. The Follow-Me bot immediately jumped up to hover in the air, turned and streaked straight to the door. The Doctor only just got to the switch in time, hitting it to enable the bot to streak out of the room and straight into the crowd of droids.
The effect was instantaneous. The droids registered the Follow-Me's presence, beeping out alerts as for a moment they all just stood there, confused. The Follow-Me then abruptly turned right and headed straight towards the lift on the left. All of the droids immediately beeped frenziedly and rushed towards it.
The Doctor grabbed Jack's arm and pulled him, running out of the possession room and to the right towards the entrance of the prison. Spleen and Todran followed as they emerged into another corridor, the door closing behind them.
'How much longer?' Spleen wanted to know.
'Two more doors, Master Jack,' the Doctor announced.
Jack nodded. 'Good. Keep going.'
He led them through the corridor to the next door, opening it. The door rolled back, immediately revealing a sentry standing one metre from them, facing away. The Doctor dived to the side immediately with Spleen and Jack following him, but Todran remained standing in the corridor, stunned...
The Doctor tried to grab him, but it was too late as the sentry turned and the sirens almost immediately began to wail.
'Alert! Alert! Four escaped prisoners in section two!'
The sentry raised its gun arm. The Doctor dived under the gun arm immediately, climbing the sentry twice the size he was to get to the head. He managed to get to the back of the sentry's head and pull off the casing before the sentry swivelled its midriff, caught the Doctor's legs with his gun and sent him back to the floor. The gun took aim.
Jack and Spleen however, were already in action. They grabbed onto the gun together, pulling it away from the Doctor. The Time Lord jumped to his feet and climbed the sentry again, throwing his hand inside the electronics of the sentry's head, gripping the wires and yanking with all of his might. The wires ripped out, and the sentry powered down.
'Idiot!' Spleen snapped at Todran.
'I'm sorry!' Todran cried.
Jack looked urgently at the Doctor as the sirens continued to wail. The Doctor nodded and immediately sprinted for the last door. There was no time for stealth now. The droids were coming – he could hear them just a few corridors away.
The last door opened, and suddenly they were outside. There were no droids out here. The only ship docked was Leya's, and the force field was only ten metres from where they were standing. Beyond it, some horrible-looking creatures lingered, waiting patiently for them to exit the forcefield.
The Doctor looked at Jack. The immortal man had obviously realised what the Doctor had known all along – now they were escaping when there wasn't a prisoner intake, they were going to have to run across the barren, parasite-filled for 500 metres to get to the distant airship.
'Master Jack, we need to run,' the Doctor told him.
This isn't happenin', this is happenin'...
Jack nodded. 'Got it.'
'What?' Todran gasped.
'What!?' Spleen cried. 'What kind of plan is that?'
'It's the only plan,' Jack snapped. 'Go back if you want.'
Todran fell silent and Spleen harrumphed, but there was no time to moan about it as the droids came around the corner, firing.
'Go!' the Doctor cried, and began to run. He reached 100 metres before he looked back, where Jack, Todran and Spleen were running with bright red faces. He looked beyond them to New Shada, but noticed that the droids weren't following them. He knew why. They expected them to die.
He looked forward and sped up, Rose screaming at him inside his head. Suddenly the ground erupted from under his feet and he was sent flying, Rose shrieking before he hit the sandy ground, rolling slightly before jumping to his feet. A huge worm had burst out of the ground, its huge, sharp and numerous teeth narrowly missing him. But Jack, Todran and Spleen were in the danger zone.
'Split!' the Doctor yelled. They all obeyed, scattering in several directions as the worm plunged back into the ground, only just missing Jack.
The Doctor turned and kept running, just as the worm burst out of the ground exactly where he'd been standing two seconds previously. He wasn't going to outrun it, so he began to wind across the terrain back and forth, hoping to outmanoeuvre the worm. After a few moments he was sure he had confused the worm enough, so he had quickly ran to catch up the others.
But they had already encountered another problem. A nest of flying insects from the blood-red plants were attacking Jack, Todran and Spleen, latching onto their skins and commencing – what the Doctor could only assume to be – sucking out their blood.
There was nothing he could do but run straight into the fray. Several of the insects latched onto him – two on his neck, one on his hand, and another on his face. He smacked the insects with his palms to kill them, but as soon as they were dead they were replaced by others almost immediately. By the time he and his group were out the other side he was covered in them; his blood being sucked out at an astonishing rate.
It was 400 metres before he managed to get them all off, but he could see the others had considerably weakened from the amount of blood taken. But there was barely any time to think about this as clearly the droids had decided that they had better pursue them, and shots were flying around them like sideways rain. The ground was exploding, revealing the horrors of the creatures underneath that they had to skip around.
The air was becoming less and less as they ran – the air filters in New Shada did not extend this far. It was becoming harder to breathe, and around him he could hear his companions gasping.
He switched to his respiratory bypass, but the others didn't have that benefit. Jack appeared to be running on adrenaline, but Spleen and Todran were slowing down…
Fifty metres to go. The worm had disappeared, but the insects were still pursuing them. The insects were fast approaching Spleen from behind.
Forty. The Doctor had to stumble to avoid something else coming out of the ground – he'd only caught a glimpse, but it had looked like an overgrown rat with blood red eyes.
Thirty. The insects were all over Spleen, who was shrieking. The droids were getting closer, and increasingly more accurate.
Twenty. The ground erupted beneath the Doctor's feet again, but this time he couldn't avoid it. He felt a sharp, stinging pain in his leg and looked down to see a rat attached to his leg by its teeth. Rose screamed inside his head as Jack, running behind him, dived mid-run to grab the rat, wrenching it from the Doctor's leg and hurling it behind him where the grateful insects finally moved off of Spleen and to the rat, blocking off the view of the droids.
Ten. The ground burst open again from behind the Doctor. He looked back, just in time to see Todran disappear. He stopped, Jack and Spleen nearly running into him.
'Move!' Spleen shrieked, but the Doctor couldn't. The worm ripped out of the ground again, and the Doctor could see Todran in its terrible jaws, the worm making a grotesque munching sound.
The last the Doctor saw of Todran was his wide-eyed, terrified expression as he screamed the Doctor's name. Seconds later the worm bit clean through the silurian, blood erupting out of its mouth before it plunged down into the earth again. There was nothing the Doctor could do as the ground beneath the worm was suddenly soaked in blood. He could only hope Todran was dead now.
They made it to the ship, and the droids had finally got through the insects with shots flying once more. The Doctor unlocked the ship with his fingerprint and they all fell inside the airlock, which rapidly decompressed. By the time the Doctor had run into the cockpit and fired up the engines the droids were already trying to break the door down. He skipped all the safety protocols, fired the auxiliaries, and they lifted off. He used every modicum of power he could without overloading the engine, and the ship immediately sped away, breaking the atmosphere and out into space.
He kept going for a minute or two, just to be sure that they were clear of the scanners. Then he stopped, masking their location before the tiredness of using his respiratory bypass became apparent and he turned and he headed back onto the deck. Spleen was gasping for air on the floor and Jack was sitting on a chair, wide-eyed. Everyone was covered in sand, and angry red welts from the insects, although Jack was quickly healing.
Oh my god.
Jack simply looked down at the Doctor's leg. The Time Lord followed his gaze, and realised for the first time that the back of his leg was bloody. The pain hit two seconds afterwards and he grunted, dropping to the floor. Jack finally got up, retrieving a green moon medical kit hanging on the wall and kneeling beside the Doctor, popping it open.
'Stupid little k'ashing silurian got what he deserved,' Spleen grated.
The Doctor and Jack exchanged a look. The Doctor could say nothing, of course.
'Yeah, fucking idiot silurian,' Jack muttered, but in no way meant it as he carefully cleaned and bandaged the bloody gouge in his best friend's leg.