AN /: This chapter may receive divided opinions. I don't particularly like it, to be honest, it's too long and everyone seems a little OOC. But I'll see what you guys think. Happy reading.
O.o.O.o.O
The Angel, The Detective, And The Phone Box
Ch 5. A Matter Of Pride
As Sherlock walks through the hole in the wall there is a rippling sensation around his body, as if he has just dived into a swimming pool. He turns to watch as the air around the Doctor shakes and wobbles as he walks forwards. Sherlock reaches back to put a hand back though the hole and finds that his gloved fingers contact something solid.
"I wasn't expecting that,' the Doctor says, and he reaches out very slowly to poke at the invisible wall with his finger. The wall looks almost like clear jelly, and while it wobbles furiously it stays solid. The Doctor reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the strange, metallic rod like object. He steps back and points the rod at the wall, pressing buttons that make loud clicking sounds and causing a green light to flash at the top end. The most Sherlock can divine from the device is that it is capable of making some very strange noises, and that the Doctor seems to be able to understand every single beep and whirr.
"Sonic screwdriver,' the Doctor says when he catches Sherlock looking,' it's okay, I wouldn't expect you to know what it was, it's not even from this planet so-"
"We're behind some sort of soundproof force field, aren't we?" Sherlock says, cutting the Doctor off before he can even approach the smug stage.
"Well... yes, we are."
"That explains why neither John nor your friends seem to be able to hear or see us."
The Doctor turns to stare at Sherlock, and Sherlock looks down and holds his gaze. For what seems like a long time, neither speak.
"You're not a robot, are you?" The Doctor asks, and Sherlock raises an eyebrow.
"No I am not." Sherlock says, and he promptly turns his back to the Doctor with a dramatic swish of his coat and proceeds to examine the room in front of him.
It is a bit like he is looking at the cockpit of a plane, except that there are strange capsules lining both of the other two walls and a hell of a lot more strange buttons, all the same colour, all squares and rectangles, all set into a panel on the far wall. A dim red light is cast from round globes on the ceiling. There is a foreign script engraved onto every button on the panel, presumably labelling them. He reaches out and touches a few, his gloved fingers picking up a thin layer of dust. Contrary to what those silly American extraterrestrial movies say or what Murphy's Law tends to dictate, nothing lights up, and no death traps appear. The room remains deathly still. Sherlock bends down to place the torch on the ground, and then walks to the centre of the small room.
Room of alien origin, he thinks to himself, too advanced for humanity, even the brighter ones, and the layer of dust says abandoned or forgotten. Main power source must be electricity, connected to the main house, or the 'crystal' we are searching for taking into account the amount of power it is meant to store. Alien inhabitants must have either died or moved out. Room used as some sort of surveillance centre. Sherlock grins. Mycroft would be so very jealous.
Sherlock begins to dart about the room, checking under the control panel, behind the capsules, running his fingers over every corner and laying flat on the metal floor to examine a small green stain. He even climbs atop one of the pods to inspect a little black box attached to the ceiling just above the door.
Containment facility as well as surveillance centre, Sherlock muses, capsules appear to have neurological wires attached to top of inner walls. Conclusion. Alien race, one close to earth presumably, came here to study the angels, hoping to use the crystal to keep them fed and placated. Mission was a failure, judging by abandoned state, angels probably got restless and killed them for fun.
"That was brilliant,' the Doctor says behind Sherlock,' absolutely magnificent."
It is then that Sherlock realises that he has been talking out loud. While talking to himself is nothing new, he usually realises when he is doing it. Maybe always having to explain things to John is starting to become a subconscious part of his deductions.
"Naturally,' Sherlock says, because he is not sure what else to do. The Doctor keeps watching him like an experiment, and it is making him just a tad uncomfortable.
The Doctor walks over to the control panel and points his screwdriver at the middle. He presses a button and suddenly the whole thing springs to life, one of the screens flickering brightly and every button lit from underneath with a soft white light.
"This surveillance unit was run by a great little race, the Enlodians,' he says as he fiddles around with the buttons, pressing a few and bringing up a file to load on the far right screen,' really clever and ingenious, loved to learn-"
"Were they reptilian, by any chance?" Sherlock asks, cutting the Doctor off.
"Yes, they were. How did you..."
"There are a few scales discarded under the control panel. The angels don't look particularly serpentine to me."
A wide smile breaks over the Doctor's face, and for a fleeting second he recognises it as the same smile that he gives to John when he says something clever.
"Anyway,' the Doctor begins again as he returns his attention to the screen,' a great bunch, but they bit off more than they could chew when they decided to have a look at the angels. This was the closest planet that had them, and so they came here with a crystal absolutely packed with energy, enough to get them here and back and keep the angels at bay to boot. I heard about the expedition a long while back, from someone I met in a bar once actually, said the poor souls assigned to the task had never come back and that the expedition was shushed up by the government."
"No great difference in political tactics between planets then,' Sherlock mutters to himself.
"And so, whatever happened to them here was probably recorded, in this last video log." The Doctor says quietly. He leans forward a bit and Sherlock moves over to the control panel, standing next to the Doctor. There is silence as the screen blinks off and back on then plays footage of three rather short aliens milling about in the control room. They look a bit like a cross between humans and snakes. Their entire bodies are covered in scales, the colour indistinguishable because of the grey footage, although if Sherlock has to guess he would say a rather vivid blur. Their limbs are rather spindly and their faces are rather small, with forked tongues that occasionally slip past their flat lips.
There is a flurry of movement as the scene fades quickly to black and then lights up again, and suddenly there is an angel sitting up in the pod. The aliens seem terrified, they are scurrying back and forth, assaulting the panel's keys at lightning speed with tapered fingers. The screen goes dark for three seconds and then when the picture comes back one of the aliens is lying on the floor, neck on a very unnatural angle, the angel standing over him with claws outstretched. The other two are still frantically tapping keys on the panel, although one breaks off and stands still, raising his hands to the roof.
"She's praying." The Doctor says quietly, and the screen goes black once again. Sherlock knows what is going to happen next, although it wasn't a very difficult logical leap. The screen flickers to life once again and this time all three are dead on the floor, their long necks snapped. The angel stands at the keyboard, its hands by its side and its back facing the camera.
"They shouldn't have tried to contain it,' the Doctor says sadly, reaching up to touch the screen as it goes black one last time. However, as the screen lights up this time, revealing the angel peering over its shoulder, the Doctor freezes.
"Image of an angel..." He mutters to himself, and then shouts in alarm and darts over to the camera, climbing atop the capsule and fumbling with his Sonic Screwdriver in an attempt to wrench it out of his pocket. "Sherlock,' he says, pleadingly, imploringly,' I need to shut the camera down, don't look away from the screen. Keep watching the angel but don't look at its eyes!"
"Why on earth would I need to do that,' Sherlock scoffs,' it's not like it can come and get us!"
"Please, you have to keep watching it!" The Doctor shouts again.
Despite how confident Sherlock is that it is impossible for the angel to get out of the screen and attack the, he cannot ignore a little voice in his brain that is telling him to do as the Doctor says. The Doctor is almost as persuasive as Mycroft, but because he doesn't know the Doctor as well as he does Mycroft, he reasons, he decides not to ignore him and turns around to humour him instead. And then he almost screams, almost, because although there is not much in the list of what this world can do to unsettle Sherlock Holmes, a screen containing the image of a bloodthirsty stone angel leering down at him is quite enough to gain a place on that much revered list.
Moriarty would probably do well to take lessons, Sherlock thinks to himself.
"It can get us,' the Doctor says, his voice a little less panicked now but still frantic,' I have no idea how, but I know it can."
Sherlock doesn't look away from the angel on the screen, instead he looks at the neckline of its grey robes. He hears the Doctor clamber down from the pod, presumably having disabled the security camera, and feels their shoulders brush as he leans past Sherlock to point at a button on the screen with his Sonic Screwdriver.
"Whatever takes the image of an angel becomes itself an angel." The Doctor says, waving his sonic screwdriver around in front of the screen in zigzagging patterns. He looks frustrated, his brow creased and a small frown on his face.
"That's impossible,' Sherlock says.
"Saying it's impossible won't make it any less true,' the Doctor replies,' I've seen it happen before, and having another angel running around here is not the sort of thing that will make us any safer."
Sherlock raises an eyebrow, still not entirely believing him, but stays silent. The Doctor is looking increasingly irritated, waggling the sonic screwdriver over the control panel and muttering to himself. With a frustrated yelp his bangs his fist down on the control panel, which bleeps rather loudly and suddenly the picture on the screen goes black.
"There we go!" the Doctor says triumphantly, taking a step back.
"We should try and find that crystal,' Sherlock says, eager to get back to the original task,' the longer we stay here the more danger we're in."
The Doctor makes a small noise of agreement and rubs his hands together, spinning himself in a small circle as if to try and take in everything at once.
"Where should we start,' he asks, a wide grin on his face,' or have you already figured out where it is?"
"Well,' Sherlock says,' while I haven't quite gotten as far as finding the precise location of the hiding spot yet, there are only so many places in such a small space."
Small, black, about the size of an apple, he recalls, eyes darting about the room. The dim red light makes it difficult to see any of the finer details, so Sherlock turns around to pick up the torch. A boom of thunder echoes around the walls, sounding far off as if it is in the distance, but through the force field barring the door he sees the walls shake ever so slightly. Apparently this room is relatively soundproof. He can also see John, who is standing just out of his viewing range. Sherlock can just see his jumper, the one with the leather patches at the elbows that he likes to wear to seem more battle-hardened and dependable in the face of danger. It makes him grin.
Picking up the torch Sherlock turns back around and flicks the switch, sending a straight beam of light barrelling into one of the two pods that line the right hand wall. They are identical, lying horizontal and pushed up against the wall. They seem to be made of metal, judging by the bright sheen that they give off when Sherlock shines the torch against them, and reinforced by the clang they make when Sherlock bangs his fist against the side of one.
The Doctor is sitting on the control panel, watching him with keen eyes. His gaze is casual but expectant, as if he is simply waiting for Sherlock to find all the right answers and all the little clues. It doesn't take long before the Doctor begins rattling off questions, like Sherlock has been waiting for him to do. They start out simple, much like the usual questions he is asked when he first meets someone new. How does he deduce so much information from so little information? How does he like solving crimes? Simple, boring little questions that he eventually gets irritated with. The Doctor had seemed so much less mundane than this, the least he could do was ask some interesting questions.
And then he does.
Never before has Sherlock been asked if he has ever worn a 'deer stalker'. He has never even heard of such a thing, but refrains from asking the Doctor for an explanation or an example and decides to Google it when he arrives back at the flat.
From there on the questions get a little more personal, but a lot more interesting. The questions turn into conversation, and as Sherlock is mucking around with the wiring inside the capsules he and the Doctor are talking like old friends, discussing animatedly how tedious yet secretly satisfying it is having to explain yourself, your knowledge and your observations to others, why television should never have been invented, and where it is and is not appropriate to keep various body parts. The Doctor takes the usual standpoint on this issue and appears faintly disgusted. He also agrees with John's belief that severed heads should not be kept in the fridge and that fingers need to stay out of the oven.
"Well, can't you at least warn him the next time you want to start fiddling around with electrodes?" The Doctor is saying, his hands gesturing wildly as he talks. This is something that Sherlock finds interesting, because he has never met anyone that gesticulates quite so wildly while trying to argue a point.
"I tried warning him once,' Sherlock replies as he examines the inner circuit board of one of the capsules,' but he didn't get the text and then threw out the entire experiment when he arrived home and found the frogs in the sink. It took me a week to repeat, and trying to find frogs of the same mass as the previous ones took an absurdly long time."
"Well maybe you shouldn't have been using hydrochloric acid."
"That would have spoilt the exp- ah."
"What is it?" the Doctor asks, sliding off the control panel and coming down to kneel next to Sherlock.
"This wiring for the neural monitor, it's running down through the floor, and so do the other three capsules."
"So they're all being powered from the same spot." The Doctor says, catching on to Sherlock's train of thought.
Sherlock grins and stands up. His coat, scarf and gloves are still lying crumpled next to the Doctor where he has abandoned them for increased freedom of movement. He is feeling exhilarated, and then an absolutely demonic noise rings out across the room, a sound that sounds like screaming and screeching metal and birdcalls, and Sherlock actually feels panic wring a knot in his stomach.
"I take it that was the angels, then?" he says, because there is little else it could be.
"That was the angels laughing." The Doctor clarifies.
"I wouldn't want to hear them screaming, then." Sherlock mutters. He walks to the centre of the room and stands still for a few moments, then taps his foot against the metal floor, listening to the soft metallic clang. He smiles.
"Found it."
"Ah, fantastic!" the Doctor says, rubbing his hands together and pulling out his sonic screwdriver. He points it at Sherlock's feet and presses a button and the green light at the end flashes. A panel just to the left of Sherlock's heel slides open soundlessly, and Sherlock steps back as the Doctor darts forwards. They both kneel down and stare into the small space that has opened up in the floor, a hole about ten inches across. Inside is a mess of wires, and in the very centre, a small, black crystal, sitting in a small metal socket. The Doctor reaches forwards very slowly, very carefully, and pulls the crystal from the socket, and he sighs in relief when it is firmly grasped in his hand.
"It's smaller than I thought it would be." Sherlock says absently as the Doctor puts the crystal into a pocket of his jacket.
"Well, at least we have it now,' the Doctor says,' we can get out of here."
Sherlock nods in agreement and goes to retrieve his coat while the Doctor turns to walk out through the force field. However, there is a muffled thump and the Sherlock turns around to see the Doctor on the floor, rubbing his nose furiously.
"I can't get through,' he says incredulously,' I thought it would only be a one way force field, the kind that stopped things from getting in."
"Well just use your screwdriver to open it." Sherlock replies, fixing his scarf back around his neck. And then the Doctor stops, the screwdriver still in hand but not pointed at anything, because the room beyond the little alien pod has been plunged into darkness. When the light flickers back on seconds later Sherlock sees John dash past the doorway, bending to pick up something just out of sight, shaking it furiously with a terrified look on his face.
There is a rather muffled but still loud shout of "Doctor!" from the other room, and the Doctor freezes.
"Amy!" the Doctor shouts as the room outside goes dark again, and the Doctor thumps the force field viciously, swinging his screwdriver around all over the door frame and muttering to himself furiously. This time it is Sherlock's turn to follow the Doctor's logic, and he really doesn't like the conclusion. The angels are coming for the crystal, and are playing with the torches batteries, somehow messing with the electricity. And they will be trapped in this small room, unable to do anything.
And even though he has tried so hard to keep John alive, his neck will be snapped in a matter of seconds, and there is nothing that Sherlock can do about it.
Sherlock freezes when he hears a voice, John's voice, shout out his name.
"Why won't you open?" The Doctor mutters angrily to himself, and Sherlock darts over to stand a few paces behind him, desperately searching for any little clue that will break the force field down. Almost instantly his eyes land on a small cluster of wires just above the doorway, and when he shows them out to the Doctor the Doctor points his sonic screwdriver at the cluster and yells triumphantly as it shoots sparks.
It takes a grand total of five seconds for the force field to disappear. In these five seconds, Sherlock watches as John pulls his gun out of his jacket and point it at the door with a look of determination on his face.
After these five seconds, the force field shimmers blue, and then fades away. And the light in the room beyond abruptly goes out.
End Chapter Five