Cold Blood - Part One
Whatever sedative gas the Silurians used on me must've been very mild because I was already waking up by the time the glass barrier on my containment pod was lowered. I continued to feign unconsciousness until the footsteps around me completely dispersed, and when I was certain I was alone, I opened my eyes. The swirled pattern on the glass distorted my visual surroundings, but I could hear water dripping from above, leaves rustling to the sides, and the occasional beep of machinery. I tried to reach up to touch the glass, but there wasn't enough room in front of me to do so. I leaned my head forward a few inches and guessed I had a little less than a foot of wiggle room in front of me; not nearly enough to attempt breaking the glass with my fists.
"Nice going, Ginny," I said to myself, "You tried to stop Elliot from being taken, but got both of yourselves taken instead."
I sighed and put my hands in my side pockets. I was about to accept my situation and just wait for the Doctor to come get me until my left hand brushed against something metallic.
Funny, I thought I left my screwdriver up on the surface, I thought. Grabbing it out of my pocket though, I realized it was the metal keychain thingy that Ambrose dropped. I ran my thumb across the tipped end, mildly disappointed that it wasn't my screwdriver. But then I remembered what the Doctor said earlier.
"In the right hands, anything can be useful."
I took a mental note that the tipped end felt rougher than the body. What did the Doctor say it was made of?! I racked my brain for an answer. It was a stainless steel body and… something different for the tip. Something on the tip of my tongue; something the Doctor licked with his tongue. Tongue, tung…
"Tungsten!" I exclaimed, having a flashback to a science lesson in high school. My teacher brought a wristband with a piece of tungsten on it for a geology lesson, and to demonstrate its hardness she shattered a sheet of glass with it! I enthusiastically turned the keychain so that the tungsten tip was facing the glass. Then I shut my eyes, said a quick prayer that this wouldn't trigger any alarms, and jabbed the tip against the glass.
The barrier shattered on impact, glass shards crashing loudly over me and onto the floor. I slowly sat up, shook my head until I couldn't hear glass falling any more, and opened my eyes.
I was alone in the overgrown corridor. Well, corridor isn't the right word. It was a corridor sized cave with prehistoric flora cascading down the walls. Every few feet or so, there were glass doors set into the walls, likely housing Silurians in stasis. I looked up at the ceiling and saw salt lamps suspended with rope being used for lumination, and as I held my head up, a drop of water collided with my forehead. I wiped it away with one of my sleeves and went to grab the edge of the pod to lift myself up. Unfortunately though I didn't think about the possibility of jagged glass edges until I'd sliced my palm open on one. I quickly reeled my hand back to see that blood was already pooling in my palm. Without really thinking, I wiped my hand on my overalls, hurriedly covered it with the sleeve of my sweater and began applying pressure. All the while I desperately hoped the cut wasn't deep enough to need stitches because I could not handle needles.
Daleks in World War Two? No problem. Weeping Angels on a spaceship? Child's play. Vampires in Venice? A Cakewalk. But even the possibility of needing sutures was where I drew the line.
"Can I ever go somewhere and not get hurt?" I asked myself, taking care to not make more contact with broken glass as I stood up, "Or is that just too much for the universe?"
The cave had three separate paths to choose from; one to the left, another on the right, and another in front of me. My choice had already been made for me though, because when I looked to the left and to the right, I found two very secure looking doors that I didn't have the equipment to deal with; center path it was then. I took a few hesitant steps down the dimly lit cavern, wondering who I'd find first; Amy and Mo, or the Doctor and Nasreen. I hoped it'd be the former. At least then I stood less of a chance of getting knocked out again for the umpteenth time.
Maybe I can make a punch card and every five times I get knocked out, the Doctor has to take me to a concert, I thought, chuckling a bit at the idea and starting to tally all the times up. Without counting the times with the Dream Lord, I'd come up with four times: Starship UK, the Byzantium, Venice, and just a few minutes ago with the Silurians. I was already trying to figure out which tour to ask for when I reached a larger opening in the caves.
"Welp, there's five," I said, sighing as I looked over to the right to find the Tardis. I trudged past the phone box and down a passage to my right. Lo and behold, the Doctor and Nasreen were up ahead of me.
"Maybe more like an entire civilization living beneath the Earth," the Doctor said as I walked up to join them. Neither of them took notice of me when I stood next to the Doctor, and after looking down at what was before me I couldn't blame them. There before us, a Silurian citadel sprawled across a giant open cave. Towers of stone jutted up from the Earth's mantle and despite the bubbling magma just a few hundred feet below us, plants were thriving in rooftop gardens all around.
"TV really couldn't hold a candle to this," I said, giving away my arrival and causing the Time Lord next to me to grin.
"Ginny!" he exclaimed, lifting me up in a tight embrace, "Thank goodness you're safe. Where's Elliot? Did you see where they took him? No wait, hang on."
For some reason he began sniffing the air around him, then he took my injured hand and quickly ripped away my bunched up sleeve which made me wince as he laid eyes on the still bleeding gash in my palm.
"The jig is up, I suppose," I said as he gently pulled me back towards the Tardis.
"What did that to you?" he asked, concern in his voice as he opened the phone cabinet to reveal a small first aid kit.
"Human error, Doc," I said, "Human error."
"No Ginny, seriously, I need to know what happened because I might need to administer a tetanus shot." The Doctor grabbed a small syringe out of the first aid kit and I nearly took a nosedive into hysterics.
"It was just a bit of broken glass, not rusty metal I swear!" I said frantically. He raised an eyebrow in suspicion, but thankfully put the syringe back. In exchange he retrieved a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, cotton pads, a roll of gauze, and a bright blue vial with unknown contents.
"I've traveled with some accident-prone humans before, but you are certainly giving them a run for their money, Parks," the Doctor said, soaking a cotton pad with the alcohol, "This might sting a bit."
My face scrunched up as the alcohol made contact with my hand. I reflexively went to close my hand but the Doctor kept it open. I tried to find something else to focus on other than how much my hand stung, and found it when Nasreen came over from the lookout to join us.
"I just realized I never properly introduced myself while we were topside," I said, reaching out my non-injured hand to the seismologist, "Ginny Parks, certified cause of worry for the Doctor. Nice to meet you!"
"Nasreen Chaudhry. Lovely to meet you, Ginny," she took my hand and shook it gently.
"Congrats on the drill by the way. Might've been in a poorly chosen spot but twenty-one thousand kilometers is still quite an achievement!"
"Thank you. Although given the circumstances I'm not sure how to feel about it anymore."
"Hey, we're only human right? Anything remotely different we get drawn right in, like a moth to a flame. Besides, I doubt an underground society was even remotely close to what y'all were expecting to find down here."
Something cold made contact with my hand, and instinctively I looked down only to find out what was in that blue vial of mystery. With each drop of its contents that made contact with the wound, the bleeding seemed to freeze in place. I watched, mesmerized by the medicine from the future until the Doctor wrapped my hand securely with the gauze.
"Temporary fix but it should stop the bleeding," he said, closing the phone cabinet and sauntering over to the right hand passage, "Now then, shall we go meet the neighbors?"
The cavern ahead of us was technically more of a stairwell, winding further down towards the mantle and the citadel we'd just observed. Upon closer inspection of the buildings, I was shocked to find that rather than being built with bricks, it looked as though the buildings themselves were hollowed out stalagmites. But we couldn't linger too long to sightsee, much to Nasreen's dismay.
"Where is everybody?" the seismologist asked, "Great big citadel like this you'd think we would've run into someone by now."
"Probably still asleep somewhere," I said as we walked down a suspended pathway, "They've probably only got a skeleton crew active right now to address the drill situation and do general damage control. Now, how do we find Amy and Elliot in a place like this, Doc?"
The Time Lord held up his sonic screwdriver and began scanning around him.
"We look for heat signature anomalies," he said, "Homo reptilia are cold blooded so it should be rather easy to track them."
"But Doctor, how can all of this be down here. I mean, these plants," Nasreen reached for a vine hanging down a cave wall.
"Maybe they're bred to survive down here. Like, how volcanic soil is more nutrient rich," I said.
"But what about sunlight?"
"Maybe they feed on the light from the magma? I've seen plants growing in stranger places before, so this seems pretty typical."
We rounded a corner and the architecture suddenly became less organic and more thought out. Columns of onyx with ivy curling around them jutted upwards into the ceiling. The floors made of polished granite were a far cry from the hastily carved out stone behind us, and the plant life began to grow more sparse.
"Must be getting closer to the center of the city," the Doctor said.
"You're sure this is the best way to enter?" Nasreen asked.
"Front door approach. Definitely. Always the best way," the Doctor said, followed immediately by an alarm system being tripped.
"HOSTILE LIFEFORMS DETECTED," the alarm repeated, with sirens blaring so loud that I had to cover my ears.
"Always the best way, Doc?" I asked, "Are you sure about that?"
"Almost always," the Doctor said, looking for a way to switch off the alarms, "Apart from the backdoor approach. That's also good."
"Probably would've been better in this case."
"Yeah, probably."
Silurians poured down the front and back of the passage we were in, effectively surrounding us. The ones directly in front of and behind us held guns very similar in make to the one I saw on the surface. So preparing for the inevitable, I sighed and sat down against a cave wall with my hands up.
"We're not hostile. We're not armed," the Doctor said, turning from one group of warriors to another, "We're here in peace."
The Silurians weren't phased though and sent a cloud of gas into the air, rendering us unconscious in seconds.