Flesh and Stone - Part One

The Doctor's impromptu escape plan may have worked, but it left us all feeling a bit woozy for a moment.

"Up. Look up," the Doctor said, being the first one on his feet. Bob offered me a hand once he got up and I took it gladly.

"Are you okay?" River asked us.

"Yeah. A bit topsy turvy, but other than that, I'm fine," I said.

"What happened?" Amy asked, holding her head.

"We jumped," River said.

"Jumped where?" Amy asked.

The Doctor repeated, "Up. Up. Look up."

"That's just maddeningly unhelpful. Why is he never clear?" I said, still focusing on keeping my balance.

"Where are we?" Amy asked.

"Exactly where we were," River said.

"Sort of," I added, then found myself being gently nudged out of the way by the Doctor who was sonicing a hatch I was apparently standing on.

"Doctor what am I looking at? Explain," Amy said. The Doctor walked over and stood next to her.

"Oh, come on, Amy, think. The ship crashed with the power still on, yeah? So what else is still on?" he asked her, then took a moment to let her answer and when she didn't, he continued, "The artificial gravity. One good jump, and up we fell," he jumped again to show that it was stable, "Shot out the grav globe to give us an updraft, and here we are."

I now decided to take the Doctor's previous advice and look up, only to find a group of statues regaining their Angelic image.

"Doctor, the statues. They look more like Angels now," Octavian said, sounding a slight bit frightened.

"They're feeding on the radiation from the wreckage, draining all the power from the ship, restoring themselves. Within an hour they'll be an army," the Doctor explained, just as the hatch opened and the lights around it started going out one by one, "They're taking out the lights," he pointed up with his screwdriver, "Look at them. Look at the Angels."

Being the chicken I was, I took no time whatsoever in diving into the ship. The Doctor told everyone else to follow, before coming in himself. Amy called after him and then looked in for herself.

"It's just a corridor," he said, as if pointing out the obvious, "The gravity orientates to the floor. Now, in here, all of you. Don't take your eyes off the Angels. Move, move, move." One by one, Amy, River, and the Clerics with Octavian entered the ship.

"Okay, I'm definitely going to need a movie night once we're out of this place," I blurted out, trying not to panic.

"You an me both," Amy agreed, laughing nervously, "You choose the movies, and I make the popcorn?"

"Deal." We shook on it, then the hatch slammed shut, making us both jump.

"They're here, now. In the dark we're finished," the Doctor said, and the door a few feet behind Amy and me began to close, "Run!"

"This whole place is a death trap!" Octavian exclaimed.

"No, it's a time bomb. Well, it's a death trap and a time bomb. And now it's a dead end," the Doctor turned to face us, "Nobody panic. Oh, just me then. What's through here?"

"Secondary flight deck," River said.

"Okay, so we've basically run up the inside of a chimney yeah?" Amy asked, "So what if the gravity fails?"

"I've thought about that," the Doctor said.

"And?"

"And we'll all plunge to our deaths. See? I've thought about it. The security protocols are still live. There's no way to override them. It's impossible."

"How impossible?" River asked, not even looking away from the wiring she was messing with.

"Two minutes."

Just then, the hatch door opened again, as if to let an unknown member of our group in.

"The hull is breached and the power is failing," Octavian said.

"Yeah, thanks for spelling it out for us! That really helps!" I hissed; the lights flickered and the stone arm of an Angel appeared in the open hatch, "I'm rude because I'm scared, and this is what I get. A truckload of Lonely Assassins. Great!"

"Sir, incoming," a cleric said.

"Doctor? Lights," Amy said. The lights flicker again and give way to the Angel's head, neck, and torso as well. They flicker once more, and wouldn't you know it, we're met with four Weeping Angels inside the Byzantium, facing us.

"Clerics, keep watching them," Octavian ordered.

"And don't look at their eyes. Anywhere else. Not the eyes," the Doctor added as a side-note, "I've isolated the lighting grid. They can't drain the power now." He must've seen how shaken up I was because after announcing this he gave me a quick hug, which I was very grateful for.

"Good work, Doctor," Octavian said.

"Yes. Good, good, good. Good in many ways. Good you like it so far."

"So far?" Amy asked, a bit panicky herself.

"Well, there's only one way to open this door. I guess I'll need to route all the power in this section through the door control."

"Good. Fine. Do it."

"Including the lights. All of them. I'll need to turn out the lights."

"How long for?"

"Fraction of a second. Maybe longer. Maybe quite a bit longer."

"Maybe?"

"I'm guessing. We're being attacked by statues in a crashed ship. There isn't a manual for this!" The Doctor was now pacing up and down the corridor.

"Doctor, we lost the torches. We'll be in total darkness!" Amy said. Or would we?

Suddenly, I had an epiphany, "Do you think you could keep the lights on and control the door if you used my screwdriver? Or if not that, maybe I could route the power from another part of the ship into the lighting grid while you open the door?"

The Doctor pondered the idea for a moment before nodding a bit, "You know, that might just work. Good thinking, Ginny!"

"Thanks," I said, feeling a bit bashful, "What do you think, Bishop?"

Father Octavian turned to face River, "Doctor Song, I've lost good clerics today. You trust these people?"

"I absolutely trust them," she said.

"They're not mad, then?" he asked.

"I absolutely trust them," she repeated.

The Doctor then pulled me away from the group with him, so he could teach me how to route power into the lightning grid with my screwdriver. It was quite simple, honestly. All I had to do was find the lighting grid, send a sonic pulse to a nearby corridor, and presto! The light goes from there, to here. At least that's how it should work. The Doctor had already found a lighting grid for me, so now all I had to do was activate my screwdriver.

"Okay, Doctor, Miss Parks, if anything goes wrong with your plan, we've got your backs," Octavian said.

"Bless you, Bishop," the Doctor replied.

"Combat distance, ten feet," Octavian ordered as two clerics backed up a bit, "If the lights do not come back on immediately, continuous fire. Full spread over the hostiles. Do not stop firing until the lights come back on if they do so. Shotgun protocol. We don't have bullets to waste."

During Octavian's orders, the Doctor and Amy had been attaching wires to a wheel in the center of the door.

"Amy, when the lights go down for a few seconds, the wheel should release. Spin it clockwise four turns," the Doctor told her.

"Ten," Amy said, out of the blue.

"No, four. Four turns."

"Yeah, four. I heard you."

The Doctor came over to the power unit and stood next to me, "Ready?"

I nodded and activated my screwdriver, hopefully keeping the lights on in here.

"On my count, then," Octavian said, "God be with us all. Three, two, one, fire!"

The lights went out for maybe a second before coming back on again. There was no need for the gunfire after all. Oh, thank God it worked! Amy began hastily turning the wheel until the door slid open a crack.

"Fall back!" the Doctor ordered. Amy and River went through first, then Octavian and his clerics, then myself, and finally the Doctor. Now in a different part of the corridor, he soniced a fixture to open the next door a fraction. We all piled through, and after a moment, the Doctor slid in.

"Fair warning, y'all might want to magnetize the doors. It won't stop the Angels, but it'll buy us time," I announced. Bob listened right away and sealed the center door, but not before convincing two more clerics I was telling the truth. It wasn't long after they had been sealed that the Angels began to turn the wheels to open the doors.

"We're surrounded," River said.

"Doctor, how long have we got?" Octavian asked the Time Lord.

"Five minutes, max," he replied, focusing a bit more on typing something into the keyboard in front of him.

"Nine," Amy said.

"Five."

"Five. Right. Yeah."

"Why'd you say nine?"

"I didn't."

The wheels slowly turned on all the doors; the Angels were really persistent, weren't they?
"We need another way out of here," River said.

"There isn't one," Octavian replied.

I smirked, "Oh isn't there. Doctor, you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Probably," the Time Lord said, "This is a galaxy class ship. Goes for years between planet falls. So, what do they need?"

River was the first to figure it out, "Of course."

"Of course what? What do they need?" Amy asked, only to be ignored.

"Can we get in there?" Octavian asked.

"Well, it's a sealed unit, but they must have installed it somehow," the Doctor said, putting the side of his face to the back wall, "This whole wall should slide up."

I pushed a crate aside and pointed to the clamps with my screwdriver, "Would we need to release these?"

The Doctor gave me a hi-five, "Yes we would. Release the clamps!"

I soniced the two on the left side of the door, and the Doctor soniced the two on the right.

"What's through there? What do they need?" Amy asked.

"They need to breathe," River said. Then, slowly but surely, the wall started to rise up, revealing a very healthy looking forest, chock full of trees, shrubbery, and various other forms of plant life.

"But that's. That's a," Amy was at a loss for words.

"It's an oxygen factory," River said.

"It's a forest!"

"Yeah, it's a forest. It's an oxygen factory."

"And if we're lucky, an escape route," the Doctor said.

Amy laughed breathlessly, "Eight."

"What did you say?" River asked.

"Nothing."

"Is there another exit? Scan the architecture, we don't have time to get lost in there," the Doctor said.

"On it. Stay where you are until I've checked the RAD levels," Octavian ordered as he, Bob, and the rest of the clerics entered the forest to scan the trees.

"But trees, on a spaceship?" Amy asked, standing between the Doctor and me.

"Oh, more than trees. Way better than trees. You two are gonna love this," the Doctor said, walking into the forest himself and standing next to a tree, "Treeborgs. Trees plus technology. Branches become cables become censors on the hull. A forest sucking in starlight, breathing out air. It even rains. There's a whole mini-climate. This vault is an ecopod running right through the heart of the ship," he jumped back onto the flight deck, "A forest in a bottle on a spaceship in a maze. Have I impressed you two yet?"

"So far, so impressive," I said.

Amy smiled, "Seven."

"Seven?" the Doctor repeated.

"Sorry, what?"

"You said seven."

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did," River said.

"Doctor, there's an exit, far end of the ship, into the Primary Flight Deck," Octavian reported.

"Oh, good. That's where we need to go," the Doctor replied, not taking his eyes off Amy.

"Plotting a safe path now."

"Quick as you like."

A communicator spat out a bit of static before relaying a message from the Angels, "Doctor? Excuse me? Hello, Doctor? Angel Angelo here, sir."

"Ah. There you are, Angel Angelo. How's life? Sorry, bad subject," the Doctor said, sitting down in a chair in front of the forest.

"The Angels are wondering what you hope to achieve."

"Achieve? We're not achieving anything. We're just... hanging. It's nice in here. Consoles, comfy chairs, a forest. How's things with you?"

"The Angels are feasting, sir. Soon we will be able to absorb enough power to consume this vessel, this world, and all the stars and worlds beyond."

"Well, we've got comfy chairs. Did I mention?"

"We have no need of comfy chairs."

"I made him say, 'comfy chairs'."

Amy snickered, "Six."

The Doctor sprung up out of his chair, "Okay, Angelo, enough chat. Here's what I want to know. What have you done to Amy?"

"There's something in her eye," Angel Angelo said.

"What's in her eye?"

"We are."

The Doctor then rushed over to Amy and looked into her eyes again, searching for any tell-tale signs of current Weeping Angel possession.

"What's he talking about?" Amy asked, "Doctor, I'm five! I mean, five. Fine! I'm fine."

"You're counting," River said.

"Counting?" Amy asked.

"You're counting down from ten. You have been for a couple of minutes," the Doctor answered.

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Well, counting down to what?"

"I don't know."

"We shall take her. We shall take all of you. We shall have dominion over all of time and space," Angel Angelo said.

The Doctor sat back down in the chair, "Get a life, Angelo. Oops, sorry again. There's power on this ship, but nowhere near that much."

"With respect, sir, there's more power on this ship than you yet understand."

Suddenly a shrill screeching sound filled the air, reminding me of nails on a chalkboard. I had to cover my ears because of how loud it was.

"What it that?" Dear God, what is that?" River asked.

"It's on the verge of making my ears bleed. That's what it is!" I shouted over the noise.

"They're back," Octavian said.

"It's hard to put it in your terms, Doctor Song, but as best as I understand it, the Angels are laughing," Angel Angelo said. The Doctor leaned forward in the chair.

"Laughing?" he asked.

"Because you haven't noticed yet, sir. The Doctor in the TARDIS hasn't noticed."

"Doctor," Octavian called, trying to get us to start moving into the forest.

"No. Wait. There's something I've," the Doctor turned around and suddenly sported a shell-shocked face, "missed."

I turned around as well and immediately regretted it. As soon as I laid eyes on the crack in the universe above the bulkhead, my head seemed to explode in pure agony. It was like someone was trying to force something into my mind, but all I was getting were psychic grenades, exploding right when they reached me. The pain caused me to crumble to my knees with my head in my hands, screaming the whole time. Closing my eyes seemed to help a little, so I kept them screwed shut.

I think someone called my name, but I couldn't really hear; my head hurt so much that it was hard to tell noises apart.

"Please. Make it stop," I cried. There was another jumble of noise and then someone -I think it was the Doctor- placed their hands on either side of my head. Everything slowly began to calm down again, and my mind relaxed until a sense of oblivion overtook me.