And then the dam burst, timber flying into the air like matchsticks, shattered under the massive pressure of the wall of foaming white water that thundered down into the canyon, the river finally reclaiming its rightful bed and bringing death in its wake, sweeping away the bridge and everything on it.
Illustration to a scene from “The Master’s Rose” by Brownbug.
A rather late gift for @erzaholmes - more like an Easter gift than a Christmas one! Hope you enjoy, all the same <3
Cheers from your friendly neighbourhood pinch-hitter, Brownbug :)
Enoch Podnitsky had always been different. Never quite fitting in, the square peg in the round hole, sitting on the sidelines watching as life passed him by at a bewildering rate.
From his first day in kindergarten, they’d teased him. They’d laughed at his funny name, the clothes he wore, his skinny physique, his glasses, his overbite, his big nose. Most of all, they’d jeered at him for always knowing the correct answer when the teacher called on him. They called him names (“Poindexter Podnitsky” was the one he hated most), they stole his homework, they wrote insulting graffiti on his locker. Sometimes they tripped him over in the corridors and laughed to see him sprawling across the floor, or shoved him around in the playground so that he came home with bruises all over.
His mother did her best to comfort him, as she tended to the worst of his injuries. She’d been to see the head teacher any number of times about the treatment her son was receiving, but nothing had been done, and she had no money to move him to a different school. Enoch’s father had left when he was just a baby, and she was working two jobs to keep enough food on the table. Tired and careworn, all she could do was to hug him and to encourage him to be brave. He was just a late bloomer, she told him, kissing him on the head. Things would get better, he’d see. One day, he’d do something amazing… something that would change the world. He tried to believe her, but it wasn’t easy. He had no siblings and no friends. It was a lonely childhood.
When he reached high school, things got even worse. While other kids were going to the movies or arranging parties or finding dates, he was stuck at home, poring over his science textbooks. No-one wanted to be seen with Poindexter Podnitsky, much less go on a date with him. The girls giggled as he walked by, his heavy book-bag slung over his shoulder, and he hung his head lower and shuffled his feet in shame. Back at home, his mother had reassured him that his time would come, that he just hadn’t met ‘the one’. Enoch smiled at her, and tried to put on a brave face, but he was starting to believe that he never would.
The years had gone by, he’d left school, gone to university, graduated with top honours, and had been recruited for a job in a top secret government scientific facility. But nothing had really changed. Somehow, in his secret heart, he’d thought that working in military intelligence might transform him into a dashing super-spy, like James Bond – that he’d be working on secret formulas, and driving around in flashy cars, and meeting mysterious, sexy women who would fall for his obvious charisma. Instead, he found himself working long hours on tasks that seemed mundane and unimportant, in the company of people who never even gave him a second glance. The teasing and taunting from his childhood had stopped – his work colleagues were far too busy for that – but it had been replaced with a kind of invisibility. Enoch couldn’t decide which was worse.
And then he’d reached his breaking point. His mother, his beloved mother, his only friend in all the world, the only one who believed in him, had died. He’d stood at her graveside, his eyes blinded by tears, a silent scream building inside him. Why? Why, when he had so little, had the only thing he cared about been so cruelly snatched away from him.
After that, life had no point, day after dreary day, just stretching on and on and on, his misery absolute. His mother had wanted him to do something amazing, how could he fail her so badly? He felt as if hit had hit rock bottom, and there was no coming back.
One brisk spring evening, several years after, he was driving home. It was late, of course. These days, he rarely left his lab before midnight, working through the quiet hours when everyone else had gone home to their husbands and wives and children.
He pulled up outside his modest rented flat, and hurried to let himself in. There were at least five locks that he needed to disengage, before he could open the door. He’d had them fitted recently, paranoia creeping in. The area he lived in was not a particularly good one, after all. Who knew what criminals could be lurking around? Once inside, he secured all the locks again, before turning aside into his small kitchen, to grab a salad out of the fridge, together with a glass of orange juice. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, he’d been much too busy, and now he was ravenous.
Out of habit, he flicked on the small television sitting on the kitchen counter. The late news was on. He turned up the volume. The newsreader was replaced with the picture of a smiling redhead in her middle twenties. Enoch didn’t need the writing at the bottom of the screen to tell him who it was. Melissa Farrington. The news report described her vaguely as a 'government employee’. What they really meant was that she worked at the same top secret laboratory complex as Enoch did. She’d gone missing three weeks ago, the latest in a recent string of kidnappings across London that the police had so far been unable to solve. The newsreader solemnly informed the public that the number of people who had gone missing in the last six months now totalled fourteen, six men and eight women. No trace of any of them had ever been found. If anyone had any information at all, even the smallest thing that could be related, they were to call the toll-free number now flashing across the screen.
Enoch leaned over and switched the television off again, an impassive expression on his face. He felt no particular sympathy for Melissa. He’d gotten up enough courage to ask her out for a drink once. She’d gone bright red, stammered some kind of embarrassed excuse, then nearly fallen over her own feet in her rush to get away from him. The memory still stung.
Sipping from his glass of orange juice, he checked the locks on the front door again, before moving into the living room of the flat and switching on the light. Most of the room was unremarkable, furnished with a couple of worn sofas, and some shelves laden with books. There was a desk under the window, topped with a rather battered laptop. No-one entering the room would have noticed any of that, however. Their attention would have immediately been attracted to the large, glass-fronted box that was attached to the far wall. A scientist would have immediately recognised it as a formicarium or ant farm, a vivarium designed primarily for the study of ant colonies and how ants behave.
Enoch crossed the room and crouched down to peer through the glass at the tiny creatures within. Technically, his lease didn’t permit him to have any pets in the flat. But he really didn’t think an ant farm counted. They kept him company, during the few hours that he spent away from his lab, and he loved to sit and watch them scurrying back and forth, and make notes on their behaviours. To his scientific mind, it was endlessly fascinating.
A frown crossed his face and he set his glass down on a nearby shelf, before crouching to look more closely into the formicarium. He’d been watching the inhabitants for so long now that he could predict with a degree of certainty what they would be doing at any given time of the day. Tonight, however, they seemed weirdly agitated. Instead of going about their usual business, they were gathered in a group around one single individual. It looked almost as if they were having some kind of meeting.
A powerful magnifying glass on a swivel arm was attached to the side of the formicarium. Enoch grabbed it and swung it towards him, positioning the glass so he could see more clearly. A soft curse word escaped his lips. The cause of the disturbance was evident – the new addition he had collected yesterday, a beautiful brown specimen, was apparently not compatible with the other members of the colony. Perhaps it had been a mistake not to undertake some further testing first.
Annoyed, he tapped on the glass, intent on disrupting whatever it was that was going on.
“That won’t work, you know,” a voice interjected calmly. “You don’t know her like I do. She won’t give up.”
Enoch whirled around so sharply that he bumped his orange juice glass, spilling the sticky liquid all over the floor. Behind him, leaning nonchalantly against the wall, was a tall thin man, dressed in a pin-striped blue suit, with a white shirt and a blue tie . A long tan-coloured coat and scruffy white Converse trainers completed his outfit. He had a shock of spiky brown hair, with long sideburns, pale skin scattered with faint freckles, and a pair of steady dark-brown eyes. Enoch had never seen him before in his life.
“Who’re you?” he sputtered. “And how did you get in here?”
“I’m the Doctor,” the man said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I suppose you’re wondering how I got past all those silly locks of yours. Weeeeell, it takes more than a lock to keep me out, Enoch.”
Enoch blinked rapidly, fear constricting his chest. “How do you know my name?”
“I know a lot of things,” the Doctor shrugged, his intent gaze never leaving Enoch’s face. His manner wasn’t at all hostile. In fact, his expression open and amicable, as if they were having a casual chat at some kind of social gathering. Nevertheless, Enoch couldn’t help the shiver that crawled up his spine. Some sixth sense was telling him that he was walking on very thin ice, and that it would be very unwise to anger his unexpected visitor.
“For instance…” the Doctor continued. “I know that you met a friend of mine in Nightingale Lane yesterday.”
There was a roaring sound in Enoch’s ears, and his heart was pounding so hard that it seemed likely to jump out of his chest. “Your f-friend?”
“Yes. Her name is Martha Jones.” The Doctor’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “She went out for some chips and never came back. Ringing any bells here, am I?”
“I…,” Enoch stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” Moving too quickly to counter, the Doctor stepped forward and grabbed the magnifying glass on its extendable arm, tilting it so that both he and Enoch could see through it at the same time. It was focused directly on the newest specimen in the formicarium. Twiddling the dial on the side of the mechanism, the Doctor increased the magnification to its maximum level, and the tiny figure was revealed in exquisite detail. It wasn’t an ant, it was a woman. She was very attractive, with dark hair and smooth ebony skin. Her mouth was open, as if she was shouting something, and she looked very angry. “Care to explain that, then?”
Enoch couldn’t explain it. He gulped hard, his eyes flickering back and forth, as though he was searching for an escape route.
His strange visitor zoomed the lens out slightly, widening the field of vision, until it was possible to see that the “ants” surrounding Martha were also people, all of them miniaturised to an unbelievably tiny size.
“And these? Just bump into them on the street one day, did you? Decided you might take them home as pets? Just how many people have you kidnapped?”
There was an unmistakable ripple of anger in the Doctor’s voice now.
Enoch backed away, trembling all over, his teeth bared like a cornered rat. There was nowhere he could run. The Doctor was between him and the only door.
“You don’t understand anything!” he shouted passionately. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?” the other man urged. “Tell me, Enoch. Make me understand.”
Enoch thrust his hand into his pocket, fumbling around until he managed to wrap his fingers around the device he had tucked away in there. It felt cold and hard to his touch, and yet familiar, as if it belonged to him and he belonged to it, a lifeline in his sea of despair.
After his mother had died, once the numbness of his grief had eventually subsided, he had become aware of a burning desire inside, a determination to change things. His mother had wanted him to do something amazing, and he couldn’t bear to fail her last wishes. And, just for once, he had been lucky. It was almost as if the universe had finally been prepared to redress the balance for all that had happened to him. Unexpectedly, Enoch had come into possession of some extraordinary research data. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, concepts that dazzled his mind with their possibilities. Feverishly, using the scientific facilities available to him at his workplace, he began to secretly branch out, to conduct his own experiments based on the new information. Once started, his work had an impetus of its own. In what seemed like no time at all, he had an operational prototype and was able to commence field testing. The project consumed him, filled his empty life with purpose, eased the ache of his loneliness. In some ways, it even made him feel like a god.
He pulled the device out and pointed it at the Doctor. It looked like a gun, but it wasn’t – it was so much more. “I’m sorry. I really am sorry,” he said jerkily. And, to his surprise, it really was true. All his other victims had been taken by surprise. Like Melissa Farrington, for instance. She hadn’t suspected for one second what was about to happen to her, when he walked up to her in a deserted corner of that underground carpark. None of them had ever expected a nobody like him to be any kind of danger to them. However, it was much harder to shrink someone when they were looking him in the eyes, knowing exactly what he was about to do. “You should have stayed away. Now you’re going to have to join your friend.”
The Doctor slowly shook his head. “You don’t want to do that.”
“I don’t want to!” Enoch retorted. “But I have to. You’ve left me with no choice! Look at me. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. My mother died, and now not a single person on this earth cares if I live or die. Except…” - with a shaking hand, he gestured towards the formicarium - “Except them. I’m important to them, they depend on me for their very lives. I take care of them. And I can’t let you take them away from me.”
“No, I mean, you really, really don’t want to do that,” the Doctor repeated, more emphatically this time. “You see, while you were in the shower this morning, I removed the dimensional stabiliser from the device. If you fire it, the effect will rebound into your own body. And without the stabiliser, there will be no size limitation in place. You’ll be shrunk out of existence.”
“You’re lying!” Enoch’s grip tightened on his precious device, his finger quivering over the trigger, his eyes wild.
“Maybe. Maybe not. You wanna risk it? Mexican standoff time, Enoch.” Fearlessly, the Doctor stepped forward, his hand extended. “This is your chance to make the right decision. Give me the device.”
“You’re crazy!” Enoch spluttered.
A humourless smile twitched the Doctor’s lips. “You’re not the first to say so. But those people in there… you’ve cheated them of their lives. Instead of thinking about how miserable you are, try looking at things from their point of view. You’ve torn them away from their homes and their loved ones. D'you really think that’s what your mother would have wanted for you? To destroy the lives of other people?”
One day you’ll do something amazing, Enoch, I know you will. Until then, you’ve just got to be brave and always do the very best you can….
His mother’s voice rang in his ears and tears sprang to his eyes. He knew quite well she wouldn’t be proud of what he’d become. Of his research, maybe. Of the sheer genius of what he’d discovered. But not the way he’d used it to hurt other people. She’d have wanted him to adapt his ideas to benefit humanity – maybe applying it to life-saving medical sciences or finding areas where he could make industry more efficient. Instead, all he’d done was to keep it for himself, for his own selfish purposes.
The guilt had been there all along, gnawing at him, but he’d been able to push it aside. Rationalise it, telling himself that after all he’d been through, it was his turn to do whatever he wanted. Now though, it was as though the Doctor had held up a mirror in front of him, revealing the person he really was. And Enoch didn’t like what he saw.
“I’m so lonely!” he blurted out, before he could stop himself.
The Doctor’s eyes were full of compassion. “I know. Believe me, I get it. I know what it’s like to lose people. So many people. Just recently, I lost a friend of mine, someone I cared for very deeply. She fell into another dimension, and now I can’t get her back, without threatening the stability of the entire causal nexus. I won’t do that. And I know she wouldn’t want me to. Sometimes… you just have to put your own personal happiness aside, for the sake of the greater good.”
Enoch had no idea what the Doctor was talking about. Other dimensions… causal nexus… they were terms and concepts that belonged in a science fiction movie. But the one thing he gleaned from what the other man was saying was that he understood. He wasn’t just trying to talk Enoch down, like a trained negotiator in a hostage situation. There was a deep sadness in that brown gaze that proved he was telling the truth.
“So… what do I do?” The plea came from the very bottom of his heart. “How can I make it hurt less?”
He didn’t really expect an answer. He didn’t believe there was one. But this man called himself the Doctor. Perhaps, in the many realms of possibility, there was some healing he could give.
“You keep going,” the Doctor said, a bleak expression flickering across his face, a shadow of many memories. “You find a new place within the universe, a new reason to get up in the morning. Not like this…” His gaze trailed across to the ant farm. “A real reason. I can help you, Enoch. But not until you decide to help yourself.” He gestured slightly with his outstretched hand. “Please. For your own sake, give me the device.”
There was a short pause as Enoch continued to wrestle with himself, the last vestiges of his resentment against the world warring with his conscience. In the end, though, his conscience – given voice by his unusual visitor – won out. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he dropped the device into the Doctor’s waiting hand.
“Thank you.” The Doctor nodded in approval, tinged with some relief. He examined Enoch’s invention with interest, holding it up in front of his eyes. “Sequential transpiration molecular compressor, complete with a displacement analyser and a distance horizon sensor, if I’m not mistaken. Very impressive.”
Enoch blinked in astonishment. His device was extremely advanced technology, thanks to the innovative data on which he had based his research. Very few people would have any clue what they were holding in their hand, let alone assess it so accurately with a glance.
“You’re… a scientist?” he blurted out.
“Weeeeeeell, I dabble,” the Doctor said modestly. “I’ve done a bit, here and there.” He was fiddling with the controls as he spoke, reversing the settings. “There. Now, let’s see if this works.”
Hurriedly, Enoch grabbed a pair of padded tongs, purpose-built for just such an occasion, and flipped open a door in the top of the formicarium. Carefully, he reached down inside and took hold of the woman known as Martha Jones, and began to gently lift her out of the glass-fronted enclosure. The other miniaturised people screamed and ran, hiding in the rough, earthen dwellings they had constructed for themselves inside their prison. Martha struggled fiercely at first, but as she rose higher, she clung on tightly to the tongs, not wanting to fall. In moments, he had placed her on the living room rug, in front of the Doctor.
A bright, blue-tinged ray burst from the end of the molecular compressor and enveloped Martha’s tiny figure. At first, it looked like nothing had happened, and Enoch felt a wave of panic. Had he, in his haste to develop the device, neglected to correctly program in the reversal procedure? But he needn’t have worried. After a few seconds, the minuscule female figure began to grow, rocketing upwards and expanding upwards, until the Doctor shut off the device, leaving a correctly-sized, but very angry woman standing there.
The first thing she did was to pat herself down, as if to reassure herself that her arms and legs and other essential body parts were all still in place. Then, upon seeing her friend, she started shouting, her cheeks flushed with rage.
“Doctor! Thank God you’re here. I was coming back to the TARDIS with some chips, when this sicko” - and here she indicated the cringing Enoch - “stops me to ask for the time. The next thing I know, he hits me with some kind of shrink ray and sticks me in his ant farm!”
“Sequential transpiration molecular compressor,” the Doctor muttered.
“WHAT?” Martha said, halted in full flow and very taken aback by the seemingly-random interruption.
“It’s a sequential transpiration molecular compressor, not a shrink ray,” the Doctor explained. “And the correct name for an ant farm is actually a formicarium.”
Martha gave him such a withering look that Enoch was surprised that he didn’t catch fire on the spot and burn into a crisp.
“Orrrrr…” the Doctor continued, suddenly realising that he was walking on very thin ice. “We could always keep referring to them as a shrink ray and an ant farm.” He spread his hands in surrender. “Whatever’s easiest.”
“The point is,” Martha hissed, transferring her glare to Enoch. “We can’t let him get away with kidnapping people. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Enoch hadn’t thought that the outrage in Martha’s voice could rise any higher, but he had obviously been mistaken, since it ratcheted even further up the scale.
“It’s all been sorted,” the Doctor replied calmly. “Enoch was just a bit… misguided… that’s all. He won’t do it again, will you, Enoch?”
Enoch shook his head vehemently, and then stared miserably at Martha, who didn’t appear at all satisfied with this explanation. “You mean…. you’re not going to call the police?” There was a disbelieving note of hope in his voice.
The Doctor looked surprised, as if that solution hadn’t even occurred to him. “I don’t really think we need to do that. I doubt they’d believe us, anyway. I have a different plan in mind.”
“A different plan?” The note of hope flickered out, to be replaced by wariness.
“I have a friend, by the name of Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. She runs an organisation that could benefit from your expertise. She’ll keep you on the straight and narrow!” the Doctor said, a twinkle in his brown eyes. “And working for her will open doors you never even knew existed. It will be the fresh start that you need.”
A fresh start? The more Enoch heard about it, the more he liked it. A new life, away from here; away from his old depressing habits, the choking holes left by the absence of his mother. He couldn’t help the glow in his heart, when the Doctor mentioned his expertise. As if he was actually worth something. As if he could actually provide something of benefit to this Kate and her team. Enoch wasn’t used to having anyone believe in him like this, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Suddenly, he experienced a fierce resolve not to let the Doctor down.
He glanced back over to the formicarium. “B-but… what about them? Even if she doesn’t call the police” - he gestured in Martha’s direction - “one of them will. I kidnapped them. They’ll want to make me pay.”
“Not if they don’t remember.”
From his pocket, the Doctor pulled a slender, silver rod-like device, with a blue diode glowing at the end. He applied it to the molecular compressor, running it up and down the length of Enoch’s invention, emitting a high-pitched buzzing sound.
“A tweak here and a tweak there – add in a selective memory-wipe process – and when they’re re-sized, they’ll be none the wiser. We’ll drop them back home, they’ll be a bit disoriented, but no harm done.”
“Will that… r-really work?” Enoch stammered, eyeing the strange silver rod with a healthy dose of scepticism.
“'Course it will. I’m the Doctor!” the other man replied matter-of-factly, as if that one single phrase told Enoch all he needed to know. “Now come on, you two. We have a lot of work to do to put all these people back where they belong.”
The front door of the flat closed softly. Enoch was left alone in the living room, sitting on the couch and staring at the now-empty formicarium, an almost dazed look on his face. In his hand was a piece of paper, with the name “Kate Lethbridge-Stewart” written on it, in a spiky, angular hand, followed by a phone number.
Now that the Doctor and Martha had gone, the room felt suddenly huge and empty, as if all the vitality they had brought with them had now been sucked away. Enoch felt as if a whirlwind had entered his life and turned it all upside down, blowing the cobwebs from the corners, and opening his mind to all sorts of possibilities he hadn’t been able to see before.
Stiffly, he levered himself to his feet and padded back into the tiny kitchen. Once more, he flicked on the television. As before, the news was on. This time, however, instead of doom and gloom, the reporter was excitedly announcing that all of the previously-listed kidnapping victims had been mysteriously returned to their homes overnight. They were all fit and well, but not one of them had any memory of where they had all been for so long, or what had happened to them. Already, the nutters were beginning to shout about government conspiracies and alien abduction.
Enoch shook his head. Sometimes, the truth was stranger than fiction. He’d seen inside the Doctor’s amazing ship, an experience that had nearly blown his mind. One by one, travelling in the blue box that was bigger on the inside than the outside, they’d dropped Enoch’s erstwhile victims back at their homes, their memories wiped, just as his new friend had promised. At first, Martha hadn’t appeared very keen on helping him, but it was clear that whatever the Doctor said went, so she eventually acquiesced, albeit it with a quite a few suspicious sidelong glances at Enoch, which he did his best to ignore. After all, it wasn’t as if he could blame her for distrusting him.
After everyone had been taken from the ant farm and returned to their proper place, the trio had paid a quick visit to Enoch’s lab, where the Doctor had confiscated all of his research, including the initial data upon which he’d based his work. Better to be safe than sorry, he’d been told. And needless to say, the Doctor had not returned his prototype device.
All the harm that he’d done had been undone. Now it was up to him to make something of the second chance he’d been so miraculously given. He straightened out the crumpled piece of paper with Kate Lethbridge Stewart’s number on it, and eyed his mobile, sitting on the bench. No time like the present, he told himself sternly.
However, before he could reach for the phone, there was a sharp rap on the door. Thinking that the Doctor may have forgotten something, Enoch hurried to open it. Standing outside in the morning sunshine was a blonde woman dressed in a smart black suit. Behind her, two black-uniformed soldiers stood to attention, and beyond them, a long black limousine with dark-tinted windows was drawn up to the curb.
Enoch’s eyes widened. He recognised the woman, of course. She was the one who had handed him the initial ground-breaking technological data on which he had based his original design for the molecular compression device. He’d never known her name. She’d just walked up to him in the park one day, when he was eating his sandwiches on a bench at lunchtime, and had handed him the innocuous-looking manila folder.
“This is for you, Mr Podnitsky,” she’d told him, in a crisp voice. “I’m told that you’ll know what do to with it.”
And with that, she’d walked away again, her high heels clacking on the concrete path.
Enoch had tried to protest that she had the wrong person, and that he had no idea what she was talking about, but it was too late. She was already gone. Out of curiosity, he had opened the folder. And that had been where the whole terrible saga had begun, until the Doctor had put an end to it.
Sudden apprehension clutched at his heart. What was she doing here? How had she known where to find him? The coincidence of her return, right after the Doctor had been here, seemed much too great. “What… what do you want?”
“Mr Saxon wants to see you,” she replied. It was not a request. It was unmistakably an order.
“Mr Saxon?” His own tone reflected nothing but bewilderment. “You mean… Harold Saxon? The Minister of Defence?”
“Of course,” the woman sneered. “Where else do you think the information I handed you came from? Now, please, Mr Podnitsky, get in the car. I don’t want to enforce the Minister’s request… but I will if I have to.”
The two black-dressed soldiers stepped forward, and deftly sandwiched Enoch between them, marching him down the short path to the curb, and from there, into the car. In the far distance, Enoch could see the Doctor’s long brown coat swirling around his ankles, as he and Martha began to turn the corner at the end of the road. Another few seconds, and they would be out of sight. Prompted by a small seed of fear, Enoch opened his mouth to shout to them, but the door of the limousine slammed shut behind him, cutting off any chance he had to make himself heard.
Back at the entrance to his flat, the blonde woman gave a satisfied smile. She spoke into a small communicator attached to her wrist. “Target acquired. I’m returning with him now. Dexter out.”
She pulled the door of the flat shut, listening as the latch engaged, and then walked back towards the curb. Seconds later, the big black limousine pulled away, vanishing into the busy London morning traffic.
Summer had crept away and the trees had begun to don their autumnal glory, when another black car drew up in front of Enoch Podnitsky’s flat. Not a limousine this time, nothing so fancy, just an ordinary black sedan – nice enough, but not jaw-droppingly expensive. A neatly-lettered blue and orange logo emblazoned on the side of the car read “Aspire Estate Agents”.
A balding, middle-aged man emerged, dressed in a neat suit, and retreated to the boot, from where he retrieved a small sign, which said: “TO LET”, followed by the contact number of his agency. Carrying it over to the wrought-iron fence in front of the flat, he began to attach it with small wire ties.
The flat had been empty for some time. The previous occupant, Enoch Podnitsky, had been a good sort of tenant – quiet, neat, kept to himself, for the most part. But inexplicably, he had vanished one day, leaving all his possessions behind. According to the police, poor Enoch had most likely been the final victim of the bizarre kidnapper that had been operating in the area over the last eighteen months. Sadly, unlike the other abductees, he had never been returned, and no-one ever knew what had become of him.
Podnitsky had been a loner, with no friends or family they could trace, so eventually the estate agents had been forced to clean out his flat and to donate all the contents to charity.
Shame, the real estate agent reflected idly. He’d been a nice enough sort of a bloke, if a little weird.
The thought, however, was a fleeting one. Standing back, he made sure the sign was straight, his mind already straying to more important matters, such as what his wife might be cooking for his dinner.
Any memory of Enoch Podnitsky was already long gone by the time he turned back to his car, his polished shoes crunching the dry, fallen leaves underfoot as he walked.
He returns her grin, even as the back of the handle slams into the heel of his hand, and he curls his fingers down around it, ignoring the fact that it actually smarts like anything. He's not going to complain about her having her fun. He did offer her anything after all. And the fact that she's not treating him like a fragile ornament is nice. As his hand curls around it, he spins towards her, and is about a millisecond away from launching the blade towards her, before he hesitates, considering the wisdom of the move. His hesitation is deadly. She vanishes and reappears behind him almost instantly, her knife held to his throat. And quietly, in his ear: “SNAP.”
RP scene - OCs Temporias and Pretty Poison face off. Illustration done for @the-ripper-rides for a birthday a little while back.
Pretty Poison is belong to Brownbug.
Temporias is belong to @the-ripper-rides
DW Secret Santa pinch-hit gift for Brownbug, from the lovely @nonexistenz, being posted up now by mod on behalf!
[From AO3:]
Notes:
Pinch-Hit for the Doctor Who Secret Santa Exchange 2015 over at tumblr.
Gift for: Brownbug
A secret Santa gift? So late? Why, yes, because I totally suck.
Sorry for the wait, dear recipient! I really hope you won't be too disappointed with this. Because, what with this being a comic, it probably doesn't have as much plot as a fic would have had. But here we go. Hope you will like this at least a little bit!
And, of course, I hope others can enjoy it a bit too. I draw comics rarely as it is, way too much work.
Also, I had to recap the episode (with subtle changes) a bit for it to not start out of nowhere on the first page and a half, so bear with it please, it's starting to go AU on page two already. I'll update this every couple of days, still adding a few last details to the pages.
Edit 2016-04-02: Because life screwed me over updates will take a while.
Second part of my gift for @fayegreener. Rating still PG-13.
Merry Christmas, and hope you enjoy!!!
Love from your Secret Santa, Brownbug XXX
Part 1 here
Jack had been right about the heavy snow causing havoc with their journey. Even in the Torchwood SUV, the roads were slick and icy, growing more difficult to navigate, the further they got from Cardiff. Rex stared out the passenger window at the moonlit snowdrifts piled high along the verge, while Jack clutched the wheel in a white-knuckled grip, doing his best not to let the vehicle slip off the road. The weather reports on the radio were not promising, forecasting more flurries before morning.
“Man, this is some godforsaken country,” the CIA agent muttered to himself, shaking his head.
Concentrating on the way ahead, Jack didn’t answer at first. It was bittersweet for him to drive this SUV, even at the best of times. Gwen had somehow managed to salvage it from the scene of destruction at the Hub, and together they’d had it repaired. It still smelled of smoke and burnt rubber and probably always would, after what it had gone through, even if just in his imagination. It was something they had left from the old days, though – a memory he could hang on to, when the ache in his heart insisted that everything was lost. Sometimes, when he turned his head, he still expected to see Owen slouching in the seat beside him, or to hear some of Ianto’s dry Welsh wit coming from the back seat. Sometimes, the wound was still so raw that he just wanted to scream and scream and never stop.
“If we’d left it any later, we probably wouldn’t have gotten through at all,” he commented, peering through the windscreen, as the relentless wipers swished a light spattering of snow aside. “The Brecon Beacons are beautiful in the summer, hence the attraction for hikers. But they can be hellishly bleak in the winter.”
He slanted a glance across at Rex. The other man had slumped back in his seat, his head hunched down into the collar of his jacket, an expression of weary resignation on his face. Jack returned his eyes to the road. He’d never been much good at the personal counselling side of leadership. That part, he’d usually left up to Gwen. But Rex was in a unique and terrible position that no-one else could ever understand. Jack could remember the early days, when he’d first discovered his own immortality. Waiting patiently for over a century for some answers from the friend who had abandoned him, seeing everyone he cared about die all around him, helplessly watching the world change while he remained forever the same. He had never blamed the Doctor for what had happened back on Satellite Five, even though it had been a direct result of travelling with the Time Lord. Nonetheless, it still hurt that after all he had done, the Doctor had never come back to try to help him, leaving him all alone to come to terms with what he’d become. It occurred to him now that, centuries later, Rex was in exactly the same position he had been in, having unwittingly become immortal through his association with Jack. And now, Jack had a choice of his own to make – to run from the situation, as the Doctor had done… or to try to help.
For a few moments, he drummed his fingers on the wheel and listened to the silence. Then he cleared his throat and asked, “So… how’re you doing, Rex?”
A loud snort emitted from behind the other man’s coat collar. “How am I doing? Just peachy, thanks to you, World War Two. Life’s one long party… one that goes on forever and never ends. I couldn’t be happier.”
Jack winced a little at the bitterness in the CIA agent’s voice. This was one conversation that he really didn’t want to have. But he owed it to Rex and so he made himself persist.
“Really?” His tone was low and sceptical.
There was a slight movement beside him, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Rex’s hands had clenched into tight fists. For a fleeting second, he was worried that the other immortal might take a swing at him, even though he was driving.
But then Rex spoke again, his voice gruff and laced with torment. “How do you bear it, Jack? How do you wake up every morning, knowing that everything around you is a day older, but you’re not? That, slowly, everything you love is slipping away from your grasp, and you can’t stop it? That one day, you’re going to outlive not only your friends and family, but the sun itself? Because that’s what you’ve done to me. How the hell am I supposed to go on, with that burden weighing on what’s left of my soul?”
“You make it count.” Jack’s answer was sure and certain. “Each and every day. We can’t die, Rex, but we can still lose ourselves. There will always be a pit of darkness and insanity yawning at your feet, that’s part of what you are now. You can stand still and let it consume you. Or you can find something worth fighting for. And that’s what you do. You fight. For me, that’s what Torchwood is all about. Preserving everything that’s good about the Earth. Protecting the future. Making it count.”
“Making it count,” Rex echoed softly, as if he was turning the words over in his mind.
“Just… don’t get to like it too much.” Sudden grief threatened to choke the advice in Jack’s throat. “Don’t… ever… start to think that you’re a god. Because, in the end, we’re not. We’re just men who live too long. One day… they’ll bring you a decision that no-one else can make… a decision that no living being should ever have to make. And you’ll have to live with the consequences forever.”
One child… or millions… Decker’s loathsome voice still rang in his head. He could still see Steven’s trusting blue eyes… still hear that single, terrible note as it sang from his grandson’s throat… and in the background, his daughter’s anguished pounding on the door, pleading for her son’s life, a plea he could not grant. And then the twitching had begun, the horrifying shaking, as the child’s brain slowly burnt, fried from within from the excruciating frequency, and Jack couldn’t look away like the others did, because this was his fault and he deserved to watch… his fault, just as Suzie had been his fault, and Owen and Tosh and Ianto. All the people who had trusted him and whom he’d been unable to save….
He was barely aware of Rex turning his head towards him, until the other man spoke. “Is that what happened to you? To your team?”
“Yeah.”
The word was brief and curt, but it contained an indescribable world of pain. A sheen of unshed tears glistened in his blue eyes as he gazed fixedly at the snowy road unwinding before them.
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“Yeah, me too.”
All at once, there was nothing else to say. To alleviate the awkwardness, Jack reached out and flipped on the radio, filling the car with the incongruously upbeat sound of some 1950s rock ‘n’ roll. Rex slouched back in his seat, staring silently out at the darkening landscape as the SUV sped through the night, leaving the lights of Cardiff far behind.
In the end, a trip that should have taken a little over an hour in fine weather took them nearly three. The sky was starting to lighten to the east as the SUV arrived on the outskirts of the remote village of Adnewyddu. As Jack had said, in summer, it probably would have been a lovely place, perched high on a steep hillside known as Ysgwydd Diafol, or the ‘Devil’s Shoulder’, and overlooking the grassy moorland in the valley far below. But in winter, with the early morning temperature dipping below freezing, the inhospitable landscape was layered in snow and sheets of glittering ice.
As soon as the Captain caught sight of the weathered old sign marking the edge of the village, he pulled over to the side of the road. Flipping back the cover of his wrist-computer, he punched some buttons, keeping an eye critically on the small readout screen.
“What’re you doing now?” Rex asked impatiently. His tone was decidedly grouchy, but he figured he could be excused for that, since he was tired and hungry and had been up for 48 hours straight.
“Scanning for chronon-particles.”
“Chronon what now?” The scowl on Rex’s face deepened. “Mind translating your Torchwood mumbo jumbo for the resident non-geek?”
Jack sighed. “Chronon particles. The fallout from temporal disruption. Like radiation. You can look at the way the particles degenerate to trace where they came from in the first place. For instance, the Rift has a very particular particle-decay signature.”
“So… you getting anything?” Despite his outward disdain of the Torchwood tech, Rex couldn’t hide his interest, as he leaned over and examined the device on Jack’s wrist. However, all he could see were some blinking lights and a scrawl of incomprehensible data across the small screen.
“Yeah. Up there.” Jack tilted his head towards the top of Ysgwydd Diafol. “There’s something up there that’s come through the Time Vortex. But not through the Rift. This has a different decay signature altogether.”
Following his line of sight, where the icy crags were slowly emerging into visibility in the grey dawnlight, Rex groaned aloud. “You’re going to tell me we have to go up there, aren’t you?”
Opening the car door, Jack let in a rush of freezing air, giving him a wide, bright grin. The same sort of grin that a geriatric nurse might give a recalcitrant patient faced with yet another basket-weaving class. “Welcome to Torchwood. Fun, isn’t it?”
Rex muttered something ambiguous and extremely uncomplimentary under his breath. Unsure whether he was referring to Torchwood or to Wales in the winter or to Jack himself, the Captain decided with perverse satisfaction that it was probably all three. Reaching into the glovebox, he drew out a high-powered maglite flashlight, and tossed it to his disgruntled colleague. “Here, you’ll need this.”
Together, they made the arduous climb to the crest of the hulking hillside. It was a slow process. With the narrow, slippery path illuminated only by the flickering yellow torchlight, they had to take great care not to lose their footing and stumble into any of the deep drifts of snow along the way. The snow had stopped falling, but it was still freezing cold. Jack shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his greatcoat, but his toes were almost numb inside his boots by the time he reached the top.
As they emerged out on to the grassy knoll, they were stopped in their tracks by a spectacular sight. Only an hour ago, the blackness had been absolute. But now the dawn was breaking, the sun peeking over the silver and pink horizon, shimmering rays tracing translucent paths of light through a halo of winter-grey clouds. In the foreground, just in front of them, stood a group of ancient, lichen-covered monoliths, standing in a solemn circle, silhouetted against the rising daylight. The feel of the place was eerie in the extreme. The stones glowed with a pearly light, showcased by the glory of the skies above, and the silence was almost deafening. No breeze stirred the grass, no small creatures through the leaves. Beneath their feet, the ground seemed to hum with eldritch potency, vibrating through their shoes and up through their bodies, singing through their blood. It was as if they had entered some sort of spell and there was no way out.
“There’s… there’s no snow up here,” Rex whispered hoarsely. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see that the other man was as awestruck as he was. What’s more, he was right. Unlike the rest of the frozen hillside, the grass up here, in the area encircled by the stones, was summer-green.
“Leylines,” Jack replied, his voice hushed, caught in the vision. “It’s a waypoint. The stones are situated on a convergence of psi energy.”
Even as he spoke, the light shifted again, with one of the mercurial changes so common to the Brecon Beacons, and the silver radiance of the circle faded away, leaving nothing but ordinary stones. Picturesque, but no longer unearthly and magical. Suddenly, they could hear the usual early morning sounds of the birds waking and a light breeze blowing. The ground they were standing on was now nothing but unremarkable turf.
Rex blinked in astonishment. “Was that even… real?”
“Depends on what you call real,” Jack said wryly. “But if you’re asking if it happened… yeah, it did.”
Warily, he began to walk towards the nearest gap in the circle of stones, gesturing for Rex to follow. “Come on. We still have a killer to find.”
