3
The sun had set over Los
Alamos. Barney Calhoun walked slowly
through the scant, dry grass, the sound of his own footsteps accompanied only
by the chirping of an occasional cricket.
He stopped, and looked around to make sure no one was following
him. When he was certain he was alone,
he continued, making his way among the canyons.
A gentle wind began to blow, amplified by the steep walls of the
cliffs. Suddenly, he stopped; there were
voices up ahead. As he got closer, he
could hear them more clearly, and realized that they didn’t have the usual
gruff or cocky tones of HECU forces, and he sighed in relief. Probably
just some more scientists, he thought.
All the same, it was best to be sure.
He drew his gun, making his way to the corner of one of the cliffs. He could hear the voices coming clearly right
around the bend.
“So, the computer said
whatever pulled the TARDIS through came from…here?” asked one, a man with an
English accent.
“Well, not here exactly, but close by,” replied another
man, also with an English accent. His
voice was slightly younger, though, more energetic. “Probably somewhere underground, though. Twenty-first century Earth, not easy to come
by a device of any kind that can tear through the walls of a universe, and very
unlikely that it’ll fit inside your pocket.
If it were above ground, we would have already seen it by now.”
The voice of a young Scottish
woman joined in. “Alright, so, where is
it then?”
“No idea. But, judging from the tang of residual
radiation in the air…” There was a short
pause. “I’d say that way.”
Barney decided he might as
well stop hiding. He hardly understood a
thing the trio was saying, but he guessed it had something to do with the accident
at Black Mesa. If they were scientists,
he had to get them back to the camp, keep them from wandering off and getting
caught or killed by HECU forces. If they
weren’t scientists…well, he would figure it out. Bracing himself, he stepped carefully around
the corner and raised his gun. “Show me
your hands, nice and easy.”
The three quickly put their
hands up. He was slightly surprised to
see that they weren’t wearing science team uniforms or HECU gear, just civilian
clothes. “Don’t shoot!” said the second
man, who was wearing a rough-looking coat and a red bow tie.
Barney lowered his gun slightly. “Mind tellin’ me who you are?”
“I’m the Doctor, and these are
my friends,” replied the man.
“Doctor? Are you one of the scientists?”
“Uhh, what scientists?”
“Do you work at Black Mesa?”
“Black Mesa…no, no, we’re just
passing through.”
“Sounds like you’re lookin’
for something,” Barney said, raising his eyebrow.
The man looked to his
companions, and then asked, “This, eh…Black Mesa, what is it?”
“It’s a research center just a
couple miles away. You’ve never heard of
it?”
“No. Like I said, just passing through. Do you mind putting that gun down? I’d appreciate it.”
Barney sighed, then nodded. He lowered his gun and strapped it to his
belt. “Sorry about that. HECU forces are out looking for everyone
involved in the project, with kill-on-sight orders. Had to make sure I could trust you.”
“Oh, that’s alright, then,”
the man said with a relieved smile, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you, mister…?”
“Barney. Barney Calhoun.” He shook the man’s hand, smiling in
return. “And your name is?”
“The Doctor. Didn’t I tell you already?”
“Doctor…who?” Barney said in
confusion.
“Oh, just the Doctor,” said
the man dismissively.
“Just the Doctor…” Barney still had no idea what the man meant,
but he shrugged. “Well, uh, nice to meet
ya, Doc.”
Rory and Amy introduced
themselves, and Barney began to feel more at ease. “So, if you’re not with the science team, and
you’re not with HECU, then who are you?”
The Doctor opened his mouth to
say something, and then stopped. He
opened his mouth again, but still said nothing.
He scratched his chin thoughtfully.
Rory interjected, “We’re from…England.”
None of this makes any sense, thought Barney. “How’d you end up out here in the middle of
nowhere, then?”
“Long story,” said the
Doctor. “But, we need to get into Black
Mesa. Can you take us there?”
“Woah, woah, Doc.” Barney waved his hands. “I dunno if you heard, but there was a major
disaster. HECU forces have sealed off
the entrances. Nobody can get in or out. Besides, why would you wanna go back in
there, anyway? Most of the testing areas
collapsed after the accident. We lost
about a third of the facility’s staff.”
“Hmm…and what exactly
happened? What caused the accident?”
“Some sort of test involving
experimental portal technology, I think.
They’ve been going nuts at Black Mesa ever since the Navy set a military
contract on the table for whoever could come up with the stuff first. Competition’s pretty fierce. They were so determined to beat Aperture
Science that—“
“Wait, wait, did you say
Aperture Science?” the Doctor interrupted.
“Yeah.” Barney wondered why the name caught his
attention. “They’ve been rivals of Black
Mesa’s for a long time. If only they
hadn’t been in such a damn hurry, none of this would have happened.” He sighed heavily.
“But some of the science team
survived, right?” asked the Doctor. “Can
you take us to them?”
Barney shrugged. “Sure, I guess. We’ll have to watch out for HECU patrols,
though. If they think you were involved
in the accident, they’ll try to kill you, no questions asked.”
The Doctor groaned in frustration. “Guns!
What is it with humans and guns?
See something you don’t like?
Shoot it, that’ll solve everything…” He began to walk off in no direction in
particular.
Confused, Barney led the
way. ‘Humans’? Nothing this Doctor said made any sense.
“Uh…Doctor?” called Amy as she
started to follow Barney. “This way!”
“I knew that!” The Doctor turned around and followed them,
looking as casual as he could. Amy shook
her head and chuckled.
They followed Barney for a
good while, making their way through the bluffs as quietly as they could. A couple of times they had to stop as a HECU
patrol went by. The soldiers didn’t seem
particularly concerned; they were joking and laughing, putting little effort
into keeping a close watch on their surroundings. Apparently, the scientists were easy prey.
“Doctor,” Amy whispered to the
Doctor, as Barney walked a short distance ahead to scout out an exposed
area. “We’ll be able to find the TARDIS
again, right?”
“Of course, of course,” he
said. “Besides, I have this.” He flashed his homing beacon with a grin,
like a boy showing off a Christmas present.
“I ought to carry it with me more often.”
“All clear!” came Barney’s
hushed call from up ahead. They hurried
along to catch up. Rory walked beside
him, and they chatted casually, laughing quietly now and then.
After walking for several more
minutes, the Doctor whispered to her, “Amy, do you remember that man we saw in
Aperture Science?”
“Wha…oh, yeah, what about
him?” she asked nonchalantly, uncomfortable with the choice of subject.
He looked at her
seriously. “What happened? I felt…something. It was some sort of time disturbance. I got the impression he was doing something to
you. I managed to stop him, but it’s
been bothering me. I haven’t seen anyone
with the technology or capability to manipulate time that way in a long time. It’s all wrong. I don’t think he’s human.”
She was confused. “What is he, then?”
“I’m not sure. But we need to be very careful.”
Rory stepped back to join
them. “How are things back here?”
The Doctor looked at Amy. “We’re fine,” he said.
“Good, good,” Rory replied,
nodding. “I think we’re almost there,
wherever ‘there’ is.”
“I’m takin’ you to the forward
camp,” Barney said. “We set up a safe
zone inside a cave, to hide the survivors from the facility in. It’s outside HECU’s search area, so as long as
we keep quiet, we should be fine.”
Rounding the side of a cliff,
they came across an opening nestled beneath a large rock face. “This way,” said Barney. He slipped a flashlight from his belt and
turned it on, lighting their way through the dark, expansive cave. A fair distance in, they began to hear
subdued voices. They stepped through
into another chamber, lit by a few small lanterns. A sizeable assembly of scientists and
security guards stood clustered into small groups, talking. Tables and makeshift tables had been set up
around the cave. Over in one corner, a
dozen or so people were lying on blankets and long tables, probably the
seriously wounded. A couple of them had
had blankets pulled over them; it seemed not everyone had managed to stay alive.
Barney headed straight for the
“infirmary”, pulling aside one of the scientists, a woman who was keeping an
eye on a dark-skinned man in a lab coat who lay on one of the tables. “How is he, doc?”
“Not good,” she replied. “I’m afraid he may have been too severely
wounded. There’s not much I can do for
him. If we could get a medical team in
here…”
“Can’t do that, doc. We can’t risk being discovered by HECU. It’s dangerous enough as it is, wandering
around lookin’ for survivors. If they
catch and interrogate one of us – or worse, follow us back here – we’re all in
serious trouble.” He gestured toward his
guests. “Oh, I almost forgot. Doctor Mossman, I found these three out in
the middle of the canyons. They said
something about needing to get back into Black Mesa. Figured you or Doctor Kleiner might wanna
have a talk with ‘em.”
The woman looked at them,
slightly surprised. “Oh, hello! I must say, we weren’t expecting
visitors. I’m Judith Mossman.” She nodded politely.
The Doctor smiled and nodded
in return, and Rory and Amy did the same.
“Nice to meet you, Judith. I’m
the Doctor, and these are my partners, Amy and Rory.”
Mossman seemed even more
surprised when she heard the Doctor’s accent.
“Well…I, ah…” She laughed
nervously. “I must admit I have so many
questions; how…how did you find us? What
are you doing out here, in the middle of the desert?”
“Oh, you know, bit of a
crash-landing,” said the Doctor. “Ended
up in a horrendously-white testing facility, spent about fifteen hours doing
test after test after test…” He waved
his hand theatrically and shook his head.
“It was unbelievably dull.”
“Dull?” Amy protested. “We were
almost killed! Twice!”
“Anyway,” the Doctor continued, “we traced a large spatial
disturbance to this area, and…here we are.”
“I can see that,” Doctor
Mossman said. “So, why exactly do you
need to get into Black Mesa?”
Rory and Barney started up a
conversation of their own, and Amy sat on an empty table nearby, half-listening
to the Doctor and Judith.
The Doctor pulled up a nearby
chair and sat down. “Tell me, Judith,
what exactly happened? What’s this
accident I keep hearing so much about?
What are you all hiding down there that’s capable of ripping holes
between universes? Or, if you like,
here’s the big question: why am I here?”
She looked utterly lost, and
she stuttered a bit as she tried to catch up.
“Well, um…as for what happened; back at Black Mesa, we…we were testing a
sample of materials from, ah…another planet, which we obtained by using an
experimental teleport. We built a device
that was capable of analyzing the samples by agitating them and analyzing the
displacement fields created by the process.
But…something went wrong.” She
looked solemn. “A few safety measures
were skipped in the interest of saving time; however, the sample was more
unstable than we had anticipated. There
was a build-up of energy, and…I still don’t know what happened. It’s as if the energy was channeled in a
single direction, which isn’t supposed to be possible; the displacement fields
are far too unstable. But, the agitation
process, if it’s done at high enough levels, can be enough to tear a rift
between universes. The event is what we
would expect from a resonance cascade scenario, but somehow the energy was
focused.”
“Which, according to you,
isn’t possible,” the Doctor followed.
“Yes. Anyway…the residual energy from the burst
overloaded the device. There was an
explosion, and it was destroyed. The
integrity of the whole level’s structure was compromised, and there were
collapses throughout the facility. Our
man in the chamber, Doctor Freeman…” She
sighed sadly. “He was killed in the
explosion. The remains of his HEV suit
were found in the chamber, but no one had enough time to do a thorough
examination. We lost a lot of our people
down there. Most of the survivors barely
made it out in time as it was. The whole
facility has collapsed. Even if it
weren’t flooded with radiation, there’s no way you could make it back inside.”
The Doctor hummed, his eyes
darting back and forth as he thought.
“Is there any other way to seal the rift?” he asked.
“We don’t have the equipment,”
Doctor Mossman replied. “We’ve
considered the possibility, but our level of technology just hasn’t developed
that far yet. The anti-mass spectrometer
was designed to analyze materials, nothing more.”
“Humans!” he said in frustration,
standing up, pacing. “You can never
leave well enough alone, can you? This
is Torchwood Tower all over again.” He
sat down, thinking again. “What,
exactly, was the nature of the explosion?
Can you tell me?”
“Well…” Doctor Mossman began rattling off all kinds
of complicated scientific terms that Amy couldn’t understand. She lost track of the conversation, staring
at one of the cave walls. She felt a
strange sensation, and her heart caught in her throat as she suddenly
recognized it. Oh, no… She could no longer
move her body, and it felt as though time had frozen. The conversation between Mossman and the
Doctor was no longer audible. In fact,
there was no sound at all, not even the sound of her breathing. Amy was terrified, and although her heart was
pounding, nothing was moving, nothing was happening. Absolutely nothing. Even her own breathing had stopped.
Her eyes locked on the cave
wall, she realized that a dark shape was emerging from the reddish stone. It formed into a silhouette, walking forward. As it came into view, her fear peaked. It’s
him, she thought. The outline became
clearer and shifted into a tall, thin man in a dark blue suit, carrying a small
briefcase. He smirked, and the
expression sent chills through her. In
her ears (or was it her mind?) she heard his voice: unsteady, thin, yet cold
and menacing.
“Hello, my dear.”
She found that she could speak, although her mouth was still
frozen. “Who are you?”
The man chuckled. ”Who I
am is beside the point. I am far, far
more interested in who you are.” He leaned forward. She realized they were no longer in the
cave. Or, perhaps they were. But what she saw now, behind the man, and
even through him, was a large, orange-lit chamber. In the center was a large, spinning machine,
a yellowish beam of lightning shooting from the top of it to the bottom. It was making a loud, raspy sound, almost
like the breathing of a mechanical beast.
“You’re not…from around here. That much is certain. That…man you travel with…who is he?”
As if on their own, the words came. “He’s called the Doctor.”
The man rubbed his chin
thoughtfully, then he smiled, and turned, waving a hand at the expansive
chamber. “Behold…the instrument of victory.
It is a primitive device…but it served my…purposes. And then, you come along, as if by
chance. A perfect opportunity. Your…Doctor…his machine would be…very useful
to me. I don’t suppose I could convince
him to, ehm…hand me the keys.” He
chuckled. His gaze returned to her, and
he stared coldly at her. Amy felt as
though his eyes were piercing straight into her mind. “This
is what I want you to do, my dear. Distract
him, when the time is right. I will take
care of the rest. And, if you
resist…” Amy gasped, suddenly
feeling as though her very consciousness was being strangled. After a moment or two, she was released. The man looked at her meaningfully. “Do
we…have an agreement?”
She nodded, feeling as though
she had no real choice. “Good.
Then, I will…leave you to it.” He
laughed, and she felt like she was falling.
With a start, she realized she
was properly inside her own body again, and she breathed a sigh of relief. The Doctor was beside her in an instant. “Amy…Amy, look at me.” He lifted her chin, and looked into her
eyes. “What happened?”
Amy opened her mouth to say
something, when suddenly the sound of gunshots came from the cave
entrance. One of the scientists cried
out in pain, and there was a commotion as everyone tried to retreat. At the mouth of the cave, Amy saw a handful
of men in military uniforms pointing guns.
Beside them, Barney ducked
down behind an overturned table. “Damn,”
he said, “HECU found us.”
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