[Part 2 of a Doctor Who/Steam Powered Giraffe crossover ficcy for pandoraslittleblackbox ]
Imagine the future. No, not the bright and shiny one where everything’s so brightly lit that you’re amazed people don’t have filters installed on their retinas so that they don’t go blind. And no, not the dark and dismal one where you’re surprised everyone isn’t carrying around lighting equipment because you can’t see a thing. The other one. No, the other, other one.
Okay. Fine. Just picture today with better stuff.
Most of which is lying in boxes in a storeroom where, for currently unknown reasons, a breeze is picking up. Then there’s an oscillating light. And a noise not entirely unlike someone dragging a house key up and down a piano wire[1]. And then… there’s a box.
It’s big. And most of it is blue.
All of this is lost on the rest of the crates. Which are dull and beige and are more informative than the words “Police Public Call Box” on this new container. But none of them open from within to reveal a smiling face. “Hello-ooooooo San Francisco!” said a strangely-dressed man as if greeting an audience.
He looked around, realising that his audience was nothing but crates and shelves.
“Fine. Be like that.”
Someone in the distance was screaming. So, of course, he went towards the noise.
*
“We’ve got you now, Tae. We’ve got you!”
Tae, stretched on the gurney, kept shrieking. She had been shrieking since the beast had got her. She had been screaming and crying all the way back to her abandoned harness. Weeping as they hauled her back up.
She was bleeding, but not profusely. That’s the thing about blood. It stands out and draws attention to itself. Hey, look at me, it seems to say, one of your fellows is in some pretty deep trouble!
We don’t measure blood by volume until after the fact. During the fact - we measure it by area.
Beside her, a medtech was chanting the things that were wrong with her and the things that might be wrong with her, as well as trying to patch it on the fly whilst simultaneously steering the gurney to medical. Another was just trying to get Tae to stop screaming.
Which was why none of them stopped the stranger when he barged in.
“Hello. Did I wind up in another hospital[2]?” He took one look at Tae and drew something shiny out of a pocket. “There now. Here. Take a good look.”
The golden, flickering light and the slight hum it made instantly fascinated her.
The stranger was singing.
“Klokeda partha mennin klatch, aroon, aroon aroon… Klokeda shunna teerenatch, aroon, aroon, aroon…” and so on. It made no sense, but it lulled all the scream out of her. Dissolved her fears.
“…aroon…” He put the device away and smiled warmly for her.
“Who *are* you?” said the leading medtech. “How did you do that?”
“I’m the Doctor, not that kind of Doctor. I’m here to help,” he flashed around a black wallet containing some form of ID that Tae didn’t quite catch. “What’s going on?”
“Silly buggers is what’s going on,” said the junior medtech. “These crazy fools are all trying to get to the treasure in the centre of the Labyrinth of W'r. They think it’s going to stop the war.”
“A weapon?”
“No. Um. I mean. We don’t know. There’s legends about this place. About the Labyrinth. About all the people who tried to get to the treasure and failed. They all say there’s an immense power for good in the middle of there, but… there’s also fearsome guardians.”
“Well, of course. Anything like that’s bound to have guards. Can’t have a force for good without *guards*.” He rolled his eyes as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe. “What’re they like? Tae, is it?”
Tae managed a nod. Now that she was calm and in the light, the wounds didn’t seem so bad. “I didn’t see. They were fast. Faster than I could follow. I lost my gun. I lost my helmet… and then there was only the dark and I didn’t know how to get back…”
The Doctor shook his head. “Why is it, whenever you humans go anywhere, the guns have to come to?” He shook his head. “What else is missing from Tae’s gear? Do you know?”
“Lots of things. Sensors, transmitters, relays. A water bottle. All her tools. Why?”
“And what do they all have in common?”
The only answer was a shrug.
*
The Doctor found the ops centre by finding the nearest stiff-necked corridor guard and reciting, “Take me to your leader.” A simple expedient that worked with surprising frequency.
There, an overworked and harassed lady worried at screen after screen of data. Trying to arrange things and come up with a plan when so much of the rotating map hovering above the main table was red.
“There has to be a way. There *has* to be a way…”
The Doctor peered over her shoulder. “Archeological dig? Looking for lost treasure? Or is it treasure that doesn’t like being found?”
“It’s hope,” sighed the leader. “And we’re losing.” Now she looked away from her data streams. “Who are you?”
“I’m the Doctor. I’m here to help. First, are you absolutely positive that this is a force for good, and not something that should definitely stay at the bottom of a labyrinth with a bunch of ferocious and unstoppable guards making certain nobody gets to it?”
She looked at him as if he’d just wet himself. “The legends of Sanyago speak only of the treasure being a force for good. Nothing else. Just a force for good. This war has us all in such dire straits that we’re determined to dig for fairy tales.”
“And you don’t care what this force would do if it judges you to be evil?”
She stared him down with eyes that had seen too much. He knew that look. He’d seen it far too often in a mirror. “Anything to stop the senseless killing. Anything.”
Not all of the news feeds were from the dig. Many were from space fleets and other planets. News from the front. Neither side were willing to stop.
“I’m going to help,” he decided. “I’m going to need all your files. The legends, the labyrinth, the guardians. Everything. And the stuff about the people who went down.” He found a chair and flopped into it, making it spin a fill circle before he faced her again. “And Admiral… are you very familiar with fairy tales?”
“Why?”
“Just curious. Just curious.”
*
Tae woke to find the Doctor draped across the visitor’s chair. Idly flipping through an info-tablet as if he wasn’t paying attention to it at all.
“Welcome back,” he said, “Feeling better?”
Tae checked. She’d seen other survivors. Other exiles from the Labyrinth of W'r. Many of them were now under tranquillisation in the ever-expanding psyche ward. “Amazingly… yes.”
“So you sent down probes, and they never came back. So you sent down cams, and they got destroyed. Then you sent down soldiers and they… got every last scrap of metal taken off them, then got subdued, and this is the telling part… dragged back to their point of origin and put back in their harnesses by the aggressor.” He looked up from the info-tablet. “Do you know of any enemy that lets their enemies go back home?”
“Uhm. I’m just here on prison detail,” she said. “They said, fight or take your chances and… I took my chances.”
“Okay. That makes me like you a bit more.” He nodded. “BUT… do you know of any combat where they let the other side get their soldiers back?”
“No. Not really.”
“First time for me, too.” He found a button and showed a typical soldier in full gear. “This is how they all go in. And this,” a soldier in torn scraps and incidental scratches, “is how they come back. Spot the difference.”
Under his semi-critical eye, Tae looked. Really looked. “Whatever’s down there… it takes all the metal. Why’d it only need metal?”
That earned a friendly smile. “An excellent question, Tae. I have another one. How would *you* like to help *me* find the answer?”
“What… go down there again? Face it again?”
“I need someone who’s been there, before. And don’t worry. I’ve figured out how we can protect ourselves.”
“You have an armour that can withstand that thing?”
“Better. We’re going down with no armour at all.”
[1] Nerd fact: This was how they made the TARDIS noise in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. A sound effect they still use to this day.
[2] Just be glad he’s not nicking the clothes again.
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