"I don't understand, Doctor. Where are we? This isn't London 1963 by any means!" Ian protested as the four re-entered the TARDIS. "Or any other time!"
"Yes, my dear boy, I quite agree. Yes, yes, I quite agree." The Doctor had returned to the console and was once more examining the instruments. Still, the reversed and inverted text remained visible on every gauge, every dial. "Wherever we have landed, it seems to be having an effect on the ship as well."
"Grandfather, there must be something we can do!" Susan insisted.
"Yes, my dear child! Now please hush, I'm trying to concentrate." The Doctor waved the young woman off as he attempted to read the gauges. "Chesterton, you had said your car. You had said it still ran, yes?"
"That's right." Ian said. "Just everything in it was inverted."
"I don't know how we didn't see it before." Barbara said. "Or how we didn't realize we were traveling through a deserted London."
"A percussion filter, I think. Yes." The Doctor muttered, tapping a gauge and then flipping a few switches. "A perception filter, yes."
"A what?" Barbara asked.
"A perception filter." Susan explained to Ian and Barbara. "It's technology from our home planet. It's part of what allows the TARDIS to blend in with its surroundings when it lands."
"I thought you said it was because of that... what did you call it? A chameleon circuit?" Ian asked.
"That just allows the TARDIS to change its shape." Susan elaborated. "The perception filter is what keeps people from noticing it."
"So, if these creatures are using a perception filter, does that mean that they're your people?" Ian asked.
"Poppycock!" The Doctor scoffed. "These creatures are unsophisticated. Juvenile."
"Well, could it be a-" Susan began, but the Doctor rested a hand on his granddaughter's shoulder.
"Susan, Susan, my dear child. You know as well as I do that they are not a method our people would use." The Doctor chided gently.
"No, I suppose not." Susan said, a bit put out.
"In any case, I have made for certain our own perception filter is up and I've raised the shielding around the ship." The Doctor said. "Nothing in the whole of Christendom will slip through those doors. That I promise you!"
"Then we can fly away from here?" Barbara asked.
"After I have repaired the relative stabilizers, yes." The Doctor noted.
"Well, it's not as if we can go back out into the junkyard for the copper you need." Susan said.
"Indeed not. Nor can we trust anything that we have seen or interacted with in the realm outside of these walls." The Doctor said. He turned to Ian and Barbara. "Did either of you bring anything with you from the outside?"
"No, nothing." Ian said. Barbara likewise shook her head.
"Good. Good." The Doctor said. "Susan, I think we may have some spare components deeper into the TARDIS. Take Chatterfax with you and go have a check, will you? There's a good girl."
"Yes, Grandfather." Susan nodded, turning to Ian. "Come on."
"Deeper into the TARDIS? What's down there?" Ian asked.
"I don't know." Susan said. "I don't think even Grandfather knows. No one has explored all of it."
"What, not even your people?" Ian asked as the two headed down deeper into the time machine. Barbara walked over to the Doctor.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" She inquired of him.
"A spot of tea would do a world of good. Put the kettle on." The Doctor said, waving her off once more.
"And I suppose I'll break out some biscuits as well?" Barbara asked, a bit of sarcasm drifting into her tone.
"Yes. Yes. I expect we shall all need a bit of refreshment when this is all over." The Doctor commented as he went about tinkering with the TARDIS. Barbara rolled her eyes, but nonetheless went to do as the man had... well, asking wasn't quite the Doctor's style. She left him there in the control room, heading down the corridor to what she had been shown to be the kitchens. Passing down the corridor, she heard the sound of footsteps branching off from another path. The footfalls sounded familiar.
"...Susan?" Yes, she was almost sure that it had been. Perhaps, Barbara thought, she was just out of the girl's earshot and she hadn't heard it. Strange that Ian wasn't with her, of course, but perhaps he too was just out of earshot. The TARDIS did have many winding corridors, after all. The Doctor had advised them often not to wander off.
"Barbara! It's us!" Susan's voice came from down the corridor.
"Oh, hello!" Barbara said.
"Would you mind coming over? We've found something to bring back, but it's a bit heavy." Ian's voice came around as well.
"Yes, yes, of course. Hang on." Barbara said, moving down a turn toward the sound of the two voices. As she moved along, she saw no sign of either of her compatriots. "Ian? Susan? Where are you?"
"We're right here. This way!" Susan's voice drifted down from another turn, which Barbara again followed and found herself facing a full-length mirror that was framed by polished wood, next to it stood a coat rack on which had been placed a beige frock coat lined in crimson that was accompanied by an ivory-shaded Panama hat with a red band. She found the clothing to be rather charming, and very well made from a cursory glance at it, but she soon found her eyes drawn to the mirror itself. In the smooth surface, Barbara could see her own reflection as well as the reflection of the room behind her. As she gazed into it further, however, she began to see something behind her. Approaching it, she saw the form of... a girl? Yes, a girl... young and blonde in a little frock coat and knit scarf, holding a ruby red balloon by its string.
She thought her mind was playing tricks on her, which is what she thought up until she felt a hand touching her back and she screamed.
Back in the console room, the Doctor did not hear the scream. Instead, he had come up from beneath the console and was replacing a panel. His eyes flickered over toward a sign of movement. Susan had returned to the room.
"Susan, my dear! What have you brought for me?" The Doctor asked.
"I found this, I don't know if it will be of any use, though." Susan said, producing a small Earth alarm clock.
"Yes, yes, I think this shall do nicely." The Doctor said, taking it and setting it on the console. "Where is Chesterton, hmm?"
"Oh, I think we got separated while coming back." Susan said dismissively. "I'm sure he'll find his way back shortly."
"Perhaps, yes. Perhaps." The Doctor said. His back was turned to his granddaughter, his suspicions having been more than a little raised. "Tell me... what have you done with my granddaughter?"
"...Grandfather, what do you mean? I-" Susan began.
"Now, now. There's no reason for you to drag this out any longer! Where is she? Hmm? What have you done with her? Ian and Barbara as well, I presume?" The Doctor turned and saw that 'Susan' was anything but. He watched as the girl's form once more became like the silvered glass of a mirror. Only this time, rather than shattering into millions of tiny shards, the image began to shift and change. The appearance of Susan gave way to that of an even younger woman with pale skin, blonde hair done up with a bow, and sharp, blue eyes that narrowed on the old man as her head tipped slightly to the side.
"It has been quite some time, Doctor." The girl spoke in a voice that seemed to be far too advanced to be that of a small child. The tone was all wrong for someone of her age.
"I don't believe I've met you before." The Doctor said. "Who are you?"
"You haven't met me, not yet." The girl said, gripping a balloon of scarlet red by the string in one hand. "I have waited a long time to meet you again. The last time you came to visit me, I had decided that fifty years was long enough to wait."
"Ah! From my future, then." The Doctor said. "I have wronged you in some way, then? Or I will, eh?"
"You took my Family from me." The girl said. "My Father, my Mother, and my Brother. All of them. Worst of all, you left me trapped and away from them all."
"My dear girl, do you have any inkling of the paradoxes you are risking by telling me of this?" The Doctor asked her. "Future events are not for me to know until they are no longer future events."
"I don't intend for you to know." The girl said. "Nor do I intend to let you leave this TARDIS ever again."
"And you mean to stop me?" The Doctor chuckled merrily. "I noticed that you avoided my question. Who are you?"
"A long time ago, I was a little girl named Lucy Cartwright." The girl said. "An even longer time ago, I was named Aphasia. Although my Family called me... Sister."
"I've never heard of you." The Doctor said.
"You never will, either." Sister said, staring at the man in that curiously reptilian sort of way with how her head was craned. "I am going to take your TARDIS and free my family from where you have imprisoned them."
"A fanciful idea indeed!" The Doctor chuckled dismissively.
"Then we shall take your lives... Time Lord." Sister still stared, unblinking at him. The Doctor's expression soured, all mirth gone from his face.
"Perhaps I don't myself, but my friends do." Sister said. "They want revenge on you just as badly as I do, so they agreed to help me."
"Your friends?"
"The duplicates? You mean to tell me that you don't recognize them? They needed some help to learn to regain their shape, but after that-"
"No. I do not, no." The Doctor said. "As you've said, though, you care so little for the proper flow of time. I suppose the energy deficit I detected earlier, that was their doing, was it?"
"Like a cowboy's lasso to draw you in. And it worked perfectly." Sister said.
"Yes, yes, indeed. Taking advantage of my relative stabilizer being on the blink. You all seem rather buggered by me, but you've not answered my question." The Doctor said, moving to stand, glowering down at the young girl with her balloon still in hand. "Why would I give you anything? You've no power to compel me to do so."
"I do, Doctor." Sister said. "I do." She gestured deeper into the TARDIS. "Come along, Doctor. My friends and I are going to make everything quite clear." She moved along without let or hindrance down the corridor. "Come along! Come along!" The Doctor's scowl remained as he nonetheless followed the entity down the pathways further down into the ship. Soon enough, he recognized the mirror that Sister now stood in front of. "Take a look, Doctor." As the old man glanced into the polished glass, he did not see his own reflection. Rather, as if they were trapped behind a glass divide, he saw Ian, Barbara, and Susan all silently screaming behind it.
"Release them to me at once!" The Doctor turned on Sister. The little girl work a dark smirk on her lips.
"No."
"Release them to me, I say!"
"I shall do nothing of the kind, Doctor and before you think of anything clever, you would do well to remember who it is I am in league with." Sister said. The Doctor suddenly cried out as Ian's hand seemed to move from within the mirror toward him, grasping him by the wrist as 'Ian' started to pull himself free. The hand that had been but a reflection was becoming solid once again, followed by the arm and the rest of the body. As the facsimile pulled himself free and restrained the Doctor, likewise images of Barbara and Susan pulled themselves free and became three-dimensional. "Now, Doctor... I think it is time for us to go back to your console room."
"To what end?" The Doctor asked, pulling in vain against the mirror-image of Ian's grip. "I will not help you. Either with my life or with my ship!"
"We don't need your life or your knowledge of your ship, Doctor." Sister said. "We merely need your Chameleon Arch." The little girl's eyes flickered from the old man toward the being that restrained him. "Take him back to the console room. Now."
"Unhand me at once! At once! Unhand me! Unhand me!" The Doctor protested as he was dragged away.
"There has to be something we can do!" Ian insisted as the image of the Doctor being dragged away by his doppelganger (and flanked by those of Susan and Barbara) began to fade away, leaving them in this strange void.
"I'm feeling very peculiar..." Barbara said, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead.
"I don't know. I don't know what to do." Susan said, shaking as she tried to work out some kind of plan. Any ideas she could think of, though, involved the TARDIS or her grandfather and she currently had neither at hand.
"Don't worry, Susan, we'll think of something. We have to." Ian said.
"We don't even know where we are, for a start!" Barbara insisted.
"I think we do, though." Susan said. "Those creatures came from within the mirror, right?"
"Right, it seemed so at least." Ian nodded.
"The mirrors could potentially be some sort of portal to another dimension."
"What? All of them? Every mirror?"
"No, not every mirror. Maybe. I'm not sure." The young woman shook her head. "Consider it, though. If these creatures had pulled the TARDIS into their realm, somehow, then perhaps they could be affecting it. Grandfather was trying to fix the relative stabilizers."
"And those keep the TARDIS... what? Relative?"
"No, they partner with the dimensional stabilizers. They keep the TARDIS moving within the same dimensional space. Remember? 'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space'. The relative stabilizers keep the TARDIS from going... sideways, for lack of a better term."
"So we went... sideways?"
"Yes. Sideways into another dimension." Susan nodded. "If we could get back to the TARDIS and repair the stabilizer, Grandfather could fly us out easily."
"Unfortunately, we can't get back to the TARDIS, we can't repair the stabilizer, and we can't rescue the Doctor." Ian said glumly. He turned his head, seeing Barbara once more touching the back of her hand to her hand and moaning softly. "Barbara? Are you alright?"
"I feel... faint..." Barbara said, falling back to be caught by Ian.
"Barbara? Barbara?" Ian asked, pressing a hand to Barbara's forehead. "She's burning up."
"I was afraid of that..." Susan said. "If this place is a two-dimensional plane, then we must find a way out of here sooner rather than later."
"I don't understand! What do you mean, Susan?"
"We're three-dimensional... not two-dimensional. You can't have a grown man on a piece of paper. It doesn't work."
"Right, length and width, but no depth." Ian said, then the light of realization flashed in his eyes. "Oh! Oh, no..."
"Right." Susan grimaced. "If it's already beginning to have an effect on Barbara, then it won't be too much longer before it has an effect on us."
"There we are."
"Young lady! That is a very dangerous piece of technology you are wielding!"
"Oh, I know. I know." Sister said as she held the fob watch. "I've gotten to see you use this across the years, Doctor. I've even had it used on me once. Such power and such age. All those years that will belong to me, now." The Doctor was still being restrained by 'Ian', while 'Susan' and 'Barbara' still stood in attendance.
"Never!"
"I'm afraid you've no choice in the matter, Doctor." Sister said. "If it is any comfort, you won't be alive long enough to worry about the consequences." She flipped a switch on the console and a mechanical whirring could be heard as a headset was lowered down from the ceiling far above. "Place it on his head."
"No! No, you mustn't!" The Doctor protested.
"Weeeeeeee muuuuuuuuuuuust, Dooooooooctor!" 'Ian' spoke in that disturbing, echoing drawl as he grasped the headset and forced it onto the Doctor's head. Holding the man about the neck to keep his head in place, the pair were able to watch as Sister handed the fob watch to 'Susan', who came forward and slid the device into its appropriate slot.
"Know that my only satisfaction is in knowing that this is going to hurt you. A lot." Sister said as she flipped as switch, the Doctor suddenly and loudly screaming as though every single nerve in his body had been set ablaze.
NEXT TIME
SHATTERDAY
No comments:
Post a Comment