by Becky Miller
8. Liquid diamonds
Mickey, Lynne and Laika had snuggled up to each other tightly at the bottom of the icy cold abyss.
Mickey was not entirely comfortable sitting squeezed up so close to Lynne, whom he fancied ever since he saw her in Cardiff. They hadn't spoken for a while. They just sat together, keeping warm. Still, Lynne could see the worrying expression on Mickey's face getting worse.
"They will come looking for us when they notice we're gone." she said kindly to comfort him.
"I don't doubt that. I just hope they notice soon, otherwise they will find three popsicles." Mickey sulked. His lips had turned blue already and he slowly stroked Laika, who lay on his lap.
"There is nothing we can do but wait." Lynne said.
"Just sitting here until we freeze, huh? Well, if I was stuck here with the Doctor or Rose, we would have tried everything to get our asses out of here!" Mickey said angrily.
"That would have been a very unwise action to take." Lynne replied.
"At least it's action." Mickey commented. He didn't like Lynne's passiveness. However Rose's desire for adventure was a bit too much for him, he was surprised to find such a passive person underneath Lynne's strong determinate exterior. The two girls were very much the opposite of each other. Rose looked like an innocent girl from to outside, but within was a powerful woman. It was exactly what the Doctor liked about her and why he asked her to come with him.
Mickey wasn't sure what to do. Lynne's advice was the clever thing to do, but he was itching to take some action and to try to get out of the abyss now.
"Okay." he said determinately, "Can't you reach the Doctor telepathically or something?"
"No." Lynne said. "He is too far from the surface, I suppose."
"Then I am going to look for a way out of here. Are you coming with me?" Mickey said and purposefully rose to his feet and extended his hand to Lynne, who took it with a big proud smile.
----
The elevator plummeted to the Earth's surface and although the Doctor, Rose and Annika tried their utmost best to bring it to a full stop, they only managed to slow it down marginally. Despite their efforts, the elevator crashed into the ground with high speed and it threw up a cloud of icy dust and a shower of debris.
A moment before, as the Doctor braced himself for impact, images of experiencing a fall into an icy abyss flashed trough his mind. Before he could puzzle out what it meant, the elevator hit the ground and the Doctor's mind went dark and empty as the metal surrounding him buckled and tore with screeching noise and a deep rumbling sound until the whole machine was compressed to a four feet high pile of rubble.
----
Mickey shivered as he walked along the slippery bottom of the icy abyss. Laika trotted out in front of him and Lynne gracefully stepped along beside him.
Suddenly, the dog stopped and began barking loudly and before Mickey could ask what was the matter, Lynne stiffened at his side. Her eyes were wide open and her lips pressed tightly together. Then, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. Laika had gone silent and stood next to Lynne as if the dog was immensely sad about something.
Questioningly and somewhat scared Mickey looked at Lynne.
"It is the Doctor." Lynne said gravely.
"You felt him? What is it, are they close?" Mickey asked hopefully.
"Yes, but I don't think they will come looking for us. I saw him in the elevator as it crashed? ?"
"And Rose?" Mickey asked, though he feared he already knew the answer.
"Rose too."
At first they both, Mickey and Lynne, tried to keep strong but eventually tears slowly rolled from their cheeks like liquid diamonds and they took each other in a strong supporting hug as they grieved for their loved ones.
9. Cyberboy
Something stirred amongst the pile of twisted metal.
The Doctor rushed towards it and started tossing pieces of debris away with great haste. There was someone alive underneath the rubble and he wanted to excavate her as quickly as possible. As soon as he saw the red strands of hair, he knew it was Annika he had found and she was alive. Within moments she was pulled from the debris and she helped him look for Rose.
It was hard for the Doctor to hide his disappointment, because the longer it would take to find her the smaller the chance would get she would survive. His face lit up immensely when again there was movement in the pile of rubble.
Both he and Annika rushed over and started digging and soon they found a hand, but it was not a human hand. It was the robot. It was quite battered and dented and barely working. Once it was free of the rubble for the most part the Doctor and Annika resumed looking for Rose, but their hopes were fading fast.
Much to the Doctor's relief they found Rose after a brief moment of frantic shouting and the tossing of pieces of metal. Rose had suffered some scratches but besides that she seemed to be just fine. She even repeatedly told the Doctor so, but he kept asking whether she was okay.
"I can't do anything about your elevator but I can try to fix the robot." the Doctor said to Annika and he kneeled down next to the machine which was still buried in the rubble to his knees and could only move its head and left arm.
"Oh, never mind. It's just a robot. There are plenty of those. I'll get a new one. The only thing I really care about is my elevator and she is beyond repair. All because of that rusty waste bin of a droid." Annika said angrily.
"He is not just a robot." the Doctor said and looked at Annika as if she had just insulted him.
"Why?"
"He said he was sorry." the Doctor replied gravely.
"So what, he made us crash. If he was really sorry he wouldn't have cut those circuits." Annika didn't understand why the Doctor was so affected by this.
"No. He wasn't strong enough, he is only a child." the Doctor explained as he freed the four feet tall red droid from the rubble.
"A child? Doctor you are talking about him as if he were-" Rose commented.
"He is, partly. At first I too thought he was just another AI robot people created to serve, but he is much more than that."
"He has emotions?" Rose said as she understood what he meant.
"Which makes him? what?" Annika said. She still had an air of dislike towards the robot. She considered it to be a freak. Again she received a stern look from the Doctor.
"Scared." he simply replied to her. Then he looked at Rose. "Help me take him to the TARDIS, Rose." They carefully picked him up and carried him off to the blue police box.
"Hey, what about me?" Annika asked, but the Doctor didn't respond..
"Yes, Doctor. What about her?" Rose asked him again, serving as his conscience once more. "You don't intend to leave her out in the cold? She has nowhere to go."
"She can come." he said blandly and quickly Annika followed them before he could change his mind.
This Annika was different from the one he had met so many years ago, the Doctor now realised. Somehow he didn't like this Annika anymore. It was probably the nasty way she spoke about the AI robot. He believed that though something is just a machine it should still be treated with respect, especially if this machine has feelings.
"We'll drop her off at another elevator platform, but first I need to make sure the others are okay." he said.
"Of course they are. They returned to the TARDIS, didn't they?" Rose said somewhat concerned.
----
Mickey and Lynne had reached the end of the abyss they had fallen into several hours ago. They faced a big wall of ice which was so smooth, like a mirror, they could see themselves standing hopelessly surrounded by white walls of snow.
Since Lynne had her vision of the elevator crashing they had lost all hope of being rescued from the abyss, because there was nobody else who knew they were missing.
Mickey slumped down with his back against the smooth icy wall and Lynne and Laika joined him. There they sat just like before, snuggled up against each other with Laika on their laps, trying to mak
e the most of their last moments.