by Paul Cornell
He closed the doors again, and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
Tegan hadn't really intended to go out and find a vampire, and she was sorry for getting worked up at the Doctor. He was doing his best, but her temper ...
Tegan could never bear sitting around waiting for something to happen. Early afternoon in Manchester city centre calmed her, and she was almost reassured by the clatter of people in the autumn cold. There were people selling novelties on street corners, and vans doing burgers. She lost herself in the Arndale Centre for a while, buying toffee and munching it while staring down at the crowds milling on lower levels of the glass and steel complex. One vampire amongst them, and it'd be like a dog in sheep. All the little kids being snatched away, the old people being thrown over. And the adults who'd try to defend them or run away. Helpless.
She left the shopping centre depressed once more, intending to pick up an Evening News and see if she could spot anything helpful. She almost walked past the beggar. But what he was putting in his pocket He was crouched in the corner of the stairs that led up to the shopping centre, and he had a cardboard sign on his lap that said "Homeless and Hungry". Tegan marched up to him and pointed at the anorak he wore.
"What's that you had there?" she demanded.
"What?"
"That bracelet. Where did you get it?"
"I didn't steal it or anything. It's mine."
Tegan made herself count to ten, aware that she'd rushed in heedlessly again. What would the Doctor do? Tegan sat down beside the boy and, remembering her training concerning difficult passengers, showed him her widest smile. "I don't want to take it off you. Look, the truth is, my sister's gone missing - "
"Lots of people going missing these days."
"Yeah, right. She was wearing something like that, and when I saw it, I thought ... could I just have a look?"
"I met her. She's okay, you shouldn't worry" The boy pulled the bracelet from his anorak, and Tegan saw that it was the one Nyssa had taken to wearing, all right.
"Where did you see her?"
"Down near Afflick's Palace. Few days ago. She started asking me all kinds of stuff about missing people. Gave me this"
Damn. Tegan realized that the boy was talking about the time when Nyssa had lost her in the city centre. "What did you tell her?"
"Oh, there's loads more since then. And did you hear what happened this morning?" The boy began to reel off a long list of strange happenings, and Tegan listened attentively: Maybe her first impulse hadn't been so wrong after all.
"Interesting!" The Doctor was peering into the eyepiece of a powerful scanning microscope. He adjusted the focus slightly.
The Time Lord had subjected the tissue samples he'd taken from the corpses to a basic biochemical scan and, as he'd suspected, an unknown element was detected. Something had been in the mortar shells which had caused the death of all but one of Lang's group, and had caused the survivor to be deeply disturbed.
The Doctor had separated some of the new substance from the tissue where it had been preserved and placed it in one of the TARDISs medical pods. This was an upright silver cylinder currently balanced on the end of the bench in the laboratory where the Doctor was working. Its normal use was in case of injury: it could knit together Gallifreyan flesh in minutes. But its current capacity was as a molecular growth machine. Whatever the unusual compound was, it bore all the signs of being organic. The Doctor had made a few adjustments to the pod and left a tiny sample of the bioweapon in it to grow. Hopefully, within the hour a batch big enough to subject to a thorough analysis would have brewed up.
It was at times like this that he missed Nyssa's biochemistry skills. But, as he ruefully thought to himself, that was rather like asking the proverbial horse to help close the gate. He'd prepared slides of tissue affected by the substance and was now examining them, trying to ascertain the cause of death.
The substance was bonded into the tissue at molecular level, that was certain, but as to the nature of those bonds ... the Doctor squinted at the slide. The chemical lay across the familiar human cell structure like a shadow. He couldn't see any damage. Whatever the stuff was, it was just hanging around the blood vessels, doing nothing. It hadn't even entered the bloodstream. Not the behaviour of a swift-acting toxin.
He raised his head from the microscope and glanced at the pod again.
Churning sounds came from within. "Still a few minutes," he muttered. "Time for another cup, I think."
Nyssa gazed in awe at the banks of instruments that Ruath had assembled. The technology was beyond her comprehension, she couldn't even begin to guess at the purpose of the device. Whatever it was, it took up most of the cellar. At its centre, in an alcove between the many banks of instruments, was a globe of the Earth. Something about the whole apparatus struck Nyssa as familiar. Then she realized: it had the somewhat gothic look of Gallifreyan workmanship. Hardly out of place in the circumstances, but unmistakable none the less. She was even familiar with some of the individual components from her recent adventures on the Time Lords' home planet.
Through an arch, another chamber beckoned. Nyssa tiptoed cautiously inside, and found this one to be more familiar. A fully equipped chemical laboratory. A forest of equipment assembled on a series of benches, with formulae scrawled on boards that stretched all round the room. Nyssa started to read them, but swiftly found herself faced with questions. There was chemistry of a kind she knew nothing of here and, she suspected, advanced physics as well. On the far wall, that was surely a wave equation, and what part could wave physics play in chemical science? Nyssa was startled from her ponderings by a noise from the other room. A chime. She wandered back in and located the source of the noise. On a screen on one of the computer banks, a display had appeared. A clock-face. It indicated a quarter of an hour in shading, and the shaded area was gradually getting smaller.
Nyssa decided that she didn't want to be around when the time was up and whatever was going to happen happened. But surely this was an opportunity too good to miss? A laboratory full of chemicals and equipment. If she could just find a few of the basics ... Quickly she went back into the laboratory and started to search in the cupboards that ringed the room at head height.
His name was Matthew, and he was very frightened indeed.
He'd told the strange man in the cricket jumper that he was in hell, and that was just how it felt. He'd wandered around his house when he got back, not wanting to wake his parents but not wanting to go to bed either. He'd flicked through the satellite TV channels and seen Roger Moore speaking German, the light from the screen throwing long shadows across the room, because he didn't want to switch the lights on. That would have woken his Mum and Dad up. They were deaf but light did that.
They would have asked him where he'd been, and been sarcastic about Mr. Lang. Mike, the leader, had come round to visit them when Matthew had first joined New Light, telling them what the group was all about and inviting them to come to a parents' evening service. But they just made tea and listened and laughed, and said that they were C of E themselves, weddings and funerals. Mum had said to Mike that she believed in some sort of power looking after us, but that she didn't know what it was. When she died, she said, she thought she might go somewhere, but as long as her body fed the trees, that was all right by her. Mike had tried to tell them about salvation, about how without the Lord Jesus Christ there was only death, and Matthew had watched as his Dad grew more and more uncomfortable. After awhile, he'd muttered something about "brainwashing" and wandered off to the toilet.
That seemed like somebody else's life now. Matthew had touched the sofa and the carpet and smelled all the smells he associated with normality and childhood, and felt no sympathy with any of it.
The God he'd found with Mike and the others had gone.
It felt like He'd died, and this was grief.
Matthew remembered the feel of his love, the way that it had filled his head up like a balloon, and made him bounce and laugh with it. Mike and
the others who'd died were clustered around Jesus now, accepted into his company. Matthew was in darkness.
He put his hand to the glow of the television screen, and seemed to see light through it. There was a strange taste in his mouth and a tightness in his stomach. He leant his head against the screen and watched pictures made up of three dot clusters: red, green, blue. The remote control in his hand, he hopped channels, faster and faster, panting as something huge thrashed inside him, and then He hit the screen and bounced off, his wings sending him fluttering around the room, swerving and shrieking to avoid furniture, a bat or a moth. "Mother!" screamed the little flying thing. "Mother!" It had flapped upstairs.
Now Matthew was really in the darkness. He was full, and it was daytime, so he slept.
Tegan had bought the flowers from a stall in the shopping centre. She had felt almost embarrassed about it, like she wanted to say to the woman "I'm going to a wedding, honest."
The boy in the anorak had mentioned something that had happened this morning, at somewhere called Irlams O'The Height in Salford. Tegan managed to get on a bus to Irlam, and spent a confused half-hour there before somebody said, "Oh, you don't mean Irlam, you mean Irlams O'The Height, lass." Finally she gave in and took a taxi.
It was still light, thankfully, when she got to where she wanted to go, a quiet-looking street in a housing estate. There was a shock of recognition when the taxi turned the corner. She hadn't paid any attention to the route they'd taken, but if she had then she'd certainly have recognized it. She'd been here last night, dropping off that poor boy. He hadn't told her an address, or she'd have got it immediately. He'd just said "go right here, and now left here", in that empty voice.
At his gate there was a police van, and in his garden there was a pile of flowers.
Tegan asked the driver to stop at the end of the road, paid him and got out, suddenly unsure of why she'd come here. If what she'd heard was true then she couldn't possibly find out anything. All the details would have been taken down in the early hours of the morning. The police were probably still doing their forensic work and the press would have been long gone.
Presumably they hadn't found the boy yet. Tegan walked up to the gate. It didn't feel right to open it so, after a moment's hesitation, she threw the bunch of flowers onto the pile. There. Almost against her will, she'd become part of a bloody stupid ritual. She should have told the cab to wait. At least this looked like the kind of place where you could get another one.
She started back towards the phone box on the corner, walking over a grating in the pavement. And at that moment she heard a cry, a short, cut-off wail. And it was coning from under the grating.
Tegan looked around. Despite everything she'd been through, she didn't feel able to run back to the police and tell them that she was hearing voices in the sewers. But if it was the kid ... Look, it was broad daylight. Unless it was a brand new sort of monster that had just happened along, then it wouldn't do any harm just to open the hatch and take a look.
Squatting down, Tegan peered through the bars of the grating. It was certainly big enough to get a child down there. It was too dark to see anything from here, but she thought she could make out some sort of figure. She got her fingers under one bar of the grating and pulled it up, pleased with the ease with which it came away. The curtains would really be twitching now, what with the whole road agitated by the events of the morning.
Tegan leaned forward and looked into the hole.
The Doctor peered into the observation port of the medical pod. He had a gnawing suspicion that he knew what the bubbling green liquid inside the container was. Nyssa would certainly say that he shouldn't leap to conclusions, but if he was right then they had no time for lengthy tests.
There was one way to find out. He turned a valve to drain some of the deadly liquid into another metal container, made sure the lock system was clear of the stuff by activating a vacuum pump, and disconnected the smaller vessel. Thoughtfully he tossed it in his hand, then frowned, aware of what he was toying with. He snapped the observation port on the little cylinder closed and strode out of the laboratory.
Nyssa had gathered all the things she needed. She ran to the door, opened the lock, thankful that it was on a latch system, and stepped outside. She glanced back at the computer clock. Only a minute left. Whatever was going to happen then, she didn't want to know about it. She closed the door behind her and ran up the stairs.
"Hello? You okay down there?" Tegan's voice echoed in the darkness. She could vaguely make out a human shape, huddled in the shadows of the shallow storm drain. It was small enough to be the kid from last night, and it looked like he was wearing the same baseball jacket. "Remember me? Tegan?" She waited for a moment but no answer came, only a shallow breathing. It sounded like the boy was asleep. "Now look, I'm not going to come down there with things like they are at the moment. You stay right where you are and I'll go and get some help, okay?" The child still made no reply, but shifted slightly. He had something in his arms, a cuddly toy or something.
The boy's eyes opened. "Oh, it's you," he said.
"Yeah," Tegan nodded, relieved. "Everybody's worried about you, you know?"
"Are they" He still had that terrible empty sound to his voice. "I'd better come out then. Could you take this, please?"
"Sure." Tegan reached out for the teddy bear with both hands.
The Doctor looked up at the low sun, shining red above the buildings, and put a hand to his brow to shield his eyes. The silver cylinder was clutched in his hand, and he stood just outside the doors of the TARDIS. No cloud, at least. The sunlight should still be strong enough for his experiment.
He reached down and slid the observation port on the cylinder open.
In the cellar of Castle Yarven, the clock graphic completed its cycle. There was a metallic thud and a low, building hum came from the machinery. In seconds the device had powered up. A shining halo flickered into life around the model globe. A beam flashed from the wall, and the halo glowed blue.
Yarven sat upright in bed, suddenly awake. "Good evening," he said to Ruath, who was already on her feet.
"It should be," she smiled. "I made it myself."
The sun slammed down below the horizon.
The Doctor dropped the canister and fell to his knees, clutching his head in agony as his time senses exploded.
Before it hit the ground, the canister burst open. Green fluid hung in the air for a moment, and then flung itself straight at the nearest living thing: the Doctor.
It slapped itself onto his face, fighting to get into his eyes and nose.
"Catch!" The boy threw something into Tegan's hands. It was round and sticky.
His mother's head.
Tegan screamed and threw it aside, scrabbling out of the hole to find daylight.
But outside it was night.
She turned to run, but something erupted out of the hole and swirled over her head, twisting to land in front of her.
Matthew opened his mouth wide and showed her his fangs.
"Wait!" Tegan yelled. "Don't you recognize me? I helped you!"
"That," the boy whispered, "was before I was damned." And he leapt for her throat.
Eight
Yarven and Ruath raced down the stairs, scattering the Undead who had awoken all over the castle.
In ranks they rose and followed their sovereigns, aware that something wonderful was happening. A great tide of vampirekind swept through the structure as more and more of Yarven's followers came to the same conclusion.
They were awake, because it was night. Yet the night had fallen two hours early!
Yarven raised a hand at the door to the cellars, holding his people back as Ruath fumbled hurriedly with keys. "Wait a while, my loyal subjects. I will tell you what has occurred once we are certain."
Nyssa stepped forward from the crowd. She had only just had time to shove the spoils of her adventure under the bed before the vampires in her chamber started to wake. "What's hap
pening, Lord Yarven?"
"The future, my dear," Yarven smiled, revealing his fangs. "Quite literally."
The Doctor stared at Romana, putting a hand gently on both her shoulders. All around them was the characteristic black void of astral communication.
"This," he told her, "is not a good time."
"On the contrary, it's the only time." Romana brushed a hair back from her brow. "I've been trying to get through to you for hours. The temporal distance was so great that I nearly gave up but then, suddenly, I found a clear channel."
"That's because something very disturbing has happened to time. My temporal senses have overloaded and switched themselves off. Also, my physical form is currently in the process of being attacked by some form of aggressive organic plasma so, nice as it is to see you again, I really must...."
"This is important. Listen."
And she began to tell him her story.
The boy had wrestled Tegan to the ground and was trying to get his teeth close to her neck. Taken off guard as she had been by the fall of night, she hadn't had time to think. When she'd found Matthew, she'd stupidly assumed that he'd been a victim of, or a witness to, the atrocity that the homeless guy had related to her. She'd thought that the vampires had come after him.
Bloody typical Tegan not to consider the idea that he'd ripped up his mum and dad himself. "The trouble with me is," she yelled into Matthew's ear, "I'm too trusting by half."
The creature that Matthew had become only hissed in reply. Tegan tensed as he slammed her arms flat to the pavement. They were actually quite similar in strength. Maybe it took vampires a while to get strong.