He had always had difficulty accepting the mortality of his companions. He never wanted to hang around and watch them grow old and die, but this was worse. This was Ivy taken away at the prime of her life.
He frowned to himself. Looking at the coffin he realised that he himself would be lying in one of these, and in the not too distant future. He’d faced death before, of course, on numerous occasions, but any battle against it this time just felt futile.
“You okay?” came Alice’s voice and the gentle touch of her hand on his shoulder.
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, nodding. He wasn’t really.
“I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through,” she said. Ivy suddenly seemed to tune in to what he was thinking about. “Can’t your own people help you?”
The Doctor turned, not knowing what to say to her.
“Surely you want to be on your own planet with your own family. Surely they can help.”
The Doctor shook his head. “Too much has happened. It can’t be helped. Not now.”
Alice frowned. He was always so vague when he spoke about his own people - the Time Lords. It’s like he was avoiding even mentioning them. She felt that she’d never get any answers out of him.
“C’mon,” said Dennington from his pew, “it’s time.”
“Nobody else coming?” said the Doctor, glancing around the church, feeling a little upset.
“Like who?” said Dennington. “She lost everything, remember?”
The Doctor puffed out his cheeks and blew out air. “Well, at least she’ll be reunited with James now. And Leska,” he added quickly.
The service was a quick and light affair. The vicar had used the anti-gravity unit to take the coffin out of the church and out into the Martian landscape. What they were standing in was a large, open area with a huge glass dome covering them. All along the reddish-brown surface were headstones.
Alice found it slightly creepy. She knew it was exactly the same on Earth - people buried under the ground - but she never expected to see it on an alien world.
The coffin was slowly lowered into the ground.
Dennington stepped forward. “I got to know Ivy quite well over the last few years. She was always there for me. She was a bright spark in the dark night, and I will miss her.”
Dennington stepped back and the Doctor felt himself walking forward. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to say.
He opened his mouth. “I…” He suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest. “I…”
“Doctor?” said Alice, looking concerned over his shoulder.
The Doctor cried out in agony and fell to his knees, the Martian dust billowing up around his knees. He was lost to the world. All he could feel was searing pain through his temples, prickling down his neck and causing him to have palpitations. One of his hearts had stopped and he fell forward, his face hitting the dust.
He felt himself being rolled onto his back, but the person standing above him wasn’t Alice or Dennington. It was his previous incarnation.
He leaned over him, concern on his face. “You idiot!” he scolded.
“What?” gasped the Doctor, barely getting the words out.
“Are you really this stupid? Have you been led astray so much?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Get it into your stupid head,” he said, tapping his right temple with his index finger. “Think thing’s through. Think it through!”
Suddenly the Doctor was awake again. The pain had subsided and his previous incarnation was gone. Standing there above him was Alice, Dennington and the old, frail vicar.
“Open the coffin,” said the Doctor quickly.
“I don’t think-”
“Open the coffin,” said the Doctor again, scrambling to his feet and steadying himself with Alice’s help.
“No,” said Dennington.
“Did you do a formal ID?”
“Of course I did,” said Dennington, frowning.
“Did you do a post mortem?”
“Doctor, she was thrown from an exploding shuttle.”
“Where there any burn marks on her? Any sign of bodily damage?”
“She was thrown from the shuttle.”
“She wouldn’t have been thrown from an explosion unless she was already exiting, and if she was already exiting the shuttle then she would be in a spacesuit.”
“Doctor…”
“Open the coffin,” said the Doctor again.
Dennington looked at the Doctor and then at Alice. Alice nodded to him, and Dennington pushed past the Doctor, clambering down into the grave.
The Doctor threw his sonic screwdriver down to him and Dennington aimed it at the coffin. A few clunks later and the lid was unlocked. Dennington got to his knees and slid back the panel that covered over the upper portion.
Dennington almost wept when he saw the perfect, sleeping features of Ivy, her red curls draped over her shoulders. She looked so peaceful and serene.
“Run the screwdriver over her,” said the Doctor. “Setting F-21”
Dennington changed the setting and then ran it above Ivy’s face. It was faint, but there was a slow, beeping coming from the device.
“Well?” said the Doctor, an excited smile on his face.
“There are faint brain signals in there.”
“They lied to us. Ivy isn’t dead at all!”
“But why?” said Dennington unable to grasp the reality of the situation.
“Because,” said the vicar, a smirk on his face, “we needed to lure you here.”
All three of them looked at the vicar as the smirk grew wider. He began laughing as he removed his white smock and threw his walking stick to the ground.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Commander Verash.” He held up a device on his wrist and flicked a button. His imaged shifted and blurred until standing there was not an old man, but a young, short-dark-haired man with a square jaw, piercing blue eyes and high cheekbones.
“Neat trick,” said Alice.
Verash smiled at Alice. “All in good time. You can wait your turn, Miss Stokes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who do you work for?” said Dennington quickly. “Why have you even played this insane, cruel trick?”
“To answer your first question, I work for Eyeglass.”
“Oh god,” said Dennington, his face pale.
“I might have known,” said the Doctor.
“And who are Eyeglass?” said Alice, confused at the two men’s reactions to Verash.
“A company that exist purely to make Humanity better.”
“Well that’s good isn’t it?” said Alice, frowning.
“No,” said the Doctor. “They are willing to exploit any race, any technology, any thing just for the-”
“For the good of the Human race,” smiled Verash. “It’s all that matters.”
“I had a run in with them a while back. How is the General?”
“He’ll be much happier now we’ve got you.”
“Go on then,” said the Doctor, sitting himself down on a nearby Martian rock, “tell me how you ensnared me?”
“Simple,” said Verash. “Miss Coldstone was in our time zone and we discovered she was a former associate-”
“Friend.”
“-a friend of yours. We staged her death knowing full well that you’d come here to mourn her.”
The Doctor nodded. “Pretty simple then really.”
“So Ivy-” started Dennington.
“She’s just in an induced coma. We took her out, blew up the shuttle and then got our own medics to declare her dead, leaving the body back with you, Mr Dennington.”
Despite the severity of the situation, Alice noticed the Doctor look relieved.
“And that brings me on to you, Miss Stokes,” said Verash.
“Me? What do you want with me?”
Verash clicked his fingers and Alice suddenly felt the world melt away until all that was left was blackness.
When Alice awoke she was lying in the dust. Her head was hurting and she could feel a trickle of blood running down the left side of her face. It felt warm and trickled into her mouth.
She was aware of something happening around her. There were explosions and what sounded like gun fire - no - laser fire. Futuristic weapons.
She edged herself up on her elbows and tried to bring her surroundings back into focus.
“Doctor…” she mumbled. And then louder. “Doctor!”
“Can you walk?” said an Irish, female voice.
Alice looked up. Standing there above her in some kind of black, combat suit - maybe some kind of uniform - with long red hair, pale face and green eyes was the woman called Ivy Coldstone. The woman they thought had been dead.
“What…” slurred Alice.
“Can you bloody well walk?” said Ivy, more urgently.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh for goodness sake, woman. Can you walk?”
“Yes,” said Alice, feeling herself hauled to her feet. “I can try.”
Ivy was taller than her and struck an imposing figure in the combat suit. The ground shook and Alice noticed a few very small cracks in the glass dome above them.
And that’s when Alice noticed something else. Something above them, flying close to the top of the glass dome. It was a spaceship. It didn’t look sleek or particularly beautiful to look at. Just a huge, dark oblong shape floating above ominously. Emblazoned on it’s underbelly was a glowing green eye and various bolts of energy were being fired out of weapons adorned across the edges of the ship.
“What the hell…?” said Alice as she was dragged towards the church by Ivy.
“No time to answer now, sweetheart,” said Ivy as they ran - or in Alice’s case stumbled - through the church and into the corridor beyond.
Ivy took them into the main Martian complex. All around were screams as people ran for cover, ran for escape pods and ran for transport ships. The huge Eyeglass ship was pounding the protective domes that covered the Mars base over and over again.
“I don’t understand,” said Alice. “Why are they attacking their own people? Why are they attacking the Humans.”
“Beats me,” said Ivy. “Maybe they don’t like us mingling with the Martians.”
Alice looked around. There weren’t just Human beings here. There were green scaly creatures wearing some kind of battle armour. They looked as concerned and frightened as the rest of the colony.
“Where’s the Doctor?” said Alice as she was dragged into a corridor lined with various small, circular airlocks.
“I told you - not time to answer now. We need to find an escape pod.”
“But the TARDIS -”
“Forget it,” said Ivy, more forcefully this time. “We need to get off Mars now!”
They finally found an airlock with it’s door unlocked. Ivy opened it up and the two women both clambered into the very small, very cramped pod.
“This is a bit of a tight fit,” said Alice, almost banging her already-sore head.
“I’m sorry,” said Ivy, closing the door and prepping the pod for launch, “I should have booked us into a Gold Standard pod,” she said sarcastically.
“Where are we going to go?” said Alice as the pod whirred into life.
“Back to Earth. In an emergency the pods are programmed to travel back to Central Command.”
“And what then?”
Ivy looked exasperated. “I don’t know, Alice. I’m sorry. I know you want to go and help the Doctor. I want to help him too, but right now my main priority is getting you away from Verash and Eyeglass.
“What have I got to do with any of this?” said Alice, finding the situation becoming more and more laughable.
“Because,” said Ivy, as the pod began to detach from the airlock, “they did something to you. They planted something in your head.”
“What?!” spluttered Ivy, not quite believing it.
“Have you had any bad dreams? Have you found yourself waking up somewhere you hadn’t gone to sleep in?”
“I’ve been dreaming of a face,” said Alice, trying to picture the face, but not quite remembering it. “And I did wake up in the swimming pool the other day.”
“Mmm-hmm,” said Ivy, nodding. “That’s because you’ve been switching off whilst somebody else uses your body.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Alice, shaking her head and laughing nervously.
“I’ve just witnessed it, love,” said Ivy. “Hold on tight!”
Alice suddenly felt a rushing sensation as her body was pressed against the small seat in the pod. The circular window at the front showed the surface of Mars rushing towards them, and then the pod tilted and lifted into the air and Alice could see a blanket of stars up above.
When the shuttle had hit it’s cruising speed, Alice unbuckled her seatbelt and scrambled to look out of the window. Below was Mars - the glass dome shattered as the huge, Eyeglass ship continued to pound it with bolts of weapon fire.
“They just don’t care now,” said Ivy, peering over Alice’s shoulder.
“Why do it at all?”
“Because they’re cruel and vicious,” she said.
“And he’s down there somewhere,” said Alice, thinking of the Doctor, stuck in the middle of all of that.
“He’ll be fine. He’ll be safe. He knows what to do.”
On the surface of Mars, the Doctor and Dennington had taken refuge in one of the only buildings in the colony that had not lost it’s air.
They were gathered around by a group of people including an Ice Lord and one of the Martian warriors.
“So, you’re the mighty Doctor,” said the Ice Lord.
“I wouldn’t say mighty,” said the Doctor.
“I’ve heard of you. I know of the legends.” The Ice Lord extended it’s claw. “My name is Saraxx.”
“Please to meet you, Saraxx.”
Saraxx hissed it’s approval. “We must escape this place before there’s nothing left to escape from.”
“Easier said than done,” said the Doctor. “My TARDIS is back in the collapsed section. We tried to get to it but it was near on impossible.”
“Well I refuse to be slaughtered like cattle.”
There was a rumble and the ground shook, causing some of the group to cry out in fear. A billow of dust emerged from down a corridor and the Doctor, Dennington and Saraxx were aware of something emerging from the dust.
Eventually the dust cleared, and standing there was a huge, seven-foot tall pure, white skinned man. His head was like a skull with jagged yellow teeth, whilst evil yellow eyes stared out over high cheek bones. He wore blue armour with rippling muscles underneath and strapped to his belt was an array of weapons.
“Good evening,” he growled.
“Paragrim,” said the Doctor.
He lifted a huge blaster and pointed it at the Doctor’s group. “You’re under arrest. General Helix is waiting for you.”
A long time later, after the ship had left with the Doctor, Dennington and Saraxx as prisoner, the colonists emerged from their hiding places. One of them looked up into the sky - it was a girl of about 12, her hair covered in dust and her eyes scared.
One of the warriors that had been left behind put it’s claw on her shoulder. She had always feared these creatures, but now she no longer feared them. She looked up at the Ice Warrior.
“We will be okay,” it hissed.
She nodded and looked back to the stars and towards Earth.
She no longer feared the Ice Warriors.
She feared the Eyeglass.
She feared the Humans.
She feared herself.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Next time: Ivy and Alice join the dots, whilst the Doctor and Dennington are captured by The Eyeglass. "Fall of the Eye" begins Saturday May 3rd 2014.
Great story - i kind of knew she would survive!
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