He had slowed down to walking pace and once he had reached the end of the sky link he stopped and turned back to face the way he had come. Nothing.
Then he turned forward again and standing there in front of him was Cole.
The Doctor jumped back.
“How did you do that?”
“Help me,” said Cole, regaining some of his original look and calming slightly. There were tears in his eyes. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
“Come here,” said the Doctor, taking out his screwdriver again. “You need to tell me all that you remember about where you come from.”
“I don’t remember anything,” said Cole, sitting himself on the floor and leaning against the curved glass of the sky link.
“Nothing at all? You’ve got a Scottish accent, so you may be from Scotland. That’s a start,” said the Doctor, sitting down beside him.
“But I don’t remember anything about it.” Cole ran his hand through his hair and then glanced sideways to the Doctor. “Did I have a daughter?”
“No idea,” said the Doctor, drawing his knees up to his chest.
“No, wait. Not a daughter. A grand daughter.”
The Doctor’s head snapped around. “I beg your pardon? Surely you’re not old enough. You’re in your late 30’s? Yes?”
“I think so,” said Cole. He shook his head. “I just don’t know anymore.”
Suddenly, without warning, a small hole appeared in the glass behind them causing both men to jump up. Soon cracks began to form from the hole.
“What’s happening?” asked Cole.
“I have no idea,” said the Doctor, edging closer to the glass. “The whole pane’s going to go.”
And with that the glass shattered leaving a large hole where the pane should have been.
And then another pane shattered. And another. And another.
Soon there were huge gaps between the metal frame work of the sky link leading out into the cold night air.
“What’s doing this?” said the Doctor, quietly, peering outside and seeing nothing.
“It’s me,” said Cole, looking down at his hands which had turned white again. “Somehow this place has got me.”
The Doctor looked back at Cole. “You’re not Human, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You registered Human, but then…maybe that’s what your body was trying to tell me. Maybe it was trying to trick me.”
“Not on purpose,” said Cole, the panic beginning to rise in him again.
“No not on purpose,” said the Doctor.
Then there came the sound of creaking metal. Sparks flew from the conveyer belt along the sky link and more windows cracked and shattered.
“The whole walkway’s going to go,” said the Doctor.
He grabbed Cole by his hand and pulled him along the sky link as the tube-like structure began to twist and turn and bend out of shape.
And then the two men felt themselves falling down towards the ground below.
Sometime ago…
The Doctor had drifted again, but now he was waking up his vision was starting to clear. He was on a bed with a very, very soft mattress. The room was dark, but there were little glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, each one perfectly arranged to the correct pattern of each constellation.
He sat up and felt his head start to throb.
He looked to his side and saw a bedside table and a glass of water. He quickly took a sip of the water and lay back down.
A door clicked open in the darkness and a pale, blue light slowly came on.
“How you feeling, sweetheart?” asked the blue-skinned woman called Aleena.
“Better. A lot better. Apart from the headache.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and smiled down at him, brushing her long, blonde hair out of her face. “I’ve got some good hangover cures,” she said. “I’ll bring you one up.”
“Wait,” said the Doctor, grabbing her arm and stopping her from getting up. “Can you just…stay. Just for a few minutes.”
“Of course I can,” she smiled.
“It’s just that…well, I just need to rest. I feel so ill. I can’t be dealing with all the rushing around.”
“I completely understand,” said Aleena, putting her hand on his. “We need to get you better.”
The Doctor smiled at the young woman. She had a trusting face and an even more trusting smile. Whether this was to her advantage or disadvantage would remain to be seen.
Now…
Blackmore and Caroline were oblivious to the chaos in the sky link and were just about to reach it when June, the nurse, came running across the T3 departure hall. She looked flustered and her cheeks were red.
She slowed when she saw Blackmore and Caroline and stopped in front of them.
“What’s wrong?” asked Blackmore.
“Keep calm,” said Caroline, putting a hand on the small woman’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Something’s not right here,” she said, out of breath.
“What do you mean?” asked Caroline.
June turned to look back where she’d come from. “I just popped to get some supplies from the cupboard and there’s….well, there’s something in there.”
“What sort of something?” asked Blackmore, frowning.
“I don’t know. Some kind of machinery. It’s just coming out of the ground.” She started scratching her hand. “I reached out to touch it. It was humming. It was like electricity running through my hand.”
“Think we should check it?” asked Caroline, hands on her hips and a stern look on her face.
“It might help answer a few questions about what’s going here.”
“We might find Cole and the Doctor on the way.”
“There was a noise from the sky link,” said June, sitting herself down on a chair. “Like metal twisting. Glass breaking.”
“We’ll go check it,” said Caroline. “You stay here.”
“No,” said Blackmore quickly. “We need her to stay with us. If she leaves she might forget us.”
“Forget you?” said June. “I just want to go home. I’ve never seen this place so quiet.”
Caroline looked around her. It was true. Although it was the middle of the night, this place should have had more people in it. All she see was dimly lit areas of the departure hall and in the background she could hear a strange, droning sound. Like an air conditioning unit. It was eerie and sent a shiver up her spine. It felt like they were the only people left alive.
“You need to come with us,” said Caroline to June. “We’ll get you home, don’t worry.”
The Doctor opened his eyes. He was lying flat on his back on top of a heap of twisted metal. Lying a few feet away from him was Matthew Cole who had begun to stir. They were lucky they had survived the fall.
The Doctor sat up and looked around. They had landed on a large cluster of bushes that ran under the sky link.
“Ouch,” said Cole, rubbing his head and looking across to the Doctor. “What the hell is going on?”
The Doctor looked at him for a moment and then slowly clambered to his feet. “We need to get you to the TARDIS.”
“The TARDIS? What the hell’s a TARDIS?” asked Cole as the Doctor dragged him to his feet.
“It’s my time machine,” said the Doctor, striding towards the car park.
Cole stood stock still and shook his head in disbelief. “Can this day get on weirder?”
“C’mon,” shouted the Doctor.
“Wait!” said Cole, looking up at the broken sky link above them. “There’s something up there.”
“I don’t see anything,” said the Doctor, walking back to Cole and looking up at the gap where the walkway used to be.
“There!” said Cole.
There was a faint, buzzing sound and then a shape, about half the size of a person, floated into view. It was gun-metal grey, cylindrical and had a large, ball-like head on top. On top of the head was an antenna and a row of lights circling the head, almost like a crown. Either side of the things cylindrical body was what looked like arms, except instead of hands there were various scientific implements.
The robot floated over the gap and the buzzing became more high-pitched when it noticed the Doctor and Cole.
“What is it?” asked Cole, edging away from the rubble under the sky link.
“Some sort of drone,” said the Doctor. “And I believe we’re it’s targets. Run!”
The Doctor and Cole span around and ran towards the car park as the drone switched an implement on it’s right arm from a syringe to what looked like a gun.
“Why are we targets?” asked Cole as they scooted around the corner of a building,
“No idea,” said the Doctor, “but my main concern is to get some answers about you. Then maybe we’ll find out what’s going on here.”
The drone swooped down and whizzed around the corner, just a few metres behind the men. It raised it’s gun appendage and shot a few bolts of white-hot energy from it.
“It’s trying to kill us!” yelled Cole, leaping as a bolt hit the ground just by his feet.
“Or trying to stun us,” said the Doctor. “It might want us alive.”
They rounded another building and arrived at the car park. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the two nearest cars. Their doors unlocked.
“Get in the red one,” said the Doctor, as he headed towards a black car.
“What? Why? It’s not like I can escape here,” said Cole, glancing back at the drone which was almost on top of them.
“I know,” said the Doctor, opening the black cars door and clambering inside. “But whilst I drive to Sheffield and get the TARDIS, you can keep driving around the airport.”
“What?” asked a confused Cole.
“It’s quicker than running! You’ll be safe in the car,” shouted the Doctor as a bolt of energy whizzed past his head. He slammed the door shut and wound down the window. “Just keep driving. Keep trying to outrun it. I’ll be back!”
Cole jumped in the red car. The Doctor aimed his strange device at the dashboard of he and Cole’s cars and the vehicles whirred into life.
“Keep driving!” repeated the Doctor as his put his foot on the accelerator and sped towards the exit, screeching as he turned the corner.
Cole sat at the steering wheel, put his foot down and hoped for the best.
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