So after being awakened in my usual fashion and a good proper English breakfast (I cooked, the Doctor toasted and opened tins, though he still maintains he can cook, remains to be seen), we made our way to the console room and randomised.
Once we'd picked ourselves up off the TARDIS floor we both cast glances at the door, and then at each other. He raised his eyebrows, "Anything could be out there."
I grinned and then punched him lightly in the stomach and we both ran for the door.
Outside was... nothing. Well, not nothing in the sense that there could be nothing. There were buildings, and trees, and carnival equipment, but there were no people no sign of anything living at all, no nothing.
Even the Doctor was silent for awhile. But we'd materialised on the roof of some kind of building so we decided there was just a good a place to investigate as anywhere else.
It seemed like the building we were on, henceforth known at Building A, was the center of some sort of 'main drag' as the Doctor likes to say. It was some sort of governmental building. And there were papers still around. It seemed like we were on Kalab Ting, which the Doctor only knew vaguely, nothing he could think of to warrant the complete desertion that appeared to have taken place. The only clue was the continual mention of some sort of corporation called Piroquay that did scientific things that I didn't understand but made the Doctor frown. I did not quite like that, the Doctor frowning is a scary thing. We looked round some more.
"Rose," the Doctor said in that voice that always gave me cause for concern, "stay close to me, don't go wandering off?"
He didn't have to tell me twice. I nodded and opened my mouth to respond but it was at that exact moment that I took a step forward and the ground gave way. I am not sure if it was rotting over some sort of mine shaft or if someone had dug a hole there for more sinister reasons, but while I was falling, and falling, and falling I didn't really think about why there was a hole there it was enough that there was and it seemed, after everything I'd seen, a very stupid way to go out and I thought this until everything went black.
I came to lying on something that felt very much like rock, feeling very sore but very much alive and unbroken. I looked round for the Doctor, though when I tried to sit up I couldn't, and that was when I looked at my hands. They were restrained with some sort of canvas rope, which meant two things 1) there were people here, and 2) I was probably in a lot of trouble.
"Hello?" I called and was answered by a very dirty, and very red, looking girl who couldn't have been any older than fifteen, although she had some sort of spear fashioned out of scrap metal, that did not bode well for me.
"You have come from the outside," she said and advanced very slowly, "You are contaminated, you will not be aloud among the enclave."
Contaminated?? This was getting worse and worse. And I really hoped that the Doctor was okay.
"Okay," I said, "no enclave. I can live with that. I think. Um, if you untie me I promise I wont go... contaminated with what?"
"The virus," she said, ignoring my query as to whether I'd be untied, "the lucky were killed, the unlucky were mutated."
"Mutated?!"
"Horrible things have happened here," she said and then brought me a glass of water and a sort of paste. "I have been selected to care for you while we see which one will happen for you."
I rejected the food and water, I was far too worried over the word mutated to want either. "What if neither of them happen?" I asked.
She shook her head, "That has never happened. We moved down here in order to escape the virus. It is the only way we have survived, though everyday another grows sick."
"Okay," I said again, trying to formulate some sort of plan, getting out of here was the first order of business. "How long until you'll let me go."
"Not long," she said, "a few weeks should do it."
More tomorrow.
1 comment:
Hmm. Intrigued.
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