Hunger Moon: Chapter Seventeen

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Rescued

 

When they reached the final cross junction of the ventilation shafts Jake wiggled down one side to allow the Doctor past him, before following in his wake. It wasn’t much further until they arrived at the grating of the room Pete Tyler was being held in. The Doctor peered through the grid and saw the battered man lying on the cot below. There was no one else in the room. He set to work with his sonic screwdriver and began unfastening the panel before him.

 

Pete glanced up at the unusual noise and said, “Who’s there?”

 

“Rescue mission,” said the Doctor gruffly. “We’ll have you out of there shortly.” Pete looked like he hardly dared to believe it as he rose unsteadily from the cot. The man was obviously weak but still able to move under his own power.

 

The Doctor made short work of the screws and pulled the grate inward, setting it against the side wall of the duct. The Doctor and Jake both scrambled through the opening and down into the room below, stretching muscles made cramped by the long crawl.

 

“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, Jake,” Pete said. “And you are?”

 

“I’m the Doctor,” he said.

 

Pete frowned, puzzled. “You don’t look like him.”

 

“Different incarnation. Different lot of things really. But I am the Doctor.”

 

“Does Rose know you’re here?” Pete asked, father first.

 

“Yeah,” said the Doctor with a grin that nearly split his face. Pete couldn’t help smiling in return even though it made him wince as it pulled across his bruised jaw. “Do you think you can crawl through a mile of ductwork?”

 

“I’ll manage,” said Pete. Jake went first to lead the way back, and then helped pull Pete up while the Doctor boosted him from behind. Next he grabbed hold of the edges of the opening and pulled himself up and through, turning about in the shaft and refastening the grate. They began the long crawl back towards the TARDIS.

 

Pete was shaking by the time they emerged from the ventilation shaft and the Doctor, after checking his ribs for injuries, hoisted the man up over his shoulder and carried him the same way he’d done for Rose just a few weeks earlier as they’d left the Valley of the Drayguins. Minus the admonishing slap on the bum to make Rose hush, of course.

 

Jake sent a subvocal message to Davin to let Rose and him know that they’d gotten Pete safely into the TARDIS. The Doctor took Pete straight to the infirmary and laid him down on the exam table, trying not to think about how he had had sex with the man’s daughter on that very bed not too long ago. He got to work scanning Pete for injuries while Jake went off to tell Jackie that the rescue had been a success.

 

He administered a painkiller and a sleeping drug and Pete soon passed out. The Doctor began repairing the injuries as best he could as they appeared on the computer screen. Pete was going to need to spend a fair amount of time in a regenerative bath. Most of his injuries would respond well to the treatment but he’d need to go under the deep tissue regenerator for several hours first for some of the internal injuries.

 

Jackie appeared in the doorway, hesitant and scared, her eyes seeking Pete’s face. “He’s going to be all right,” the Doctor said without looking up.

 

Jackie stepped to his side. “Can I touch him?”

 

“Yeah, but just on the top of his head. It’s the only place that doesn’t need healing besides his feet. I’m going to put him inside a machine in a minute and it’ll do a lot of repair work. After that he’s going to need to soak in a medicated bath for four hours and I’ll need you to go in with him and keep his head above the surface. I won’t lie to you, Jackie. A lot of damage has been done and it’s going to take a lot of fixing.”

 

“Will he be okay?” she asked.

 

“Eventually. But he was tortured. His mental state, well…when his body is better I’ll see what I can do to repair his mind. He’ll need therapy, someone who deals with torture and rape victims would be best. What they did to his mind, it’s very much like rape, a violation of his person, his sense of self. It’s the same sort of treatment.”

 

The Doctor wheeled Pete over to the big tissue regenerator and opened a door, then slid the bed inside. Only his feet protruded. They were the one bit of him that was still fine. “Stay with him, touch his feet if you want. He may or may not know you’re here, but I imagine you’ll feel better doing it. I’ve knocked him out for several hours. I’ll make sure you’re brought food. Where are the twins?”

 

“With Suzie,” she said. “I don’t want them seeing Pete until he’s better.”

 

“Me either,” said the Doctor. “I’ll be back to check on him when I can, but it may be a few hours. He’ll be fine in there until I do.”

 

“Thank you, Doctor,” Jackie said. “Thank you so much.” She reached out and snagged his hand, giving it a quick squeeze.

 

“You’re welcome,” he told her simply and when she let go he left the room.

 

 

 

The glimpse was fleeting but it was enough to send Rose backpedaling into Davin. The opalescent creature had been such a vivid presence that she knew it was not just her imagination that had seen the strange milky iridescence shot through with a play of other colors, or the oddly faceted body that appeared to be made of cut stone. She wished desperately that the Doctor was by her side. He’d know what to do when confronted by an alien.

 

Rose shook herself. What was she thinking? She knew what to do when confronted by an alien for goodness’ sake! She wasn’t some nineteen year old girl fresh into the TARDIS anymore. She had ten years of Torchwood field work behind her. She didn’t need her husband to figure out where to go from here. Though he would have been nice to have as backup. And infinitely more useful than what she did have.

 

The woman now standing before her looked like Ava Hartman, twin sister to the long dead Yvonne who had died in this universe before Rose had ever had a chance to meet her, had died in that first savage Cyberman attack that had taken Pete’s first Jackie to her death and decided for Mickey that he would stay in this universe of his own accord. So unlike her own permanent arrival here.

 

Her mind was wandering? Why was her mind wandering this much? She glared at the alien as she felt tendrils reaching out toward her thoughts. “What are you doing down here, Rose?” Ava asked her in a completely normal voice.  “There’s been a building-wide evacuation.”

 

“I could ask you the same thing,” Rose said putting her own efforts into strengthening the blocks the Doctor had put into place.

 

“It’s a false alarm. The mainframe’s been hacked. I’m just trying to trace the source,” Ava said.

 

“The mainframe is in sub basement four,” Davin said from behind Rose.

 

Ava looked at him and then suddenly Davin looked like he’d been punched in the face. Rose could feel the psychic assault as the alien pushed into her friend’s mind searching for telepathy. Rose toggled the subvocal device behind her ear and was about to ask for help when Davin raised his gun and fired at the alien.

 

Ava swirled and shimmered and simply absorbed the bullet. But her grip on Davin’s mind had let go. He jumped on the woman, trying to subdue her and was partially successful, pulling her from the doorway. Rose managed to dodge around the struggle and eased herself into the next room. Her eyes took in the empty cot with its mussed bedding, a straight back chair, the glass of water on the bedside table, a covered bucket beside it, a small sink, and nothing else. The room was empty. Her father wasn’t there.

 

She glanced up at the ventilation shaft and saw that it was not quite properly in place. With a grin of relief she realized the Doctor and Jake must have gotten to Pete first. She turned back to confront Ava only to realize that Davin was standing rigidly in front of the woman and was surrounded by four more undisguised aliens. She leveled a long, thin conical device at Rose. “I have some questions for you, Miss Tyler.”

 

Rose ignored her for a moment as the subvocal equipment came to life. “Rose, we have your Dad. Get out of there.” She toggled the device and replied with a brief affirmative. The motion was not missed by Ava Hartman and she leapt forward, grabbing Rose and searching behind her ear. Her fingers came up with the device and crushed it between her fingers. A human hand couldn’t have done that, but Ava shimmered back into her proper appearance, she was no longer pretending to be human.

 

“Bring them,” she snapped to the other guards. Without another word they were hustled from the room and into the lift. Thankfully the sprinkler system had now shut off as they were herded off the lift and they didn’t get any more soaked then they already were. Rose recognized the floor they were on as the executive one, where the head of Torchwood, her father, had his office.

 

Once inside with the door firmly shut behind them Ava went to a box and opened it. Inside were some odd rings that seemed to glow faintly blue and green in the light. Ava lifted a pair out of the box and with a savage psychic jolt pulled them apart. Rose felt a wave of pain emanating from the rings and realized they were alive, whatever they were. The tube-like creatures opened and Ava snapped one around each of Rose’s wrists. They curled back into their natural round shape and Rose felt the sudden tug as the two creatures sought each other, bringing her wrists together with something very like a strong magnetic force.

 

Rose struggled frantically as the process was repeated on her ankles and then a longer band was placed around her waist. One of the other aliens picked her up and deposited her in the far corner of the room, while Ava plucked more of the creatures out of the box and used them to tie up Davin. He was placed in the opposite corner of the room from Rose.  The creature questioned both her and Davin rather relentlessly but neither one would answer her.

 

The alien shimmered and looked like Ava Hartman again. “I'll be back to...question you...a little more thoroughly.  Now in the meantime, I strongly suggest that the two of you stay apart and don’t try to escape.” The woman had a smirk on her face. “This room will be guarded at all times. We will find your father or you, my dear, will end up paying the consequences.” With that the woman strode from the room, her little band of soldiers following her out the door, which shut with a resounding thud.

 

Immediately Rose began trying to tug her hands apart but the harder she pulled the stronger the force between the two creatures on her wrists became. She was able to shuffle forward moving her feet just a few inches at a time and headed towards Davin.

 

“Rose, she said to stay away from each other,” Davin warned.

 

“She also said we shouldn’t try to escape, but I’m going to,” Rose said with determination. “Come on. Meet me in the middle.”

 

With a look of reluctance Davin did as requested but the closer he got to Rose, the faster he seemed to be moving. He tripped and when he went to push himself up his hands got too close to his ankles and snapped together. “Oh, no,” he said. “Rose, the alien handcuffs are attracted to the ankle ones.”

 

“Let’s see if I can help,” she said as she edged closer to him and knelt down. She hoped that since he was wearing the blue alien restraints and she had on the green ones the different sets wouldn’t be attracted to each other. She was wrong. As she went to pull his hands from his ankles her own wrist cuffs fastened onto his.

 

“Oh, great,” he said as he felt his ankles sliding towards hers. “Pull back, Rose, as hard as you can.” He held onto one of her hands while she pulled the other and succeeded in pulling one arm free. She thrust it behind her and grabbed hold of her father’s desk leg.

 

“Hold tight to my hand,” Davin said. “I’m going to try to break free.” He managed to rip his other arm from the cuff and grabbed for a filing cabinet. His leverage shifted and their ankles snapped together. The cuff around Rose’s hand began to writhe and turn red. She felt pain emanating from it again.

 

“These things are alive,” Rose told him. “It’s hurting them to be away from each other.”

 

“I know, but we’ll never get out of here unless we keep them apart.”

 

“Can you reach your subvocal?” Rose asked.

 

“Not without letting go. If I let go, we’ll get pulled back together,” Davin said.

 

“Well, if we can get a message to Jake and the Doctor or Mickey, then they can come and rescue us and the Doctor will figure out how to get us apart without hurting these creatures any further.”

 

“All right.” Davin quickly toggled the switch on and as he and Rose were pulled inevitably back together he managed to send out a quick request for assistance with their location.

 

Rose’s fingers began to slip and when she finally lost her grip on the desk, the wrist snapped down to her waist belt and then her body was dragged across the floor rapidly until she smacked fully into Davin, her waist belt locking against his. Davin groaned. “We really should have stayed on opposite sides of the room.”

 

“Well, how were we to know?” Rose asked. “Didn’t expect the evil alien to actually speak the truth.”

 

They were now lying on the floor face to face, or more accurately face to chest. Rose turned her head towards the ceiling, her ear resting against him. His heart was racing and if she wasn’t mistaken her ex-boyfriend was getting rather more than he ought to out of the situation.

 

Rose tried to pull herself back from him as she began to feel a mild flush to her skin and a sinking sensation in her stomach that heralded the start of nausea. Sweat broke out on her body. “Stop squirming, Rose,” Davin bit out.

 

“I need to move away,” she said.

 

“It’s not possible. Just wait until the others get here.”

 

“Fine,” she snapped. “Then make your erection go away.”

 

“I can’t just make it go away,” he told her. “Not when you’re up against me.”

 

“This is hardly a romantic situation,” she griped.

 

“I can’t help it. I haven’t had sex since a week before you left, Rose. And I can’t stop being attracted to you just because we’re over. Especially with you stuck to me like glue. I’m not trying to be difficult here,” he told her.

 

“I know,” she said. “But I’m feeling sick.”

 

“Please tell me you’re not going to vomit on me,” he said.

 

“I’ll try, but no promises. Just see if you can pull you pelvis away from mine,” she told him. After a few attempts he had to stop because it was only making things worse.

 

“We’ll just lie perfectly still and wait,” he told her. Rose bit her lip, but found that at least with no movements she was able to force down the nausea. She forced her mind to the Doctor, and retreated in a little fantasy of being stuck in this same situation with him. Knowing the Doctor, he’d have found a way to shag.

 

 

 

 

“We’ll just have to risk it,” said Mickey. “Pete’s office is the most heavily guarded in the building. The only thing that can get around all the safeguards is the TARDIS."

 

The Doctor agreed reluctantly and fed in the coordinates Mickey gave him. A moment later the ship materialized in Pete’s office. The two men burst through the doors followed by Jake, and Mickey had to fight really hard not to laugh at the predicament Rose and Davin found themselves in. The Doctor’s face had gone dark, but at Rose’s plea of, “Help. It hurts,” the man sprang into action.

 

“Mickey, Jake, you two grab Davin and pull. I’ll take Rose.” With violent tugging the trio managed to get the pair apart and the Doctor said, “Keep him here until I come back.” He picked up Rose and disappeared into the TARDIS with her, hastily taking her through the maze of corridors and dropping her onto the couch in the library. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Stay.”

"Very funny," Rose called after him.

 

He hurried back to the other men and instructed them to help Davin into the conservatory and stay with him. He sent the ship into the Time Vortex, went into his workshop for a special glass container that he filled with a gelatinous fluid and then hurried to the med bay. It took twenty minutes of gentle psychic persuasion to remove the creature from around Davin’s waist and a further ten each to get the ones off his wrists and ankles.

 

The entire time the Doctor worked he didn’t speak aloud. When they were at last removed and inside the glass box in a writhing series of concentric circles, he handed Davin some water and told him to hydrate himself. “You may feel weak from the psychic drain, or you may not even notice it. But either way, the water should help restore what was withdrawn. Jake, show him to the room next to yours. You need to rest for the next several hours.”

 

Jake led Davin away and Mickey asked, “What are those things?”

 

“They’re a very rudimentary telepathic species called Lurvin with a strong need to be paired or grouped with others of their kind. If any one is on it’s own for too long, the pain is awful for it. And it can lead to their death after a day or so apart. They’re not quite as intelligent as an earth dog or cat. In fact higher telepathic species often keep them as pets.”

 

“Why do the Monoc’teru have them?”

 

“They like to enslave telepathic races. Wouldn’t have thought they’d go after such a lesser species, but I suppose they have proven useful to them. I really need to go get the rest of these creatures off of Rose. It may take quite a bit of time. We’re safe in the Vortex. Don’t come looking for us.”

 

The Doctor wheeled around abruptly and left the infirmary, heading to the library and Rose.

Ch. 18:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/92219.html