DW Fanfic: The Inheritance pt.2
The Inheritance
2
“Right, lets get straight to the point. Show me where it happened” barked the doctor, enthusiastic with the spirit of intervention. But Ann withdrew an inch or so, as if guarding herself against the thought of showing that place to anyone, most of all, herself.
“Oh come on, you want to get to the root of all this don’t you?”
“It’s just… I haven’t opened that room in months… Its become like a pit in my daily routine that I steer well clear of.”
The doctor turned to face her square on. There was little height difference between them, but Ann felt she was in front of a towering pillar as he placed a solid hand on each of her shoulders and reassured her.
“You’re not alone now Ann.”
She examined his new face, its interesting lines and contours, its friendly smile.
“Don’t you ever get afraid, doctor?”
If anything, the smile broadened.
“Only when I notice how overconfident I’ve been acting. Now come on, we can hold hands.”
The thought kindled a dim sense of peace for Ann, and as she led him to the corridor where the room was, her hand snaked into his. She noticed it was slightly hotter than she had expected.
The door sung as easily open as if it had been in regular use, even though it had been locked for long months. And there the room lay, before them. The curtains still barely drawn, books scattered around the floor, and a horrid singed smell.
Once again, Ann drew herself back, this time half-choking, her hand to her face. The doctor left her in the doorway for a moment, marched to the window and snatched both curtains fully open, then joined her again.
A moment later his sonic screwdriver was out and he was pointing it around the room, monitoring its intermittent glow with a wistful concentration.
“I need to go over to that corner” he announced: words that Ann had been dreading with all her being.
She simply shook her head and stepped back into the doorway. One hand covering her mouth, she gestured with the other that it was ok for him to leave her there.
“This is where he died, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing his device all around the corner. She nodded, barely disguising the gasps in her breath.
Leafing through the papers on the old desk, the doctor singled one out and his eyes flickered as he quickly scanned its words. Then, pausing, he read something under his breath.
As he soundlessly worded something, a moment of chaos came and passed.
A lurid glow sprang up in the ceiling of the room. It seemed to flare up from the corner right above where the doctor stood, then quickly diffused into snake-like patterns that ran round the room at lightening speed, in an instant fading.
Ann was now panting, and visibly shaking. She barely noticed the doctor’s expression, which was one of extreme interest. To her horror, he read the words again, this time aloud, and with his eye’s skyward. The words were ugly and twisted:
“Iä, Iä… Pantothymos eggregores, Iä. Oo-el sunooth ve-ay-or-esaigee Iä”
Again the phantasm flickered, more intensely this time, and with them came a sound that aggravated every nerve in Ann’s body, as if a coarse fabric had been dragged through her. It was deep, but neither hollow nor rich. Its essence was dreamlike, like the slow roar of some nightmare animal.
Ann could not bear it a moment longer, and shut herself outside the accursed room, collapsing against the wall. Even the doctor had been disquieted by the noise, but was so keen in his concern for Ann that she was barely alone long enough to retreat entirely into herself.
“Come to the Tardis” he consoled her. “I have tea” he added, with a flash of a smile, to which Ann could not resist responding with her own.
“And”, he added, with an almost theatrical flourish of the hand, “there is someone I want you to meet”
…
The Tardis interior was more or less how Ann remembered it: incomprehensible. She had spent a whole year in that strange, half-organic, half-technological cave of treasures, and had never learned anything of how it functioned. The same glowing crystal column stood in the centre, flanked with controls. The same honeycombed walls, like gigantic bees had been at work.
On a stool by the controls, however, slouched a figure that filled Ann with instant repulsion.
“Talso?!” Her lips and eyes narrowed in hostility, and she turned abruptly. The memory of being at the point of Talso’s sword was still fresh in her mind, although years away. She would have marched out then and there if the doctor had not neatly caught hold of her elbow and pivoted her back around.
“Doctor, I thought you would take me away from all this betrayal” she shouted at him, with rising fury. First, August, latching onto that horrific old letch HP, and now, her only other source of comfort, consorting with this vicious murderer. “Instead you bring more of it with you?”
“It’s ok, Ann… Ann, its OK.” The doctor went to stand beside the masked bandit, on whose hip he fiddled with some switches.
Ann was utterly unconvinced of her safety.
“No, Doctor, No… For the love of God, No!”
“Talso awakes” chimed the familiar, greasy voice “How can I be of assistance?”
The hospitality of the question caught Ann completely off guard, the surprise instantly cooling her anger.
In fact Ann found the spectacle of the deadly android assassin - having so very nearly killed both herself and then the doctor all those years ago, now asking how he might serve them - vaguely amusing.
The doctor looked at her, and, trying to imitate something like human modesty, cocked his head to one side. “I reprogrammed him.”
Ann cautiously stalked the android for a moment, and then fully approached it.
“Can you be sure none of the original programming remains?”
The doctor look puzzled, as if she had asked entirely the wrong question. In truth, the question had simply been unexpected.
“Er… well. He retains the same basic physico-temporal semantic matrix, and basic personalisation settings… er… but I obviously recalibrated his main affectivity drivers”
Obviously the Doctor knew far more about such things than Ann understood, or was prepared to learn. She relaxed further. Perhaps further than she realised, for soon the room, the room her husband had melted in, and that awful nerve-scratching noise she had witnessed not an hour ago, fell from her mind.
Soon they were drinking tea, being waited on by the Doctor’s new assistant, an android whose deathly mask and jagged armour-plating now appeared quite comical. As if to make the most of it, he found an apron from somewhere amongst the many rooms in the Tardis, and tied it around the android.
“Talso does not require this peripheral”, it replied, the humour entirely lost on it. At this, Ann actually found herself laughing. It was the first time in perhaps a year that she had done so, and the sound struggled, but nonetheless escaped.
Hours passed easily, and Ann felt herself warming, remembering her old self. Old jokes between herself and the Doctor came flooding back, and delighted her tongue in the telling.
Soon, she succumbed to rest, and her only awareness was a tender hand draping an unfathomably comfortable blanket over her half-asleep form. The Doctor’s footsteps receded into his own dormitory, and with that she entered the best night’s sleep she had ever had.
…
The house still stood out against the star-less, moon-less night sky, as if darker than were possible. In a window, strange lights flickered intermittently. With each flare, the intensity grew.
If one had been there, one might have approached that window, anxiously, fearing what it might reveal. One could have crept up beside the tall frame of the window and risked a glance inside.
One would have seen Talso, standing in that corner, in that study, amongst the debris of books and papers, reading aloud.
One might have discerned the words, for they were spoken with depth and sonority,
“Iä, Iä…”
Then one would recoil in terror from the booming screech that answered, and the strange phosphorescence that sprang up. For Talso knew full well what he was doing…
Talso was no longer pretending to be the dumb, laughable assistant. Talso was recalling his primary concerns, those he had received millennia ago… They were not so easily overwritten, those directives, being hard-coded into the very molecular structure of his exoskeleton.
And now, Talso was unleashing something… Something that would complete his mission for him…
While the Doctor and Ann slept, their doom was awakening…
2
“Right, lets get straight to the point. Show me where it happened” barked the doctor, enthusiastic with the spirit of intervention. But Ann withdrew an inch or so, as if guarding herself against the thought of showing that place to anyone, most of all, herself.
“Oh come on, you want to get to the root of all this don’t you?”
“It’s just… I haven’t opened that room in months… Its become like a pit in my daily routine that I steer well clear of.”
The doctor turned to face her square on. There was little height difference between them, but Ann felt she was in front of a towering pillar as he placed a solid hand on each of her shoulders and reassured her.
“You’re not alone now Ann.”
She examined his new face, its interesting lines and contours, its friendly smile.
“Don’t you ever get afraid, doctor?”
If anything, the smile broadened.
“Only when I notice how overconfident I’ve been acting. Now come on, we can hold hands.”
The thought kindled a dim sense of peace for Ann, and as she led him to the corridor where the room was, her hand snaked into his. She noticed it was slightly hotter than she had expected.
The door sung as easily open as if it had been in regular use, even though it had been locked for long months. And there the room lay, before them. The curtains still barely drawn, books scattered around the floor, and a horrid singed smell.
Once again, Ann drew herself back, this time half-choking, her hand to her face. The doctor left her in the doorway for a moment, marched to the window and snatched both curtains fully open, then joined her again.
A moment later his sonic screwdriver was out and he was pointing it around the room, monitoring its intermittent glow with a wistful concentration.
“I need to go over to that corner” he announced: words that Ann had been dreading with all her being.
She simply shook her head and stepped back into the doorway. One hand covering her mouth, she gestured with the other that it was ok for him to leave her there.
“This is where he died, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing his device all around the corner. She nodded, barely disguising the gasps in her breath.
Leafing through the papers on the old desk, the doctor singled one out and his eyes flickered as he quickly scanned its words. Then, pausing, he read something under his breath.
As he soundlessly worded something, a moment of chaos came and passed.
A lurid glow sprang up in the ceiling of the room. It seemed to flare up from the corner right above where the doctor stood, then quickly diffused into snake-like patterns that ran round the room at lightening speed, in an instant fading.
Ann was now panting, and visibly shaking. She barely noticed the doctor’s expression, which was one of extreme interest. To her horror, he read the words again, this time aloud, and with his eye’s skyward. The words were ugly and twisted:
“Iä, Iä… Pantothymos eggregores, Iä. Oo-el sunooth ve-ay-or-esaigee Iä”
Again the phantasm flickered, more intensely this time, and with them came a sound that aggravated every nerve in Ann’s body, as if a coarse fabric had been dragged through her. It was deep, but neither hollow nor rich. Its essence was dreamlike, like the slow roar of some nightmare animal.
Ann could not bear it a moment longer, and shut herself outside the accursed room, collapsing against the wall. Even the doctor had been disquieted by the noise, but was so keen in his concern for Ann that she was barely alone long enough to retreat entirely into herself.
“Come to the Tardis” he consoled her. “I have tea” he added, with a flash of a smile, to which Ann could not resist responding with her own.
“And”, he added, with an almost theatrical flourish of the hand, “there is someone I want you to meet”
…
The Tardis interior was more or less how Ann remembered it: incomprehensible. She had spent a whole year in that strange, half-organic, half-technological cave of treasures, and had never learned anything of how it functioned. The same glowing crystal column stood in the centre, flanked with controls. The same honeycombed walls, like gigantic bees had been at work.
On a stool by the controls, however, slouched a figure that filled Ann with instant repulsion.
“Talso?!” Her lips and eyes narrowed in hostility, and she turned abruptly. The memory of being at the point of Talso’s sword was still fresh in her mind, although years away. She would have marched out then and there if the doctor had not neatly caught hold of her elbow and pivoted her back around.
“Doctor, I thought you would take me away from all this betrayal” she shouted at him, with rising fury. First, August, latching onto that horrific old letch HP, and now, her only other source of comfort, consorting with this vicious murderer. “Instead you bring more of it with you?”
“It’s ok, Ann… Ann, its OK.” The doctor went to stand beside the masked bandit, on whose hip he fiddled with some switches.
Ann was utterly unconvinced of her safety.
“No, Doctor, No… For the love of God, No!”
“Talso awakes” chimed the familiar, greasy voice “How can I be of assistance?”
The hospitality of the question caught Ann completely off guard, the surprise instantly cooling her anger.
In fact Ann found the spectacle of the deadly android assassin - having so very nearly killed both herself and then the doctor all those years ago, now asking how he might serve them - vaguely amusing.
The doctor looked at her, and, trying to imitate something like human modesty, cocked his head to one side. “I reprogrammed him.”
Ann cautiously stalked the android for a moment, and then fully approached it.
“Can you be sure none of the original programming remains?”
The doctor look puzzled, as if she had asked entirely the wrong question. In truth, the question had simply been unexpected.
“Er… well. He retains the same basic physico-temporal semantic matrix, and basic personalisation settings… er… but I obviously recalibrated his main affectivity drivers”
Obviously the Doctor knew far more about such things than Ann understood, or was prepared to learn. She relaxed further. Perhaps further than she realised, for soon the room, the room her husband had melted in, and that awful nerve-scratching noise she had witnessed not an hour ago, fell from her mind.
Soon they were drinking tea, being waited on by the Doctor’s new assistant, an android whose deathly mask and jagged armour-plating now appeared quite comical. As if to make the most of it, he found an apron from somewhere amongst the many rooms in the Tardis, and tied it around the android.
“Talso does not require this peripheral”, it replied, the humour entirely lost on it. At this, Ann actually found herself laughing. It was the first time in perhaps a year that she had done so, and the sound struggled, but nonetheless escaped.
Hours passed easily, and Ann felt herself warming, remembering her old self. Old jokes between herself and the Doctor came flooding back, and delighted her tongue in the telling.
Soon, she succumbed to rest, and her only awareness was a tender hand draping an unfathomably comfortable blanket over her half-asleep form. The Doctor’s footsteps receded into his own dormitory, and with that she entered the best night’s sleep she had ever had.
…
The house still stood out against the star-less, moon-less night sky, as if darker than were possible. In a window, strange lights flickered intermittently. With each flare, the intensity grew.
If one had been there, one might have approached that window, anxiously, fearing what it might reveal. One could have crept up beside the tall frame of the window and risked a glance inside.
One would have seen Talso, standing in that corner, in that study, amongst the debris of books and papers, reading aloud.
One might have discerned the words, for they were spoken with depth and sonority,
“Iä, Iä…”
Then one would recoil in terror from the booming screech that answered, and the strange phosphorescence that sprang up. For Talso knew full well what he was doing…
Talso was no longer pretending to be the dumb, laughable assistant. Talso was recalling his primary concerns, those he had received millennia ago… They were not so easily overwritten, those directives, being hard-coded into the very molecular structure of his exoskeleton.
And now, Talso was unleashing something… Something that would complete his mission for him…
While the Doctor and Ann slept, their doom was awakening…