R/Revolution, Chapter Two
The Doctor didn’t have to look far to find the Vitex tower. It loomed above the rest of downtown London’s skyline like a vulture over its prey, and glowed with an eerie red hue. At the top of the building was the Vitex logo, a bright red “V” minus the subversive slash he’d seen in the hub. Keeping to the inner streets, the Doctor made his way there cautiously, and hopped between the shadowy outlines of buildings to keep from being seen.
After a few blocks, the Doctor spotted the main entrance to the corporate office, and saw that it was heavily guarded by heavily armed security officers. A few armored hum-v’s sat outside, as well as a low barbed-wire fence securing the perimeter. The Doctor did what he did best in such scenarios, and walked up with absolute confidence to flash his psychic paper at the first guard he came to.
“Meeting with the CEO,” the Doctor said forcefully. “And I’d rather you didn’t hold me up. This is of the utmost importance.”
The guard sneered at the psychic paper, but waved the Doctor in through a small opening in the fence. Another guard came to escort him into the lobby, but paused to report to a superior officer through his ear piece.
“Yes sir,” the guard said gruffly. “It’s the Lord High Chancellor. Right away, sir.”
The Doctor smiled inwardly as he was directed past a metal detector, then through a clausterphobic hallway with several open elevators. The guard signaled for the Doctor to lead the way, and then followed behind him, slipping a key into the pad to take them up to the top level.
“Actually,” the Doctor interjected. “I’d like to see the main facility first.”
The guard raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“Not that you’d interfere with an official inspection,” the Doctor added. “But Mr. Tyler doesn’t need to know I’m dropping in just yet. Take me to the lab immediately.”
The guard nodded abruptly, and pushed a lower button on the elevator directory. The Doctor watched out of the corner of his eye as the guard swallowed hard. Apparently, Parliament threw a lot of weight around in Pete’s World.
“This way sir,” the guard directed once the lift had come to the appropriate floor.
The Doctor marveled at the sight in front of him. A long steel walkway was suspended over a gigantic laboratory, where workers went between buzzing machines that looked like inverted, triangular colanders. The temperature was twenty degrees colder inside to preserve the genetic experiments going on below. Along all sides of the room were glowing green panels, each linked into a network of data collected by the scientists. The Doctor watched in fascination as each panel revealed a string of binary code, translating the numbers into computer language that Vitex could manipulate and control.
The Doctor brushed past the guard and made his way down to the room, where he accosted the first scientist he came to.
“Tell me how our latest project is developing,” the Doctor insisted as he held up his psychic paper.
The scientist pushed up his thick work goggles over a mop of unruly red hair and frowned slightly.
“R complex is becoming unstable, sir,” he admitted. “It’s started to mutate once inside the host body. There’s talk of an impending crisis if we can’t control it…”
“What?” an anxious looking gentleman in a pressed suit interrupted as he ran up to the Doctor, glancing at his psychic paper.
“Don’t be silly Jameson! Lord High Chancellor,” the man continued pleadingly, “please pay no attention to our latest intern.”
“But I’m Head of the Genome Project!” Jameson argued.
“Certainly not!” the man said hotly. “Now back to your department, Jameson! Excuse me for that, sir. I’m Mycroft Pembleton, Director of Experimental Medicine. Let me assure you that the R complex trials are proceeding as planned, with very few setbacks. Jameson and his lot are inexperienced in these matters, and tend to blow everything out of proportion. I’m sure you understand.”
“Quite,” the Doctor replied coolly. “So I’m sure you won’t mind showing me the anomalous materials. There’s a reason we call it quality control, Mr. Pembleton.”
Mr. Pembleton trembled under his fine-cut suit as he walked before the Doctor, not unlike a man on death row. He took him to a cordoned-off area where he entered a private pin number, and then escorted the Doctor to a large basin filled with the glowing red drug. Around it were several tons of wire leading out to overhead cables, and distributed from there down to passive patients lying in hospital beds.
The Doctor could hardly disguise his horror as Pembleton took him to a bed with a young boy lying on it.
“The children take to it worse than the others,” the Director explained. “At first the results appear to resemble normal parameters, but within a few days…”
“Show me,” the Doctor demanded.
Pembleton led the Doctor toward a series of glass-walled rooms on the other side of the ward. In each he found a raving patient, some doing violence to themselves as they raged inside their cells. All of them had bright red hair that reminded him of Rose.
“What have you done to them?” he asked in a trembling voice.
Pembleton placed a hand against one of the clear walls, and watched with fascination as the woman inside ran at him, only to bounce off the glass and fall down in a heap.
“They’re all completely mad,” he answered emptily. “If they get out…they kill anyone who comes into contact with them. We keep them here for a few days, to see what results we can tabulate before it’s time to put them down.”
“And how many have you terminated?” the Doctor dared to ask.
Pembleton stared into the Doctor’s eyes, and tried to keep his tears at bay.
“700.”
The Doctor blanched and looked away from the Director and the cells. But everywhere he looked was only more evidence confirming Vitex’s heinous crimes.
“I think I’m ready to see Pete Tyler now,” the Doctor said quietly as he twisted his fists in his pockets.
**
When Pete Tyler entered his office, the room was shrouded in darkness. He’d just dismissed his chief operative, and found his desk chair, which had swiveled around to face him, was occupied.
Pete jerked in surprise when the small lamp on his desk clicked on to reveal the Doctor’s icy visage. He started to back out of the room, but the Doctor held his gaze and raised one hand.
“Sit,” the Doctor intoned.
He pointed to a facing chair, the look on his face suggesting the invitation wasn’t optional.
Pete tried to calm his trembling hands as he moved toward the open seat. His eyes were wide with terror as he sat down a little too hard.
“You…there was no way for you to come back,” Pete stuttered.
“Is that what you were banking on?” the Doctor asked sharply.
“I…” Pete fumbled uselessly. “I…”
“You are going to tell me what’s happened here,” the Doctor continued. “And don’t waste my time with empty lies.”
“Cybus Industries failed,” Pete said unsteadily. “The economy plummeted. Industry, media, housing…they were all in ruins without a controlling agent. The people rioted and Parliament was posed to fall. Someone had to step in…control the chaos.”
“That was you, I take it?” the Doctor said, leaning forward on the desk imposingly.
“Myself and the remnants of the Vitex corporation, yes,” Pete answered slowly. “The President offered us a merger with the only remaining industry, a pharmaceutical corporation working on fringe genetics. The birthrate had plummeted. We were engaged in an effort to mitigate social unrest.”
“You mean the domination of the masses,” the Doctor corrected indignantly.
“We…” Pete contended, “alleviated the majority of the problem. Found a drug combination that could subdue the irascible post-depression citizens. But the government wanted more than that. They kept pushing us to manipulate the people, so that another uprising could be repressed. They were afraid, and their fear became the order of the new administration. The people…suffered.”
“And have you suffered?” the Doctor asked candidly. He glanced around the opulent office as if to suggest Pete’s lucrative trade had been to his advantage.
“Yes,” Pete said tightly, wrapping his arms around himself. “For the good of the nation.”
“That’s your justification?” the Doctor arched an eyebrow as he stood. He waved a hand toward the window where downtown London was choking on pollution.
“I wasn’t strong enough to fight them,” Pete said morosely, staring down at his wedding band.
The Doctor followed his gaze, and crossed his arms.
“Where’s Jackie Tyler, Pete?”
It was then that Pete broke down in tears, and snuffled his nose against one of his sleeves.
“Gone,” he gasped miserably. “Taken in the first wave of the revolution. They surrounded our home, demanding justice. They came in droves…a secret sect that had resisted medication, even after it went to compulsory ingestion, and then blood transfusion. They’d been hiding underground, and chose their day of infamy last Fall. Jackie took the first bullet when she went to mediate. She was trying to help them! And they shot her!”
Pete collapsed into convulsions as the Doctor looked on in horror. The loss of Jackie absolutely devastated him, and made him mourn all the more for Rose.
“And Rose?” the Doctor asked harshly. “What happened to her?”
Pete narrowed his eyes at the name, and stared up at the Doctor with blind hatred.
“That traitor!” he roared. “They killed her own mother and she took up their cause! Jackie had always been sentimental toward them…professed her belief in their end goal for unrepressed government. All of that drabble passed straight on to Rose, even after Jackie’s death. Rose thought her mother died for the cause…but I see it for what it is. I understood on that day how much those people need to be controlled! Look what happens when they are free to think for themselves! They degenerate to war, madness, violence! With Vitex, we create a peaceful society!”
“Listen to yourself!” the Doctor hissed, coming to shake Pete’s shoulders. “You don’t honestly believe in that propaganda? People need to be free to make their own choices, even the bad ones. Jackie didn’t deserve to die, but Rose doesn’t deserve to be ostracized by her own father, either! There’s still a chance to make this right!”
“Rose Tyler is NOT my daughter!” Pete countered furiously, knocking away the Doctor’s hands.
Pete stood abruptly and stormed over to a file cabinet, where he extracted one folio and threw it down on the desk. The Doctor opened it uncertainly, and found an image of Rose on the inside, along with a list of convictions.
“Rose Tyler is public enemy number one!” Pete raged. “Arson, theft, murder, terrorism…you name it. Wanted dead or alive, but you can imagine my preference.”
The Doctor thumbed over the internment camp photo and flipped to another page, where his eyes scanned over a long lab report.
“Rose was in the Vitex lab?” he gasped. “You experimented on your own child!”
“Not my child!” Pete repeated. “And only after she’d gone rogue. The government tracked her down after she bombed Vitex Lab’s resourcing agent on the border. Voluntary patients were slim at that time, so we took to emptying the prisons. Rose was first up…but everything went wrong. She was the first to receive R complex, before the preliminary drug trials. You’ve seen the results, I take it?”
The Doctor shuddered wildly as he recalled her intake of the genetic transfer pill. He thought it had been a performance enhancer, but it must have been something to waylay the violent effects of the Vitex drug…including death.
“You turned Rose into what she is today,” the Doctor said with deadly precision. “And now she’s hunting you and all your men. What do you think will happen when she finds you, Pete? You can’t run forever.”
“That’s why I’m going to kill her first,” Pete vowed. “As long as I’m alive, Rose Tyler is doomed.”
The Doctor backed away from him to run a hand through his hair, hardly believing in anything he’d heard. It was at that moment a red dot appeared on Pete’s forehead, but the Doctor was too slow to react.
“No!” he cried as he turned toward the window, seeing a flash of bright red hair before the bullet tore through the glass.
The Doctor ducked just in time, as a barrage of heavy artillery followed. Pete was cut down almost immediately, and the Doctor had to crawl toward him on the floor to avoid the raining bullets.
The din was cut off by a volley of return fire, coming from the top of the Vitex building. The Doctor turned to see Rose suspended on a wire from the bottom of a retreating stealth helicopter. Before she was yanked toward the belly of the chopper, she shot him a twisted grin that bespoke her true intentions. It wasn’t just Pete Tyler she’d been aiming at.
Next Chapter