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charleygirlTitle: Underground Part Three
Author: charleygirl
Rating: PG
Type: Gen, action/adventure
Characters Involved/Pairing: The Eighth Doctor, Lucie Miller
Summary: Time to have your world view turned upside down...
Disclaimer: Everything barring any original characters belongs to the BBC/Big Finish Productions.
UNDERGROUND
PART THREE
“Tea! Brilliant. Thanks – I’m freezing. It’s colder than a polar bear’s whatsit down there.”
Lucie gratefully took the mug from Maggie and huddled down inside her borrowed fleece. She was too glad to be warm again to pay much attention to the bemused glance Maggie shot her as she sat down across the room.
On emerging from the caves, Lucie and the Doctor had had a hurried discussion about the creature down below, during which she’d quickly filled him on what had happened while he’d been unconscious, before the highly suspicious Jason had ushered them into the site office. He glowered at them for some time, and threatened to call the police until the Doctor started asking questions about strange happenings in the mine. The suggestion that anything out of the ordinary might be going on down in his precious caves put Jason immediately on the defensive.
“Look,” he said sharply, “If you’re going to start banging on about ghosts - ”
“He doesn’t believe in them, do you, Jase?” said Maggie, picking up the kettle. “The rest of us have felt something down there, but he won’t have it.”
“That’s because there’s nothing there,” Jason insisted, his weary expression making Lucie guess that this was an old argument. “I’ve spent more time down there than anyone else, and I’ve never seen a thing.”
“That just proves you’re one of those people who can’t feel the vibrations, not that there are no ghosts,” she pointed out.
He rolled his eyes, exasperated. “What do you want me to do? Invite Most Haunted to do a programme and prove to you that it’s all rubbish?”
“You won’t do that. They might find something.”
The Doctor snorted. “I doubt it. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Thank you!” said Jason. Then he seemed to take in what the Doctor had said and stared at him. “Hang on – a moment ago you were suggesting we had something supernatural down there!”
“I didn’t suggest anything of the sort. You jumped to the obvious conclusion.” The Time Lord got up and crossed the office to look at the Ordnance Survey map pinned to the wall. “I said there was something in the caves, but it’s far more likely to be extra-terrestrial than supernatural in origin.”
Jason blinked in astonishment, and then laughed out loud. “Oh, come on – that’s even more ludicrous than ghosts!”
“Is it?” asked the Doctor with absolute seriousness. He turned and fixed Jason with a piercing blue gaze, and after a few moments the man had look away.
“You think it’s alien, Doctor?” Lucie asked after a pause.
“I think it’s highly likely, yes,” he replied, swinging back round to look at the map again.
That had been half an hour ago. Maggie offered to make tea, and they all sat there, rather uncomfortably watching the Doctor as he stared at the map in silence. He seemed to have forgotten that they were even in the room. Lucie had returned his jacket when Maggie found her a spare uniform fleece, and he stood there like a silhouette in the sunlight that streamed through the window, one hand stroking his chin and a frown embedded between his eyebrows.
“Look,” said Maggie eventually, “would someone mind telling me exactly what the hell’s going on?”
“Rock monsters,” Lucie replied before Jason could open his mouth. “You’ve got ‘em in your caves. But don’t worry, the Doctor’ll sort ‘em out.”
“Oh, right. Rock monsters.”
“Insanity,” muttered Jason. “Sheer insanity…”
“Well, you believed in the ghosts, didn’t you?” Lucie asked Maggie, ignoring him.
“I felt something when I went down there, yes,” Maggie conceded. “We all did, except Jase. Steve always said it was the guy who killed himself hanging around. You’d think it would put off the visitors, but they love to hear about a haunting. Always made me feel uncomfortable – that’s why I run things up here.”
Lucie frowned. “What did you feel?”
“I don’t know…cold, I suppose, like someone was watching me.” Maggie shivered. “I didn’t like it.”
“Did you ever hear voices?”
Maggie shook her head, looking surprised to be asked. “No, no one’s ever mentioned voices before.”
Lucie glanced over the other woman’s shoulder at Jason. He was looking rather confused, and extremely uncomfortable. “You heard the voices, didn’t you?” she said. “Before you found us.”
“Of course he did, Lucie,” said the Doctor without turning round. “He just doesn’t want to admit it. Do you,
Jason looked reluctant. After a few moments of everyone looking at him expectantly he said, “I don’t…I might have…But it was dark – the torch went out. Pitch blackness can make you imagine all sorts of things. Can’t it?”
“Oh, certainly, though I think that something more sinister was at work in this instance. The same something that quite violently gave my brain a scan when I came into contact with it.” The Doctor massaged his forehead for a moment, wincing. “Very crude metal power.”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” Lucie remarked. “How come that happened to you and not me? It looked like something was attacking you.”
“In a way it was. And it got me because I touched it. It recognised me as something alien.” He tapped the map. “You know, it’s interesting that the mine is so cut off. No settlement for at least fifteen miles. A very lonely place to work.”
“There was a village at one point,” said Maggie, still looking rather confused. “Received wisdom has it that the place was deserted during the plague in the seventeenth century. Eyam’s not that far away. It remained uninhabited until lead was found in the 1770s and the mine was sunk.”
“And the mine was eventually abandoned too?”
“The company went bankrupt. Not enough lead to even cover the costs,” Jason said.
“Oh, I doubt that’s true.” The Doctor turned round at last. “Not if the sizeable lead vein Lucie and I saw down there is anything to go by.”
Jason looked startled. “Lead? Where?”
“Beyond the old workings. There’s a network of tunnels off the passage you found us in. If they’d dug far enough to reach them they would’ve been onto a winner. So why didn’t they?” mused the Doctor, raising an eyebrow. “Hmm?”
“Because something stopped them. Frightened them away,” said Lucie, seeing the rock man crumble in her mind’s eye.
“I think so. It must have been something major to make them leave so much potential cash behind.” There was a pause, and then the Doctor said, “Energy!”
Maggie and Jason looked at each other, and she shrugged. Lucie, used to these random moments, asked, “What about energy, Doctor?”
He sat down on the edge of one of the desks and picked up the mug of tea Maggie had left there for him. “From what you’ve told me, Lucie, it very much sounds as though the creature feeds on energy. This tea is cold. Until we arrived, that section of the tunnels had been left for more than two hundred years. Then the TARDIS turns up, and suddenly there are live energy signatures again. Without food, the creature has been hibernating, dormant, but now it wakes up, and it wants breakfast.”
“TARDIS?” said Maggie, perplexed.
“His spaceship,” Lucie clarified. “It’s down there.”
Jason shook his head. “This all sounds like something from a bad sci-fi series! I’m a rational man!”
“And so am I,
“Now hold on - ”
“Doctor, if you’re right about this energy thing,” said Lucie before an argument could start, “then how come it couldn’t feed off the TARDIS?”
“Because I don’t think it can metabolise the energy from the TARDIS. It’s alien. The TARDIS is alien. What’s it been feeding on in the past?”
“Humans,” said Maggie quietly.
“Precisely,” the Doctor agreed. “It was your energy signature that whetted its appetite, Lucie. Remember that only you could hear the voices to start with?”
She stared at him. “It’s after me? What about your energy whatsit?”
“My energy signature is the same as the TARDIS’s. Artron energy. That’s why it reacted so strongly when it tried to scan me – my energy composition confused it.”
“You’re making this up, aren’t you?”
He just gave her one of those enigmatic smiles he was so good at. Lucie wanted to smack him. Maggie raised her hand, like a kid at the back of a classroom.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but if there is something in the caves, what do we do about it? We can’t call the police, can we?”
“Maggie - ” Jason began, but she cut him off.
“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that there is something, Jase. I’ve felt it, we’ve all felt it over the years. And now you - ”
“It’s rubbish, superstition! The mind can play tricks – the dark does that to you! You can’t believe this, it’s absurd!”
She shook her head. “I know what I felt. And so do you, if you’d only admit it to yourself.” Before he could say anything else, she looked at the Doctor and Lucie. “You two seem to know all about it. What do we do?”
The Doctor turned to Lucie. “You said that the sonic screwdriver worked against the creature we found?”
“It didn’t like the sound. Or the light. The noise made it crumble,” she said. “I was surprised when it worked.”
From the look on his face, the cogs of the Doctor’s brain were working overtime. “Then we may have a chance. We have to make sure that the mine is empty – deprive the creature of food. What time do your tours start?” he asked Maggie.
“Ten. Steve will be getting ready to take the first lot down,” she replied.
“Good. Tell him to keep them above ground until instructed otherwise.” The Doctor was already heading for the door. Lucie and Maggie followed, with Jason bringing up the rear.
When they emerged from the office the main entrance to the mine was deserted, the gates closed. The benches that snaked round the wall for waiting visitors were all empty. Maggie frowned, and called to the youngish guy leaning against the ticket booth smoking a cigarette.
“Matt – where is everyone? There was a group waiting here earlier.”
He looked at her as though she was mad. “Steve’s taken ‘em down. Been there about fifteen minutes now. Why?”
“Did he go early?” asked Jason, looking concerned despite his refusal to believe that there was a threat. “He should be starting now!”
“Went dead on ten, same as always,” Matt replied. “What’s the matter with you two?”
The Doctor pulled out his pocket watch and flicked it open. “It’s just gone a
“It was going to be changed tomorrow,” said Maggie, and an expression of horror crossed her face as she realised the implication of her words, “It’s been running slow…”
Jason checked his own watch and swore.
“Quite,” agreed the Doctor. He was across the little courtyard in three strides and pulling open the gates, much to Matt’s consternation. “We’d better hope they haven’t got too far!”
***
Lucie was glad of the handrail as she followed the others down the slippery steps as fast as she could. The Doctor had gone haring off like a Gallifreyan mountain goat, probably not even noticing how wet the rock was underfoot. Thankfully, Maggie hung back a little to make sure that Lucie didn’t reach the bottom somewhat quicker than she expected.
When they caught up, Jason was trying to make the Doctor take a hard hat.
“No time for that,
“That man is an idiot!” Jason fumed, gesturing towards the door with the hat he still held.
“He’s a Time Lord - got a head like a rock. I’ll have that, though - ” Lucie plucked the hat from his hand and plonked it on her head “ – I’m sick of getting dripped on.” Cursing her sandals once again, she tottered off through the door after the Doctor. Behind her she could hear Jason complaining about something and Maggie telling him in no uncertain terms to shut up and go back to the office if he didn’t like it.
Beyond the door was a narrow tunnel that Lucie recalled from her first visit earlier. After about fifty metres or so it widened, opening out into the first of the caves. Yellow light spilled over the walls from the old lamps, sending shadows skittering all over the place, but barely touching the high ceiling that dripped with stalactites (or was it stalagmites? She could never remember which was which) like huge icicles. She pulled a face in disgust as her foot splashed through a puddle that she hadn’t even noticed, dousing her toes in ice-cold water.
The cave was empty, no sign of either the tour party or the Doctor. Telling herself that she wasn’t here to admire the view, Lucie hurried on as best she could, leaving the others to catch her up. She passed through two more caves, one of them with a spectacular drop into the bowels of the earth that she barely paid any attention to, more intent on keeping her footing on the dodgy stairs, before she heard voices up ahead. Creeping forwards, she found an alcove that was about the right size to keep her hidden from view, and peered round into the cavern beyond.
A group of about ten or fifteen people were standing in a loose semi-circle, some muttering amongst themselves and looking rather annoyed. Lucie could make out a tall young man in a hard hat and navy blue fleece crouched over something on the floor. With him was the familiar black-suited figure of the Doctor.
“I think she’s all right,” Lucie heard him say, his voice echoing from the rock, “Just fainted. She’ll need to be taken outside for some air.”
“I don’t understand,” the guide – Steve, Lucie remembered – said, “She was fine a moment ago. Then she reckoned she could see something, up there.” He pointed to a spot halfway up the wall – Lucie looked, as all the other people were doing, but could see nothing beyond another small alcove, shrouded in shadow.
The Doctor’s head shot up from his examination of the unconscious woman and he fixed Steve with a hard stare. “Saw something? What did she see?”
Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. She keeled over two seconds later. Look, who are you, anyway? How did you get in here?”
“He came with me, Steve,” said Jason, entering the cave with Maggie in tow. “We need to get everyone out. Now.”
“He’s changed his tune,” Lucie murmured to Maggie as the other woman joined her. “What happened?”
“I told him he was being an idiot; and that if he didn’t stop being one I’d get a priest to exorcise the place. It’s the last thing he wants, as it’d convince people that the ghosts are real.” Maggie smiled. “I’ve been threatening to do it for years.”
***
“Is she OK?” Jason asked the Doctor. “I don’t want us to end up with a lawsuit on our hands.”
“Yes, I think she’ll be right as rain once she gets some fresh air. It looks like the power of suggestion is the culprit here – the ghost stories made her think that she saw something,” the Doctor replied, taking hold of the woman’s wrist to check her pulse. Despite his rather eccentric appearance, he seemed to know what he was doing. He touched the woman’s cheek and she groaned, her eyelids flickering. “She’s coming round now.”
“Did she see anything?”
“That depends on whether our rocky friends have made it out of those tunnels. I suggest you get everyone out of here on health and safety grounds, and then I need to get to my TARDIS. I have some equipment that may help us against these things.”
“Right.” Jason straightened and found Steve standing right behind him.
“Jase, what the hell is going on? Who is that guy?” the guide demanded.
“The inspector,” said Jason, voicing the first thought that came into his head. It didn’t sound very convincing, and evidently Steve didn’t believe it for a moment.
“You what?”
“The health and safety guy who was coming to make sure everything was ship shape after the flood. He should have been here first thing – got caught in traffic.”
Steve just stared at him. “What traffic? Jase - ”
“Just take my word for it, Steve. Who’s the boss here, you or me?”
“Well, you, obviously, but - ”
“Then stop asking questions.” Jason felt awful having to lie to his staff, but this situation was looking dodgier and dodgier. Even if there were no alien rock monsters in the mine, he couldn’t run the risk of the woman who had fainted suing them. “Get everyone back above ground and have Lisa look at that lady. If necessary call an ambulance and have her checked out. We have to take this seriously.”
Steve reluctantly agreed, and went, shepherding his grumbling group before him. The Doctor gave the recovering woman into the care of her relatives, with the order that she had some water and air as soon as possible, then he allowed Jason to take the lead as they were heading into the depths of the mine workings. This meant it was time for torches and single-file procession, Jason in front and Maggie and Lucie behind him with the Doctor bringing up the rear. Silence descended as they walked, the only sound the rustle of clothes and the splash of their footsteps in unseen puddles. Despite himself Jason felt a knot of apprehension in his stomach, recalling the strange feelings he’d had before. He told himself once again that it had been his imagination, but the Doctor and Lucie’s assertions that there was something nasty in the tunnels kept nagging at him. Was it really possible that there had been something lurking down there all that time and he’d never noticed?
***
Lucie was glad of her borrowed fleece – the deeper they went the colder it got.
They passed the sign that forbade visitors to venture any further, and as the passage got even narrower she realised that they were back in the abandoned section of the mine in which she and the Doctor had arrived. As Jason’s torch beam swept over the rock, at last leading them into a wider tunnel, she was sure that they were on familiar ground.
“This is where we saw the rock man,” she said, and they all stopped.
“You’re sure?” asked the Doctor.
Lucie nodded. “Positive. I remember that bend, and there’s the rubble from when the sonic screwdriver – and this is going to sound really dodgy but I can’t think of a better way to describe it – vibrated it to bits.”
“Hmm.” He squeezed past her into the tunnel, using the torch in the screwdriver’s handle to see. Lucie watched his shadow dancing over the ceiling as he crouched down to look at the pile of rock and an image of him, face contorted in agony as he touched the rock flashed into her head. As he reached out to touch the rubble she called to him to stop.
“Remember what happened last time?” she asked when he looked questioningly at her.
He gave her a grin. “Don’t worry. I know what to expect – I’ll be ready for it if it tries that stunt again.”
“Yeah, and I’ve heard that one before. It wasn’t funny – I thought you might be dead.”
“Sorry.” He sobered. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“Is he really an alien?” Maggie asked Lucie conversationally.
“Yeah,” Lucie said, “and if you lived with him you’d know it, believe me.”
Jason joined the Doctor at the rubble, but the Time Lord held out a hand in warning. “I suggest you keep back,
“It just looks like rock,” Jason observed.
“It’s actually a little more than that.” The Doctor turned the sonic screwdriver the right way up and passed it over the rubble, his thumb holding down one of the buttons. The tool emitted a low humming noise that made Lucie’s teeth ache. “There’s a consciousness in here.”
“In the rock?”
“Yes. Only a fraction, but there’s definitely something. If I try another scan…” The noise changed, warbling rather than humming, the light on the top of the screwdriver turning blue. “Ah. Yes, there it is. If I can just - ”
Lucie squinted into the shadows. The position of Jason’s torch wasn’t great but she could see something… “Doctor!”
He flapped a distracted hand at her. “Not now, Lucie, I’m busy.”
“Doctor, you might want to get away from there,” Lucie said, resisting the urge to back away herself. There was definitely something odd about the floor that couldn’t be explained by the shadows thrown by the torch.
Now he looked up at her. “What?”
“The rock – the rock’s moving!” Maggie cried out.
There was a rumbling, and the floor suddenly shook as though a tremor was running through it. The rubble shuddered, and rolled - Jason took two steps backwards and stumbled, ending up full-length on the floor, the breath knocked out of him. The Doctor grabbed him under the arm, heaved him to his feet, unsteady as the ground shook beneath them, nearly going down himself.
“Lucie! Which way’s the TARDIS?” he shouted, struggling to get up, only to be thrown to the floor as it quaked again.
“Down there, I think! To the left!” She would have gone to help him but to her astonishment something seemed to be rising up out of the rock between them like Godzilla out of the sea, the ground parting to make way for – “Doctor, look out!”
But it was too late. Before he could even react a hand had snaked out of the rock and grabbed his ankle. The Doctor yelled in alarm as it began to pull him slowly, inexorably, towards the hole that had opened up in the floor…
TBC
