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eve11Main Post and Chapter Index
**
THIS REEL IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*
PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY
SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-F6-R620
AREA 51 EAST LABORATORY
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS
AUDIO ANNOTATION: RECORDED AND ARCHIVED 15 AUGUST 1969
OGDEN, MAJOR CHARLES J N.R.O. SPECIAL ATTACHE
TRANSCRIPT (18:35): The surveillance feed is clear and uninterrupted until eighteen-thirty-three hours, twenty-two seconds, here, when subject thirty-six regains consciousness after the SMM probe begun by Doctor Duvall. Then we see the lights flicker, and at eighteen-thirty-three, twenty-nine seconds, surveillance is interrupted. We see the image distort briefly, and then the feed splices directly to eighteen-fifty-five, thirty-two, as though the camera were switched off and then on again. This is the point of initiation of what we are calling the alpha shockwave.
I'll pause the tape here for a second to explain in more detail. There is no visual record from any camera on the base of the period extending from eighteen-thirty-three hours, twenty-nine seconds to eighteen-fifty-five hours, thirty-two seconds. Furthermore, no one present on the base has any recollection of that stretch of time. Whatever temporal ability subject thirty-six activated, the effect seems to have wiped those twenty-two minutes completely off the map. We also know that the effect was not contained to the base alone. Residents reported noticeable time skips of varying intervals as far away as the towns of Rachel, twenty-five miles away, and Crystal Springs, fifty miles. Scientific instruments measured smaller temporal disturbances as far away as Salt Lake City.
Resuming the tape, we can plainly observe the secondary effects of the ability. His accomplice--the unknown foreign agent, alias Doctor Sarah Hamilton--frees subject thirty-six from the restraints with no interference from the security detail. In the chaos after the shockwave, Sergeant James' men regroup to form a perimeter, but the subject and his accomplice continue in their actions unimpeded.
The plain fact is, we didn't see them. After recovering from the alpha shockwave, base personnel--myself included--saw what could only be described as a 'bubble' of distortion surrounding the examination chair, the subject, and his accomplice. We detected no movement from within. We thought it was a defensive measure, a screen of some kind, and so we planned for a siege. At nineteen-hundred hours, twelve seconds, you can see Sergeant James examining the spot where the bubble appeared, at the same time that the subject's accomplice does. But the bubble itself is no longer on any of the visual records.
Psychological evaluation of the visual record of their conversation indicates that the subject and his accomplice clearly know each other and most likely have collaborated on previous missions. We think he uses a code name--likely 'River', as it corroborates airman Carillo's observation that he uttered the phrase earlier in the cell block, though we didn't realize it at the time. Physically, we can see that the subject is clearly in distress and is still operating within the parameters of sensory isolation, as his reactions are not responses to visual or auditory cues, and as you can see here, he obviously needs mobility assistance from his accomplice.
At nineteen-oh-five and ten seconds, the subject points to the position off-camera where the casualty occurred. This brief gesture is the only indication of it in the visual records.
'Run for it' was a generous description of this rubbish plan.
The Doctor would have told River as much, but he was too busy trying to stay on his feet as they picked their way carefully out of the laboratory. His balance reeled, and his nerves buzzed with the echo of the vise's renewed grip on his systems. Time was all out of sorts; he'd spent so long relying on little else, and now everything was bizarrely re-weighted relative to the likelihood of collision across his two hastily constructed time streams. Spatio-temporal motion didn't help. With each step, potentials rushed against him and receded away at unexpected angles. With each passing second, events swelled like waves against a break point, and he was fighting to keep that break point on the future horizon for as long as he could.
In the middle of it all blazed River Song, pristine and precise and impossible to ignore. Cushioned in the quarantine, her most minute decision points and interleaved potentials all stood out like brush strokes on a canvas that was usually so much more distant. The complex manifold of their history danced temporal summersaults around him, and he had to stop himself trying to adjust his grasp on that space. Its solidity was an illusion of the distorted, magnified view the vise had given him; trying to examine his future--her past--could unravel the delicate threads or disintegrate them outright. Instead, he brought the brunt of his concentration to bear on her immediate decisions and actions. He had to; it was either that or keel over before their escape had even truly begun.
They weaved around the other humans in the room, their stalled change points bending grotesquely around the barrier like images in a fish-eye lens. Awful plan. What had he been thinking? Well, he'd been thinking it was better than getting shot or recaptured, and anything was better than the interminable waiting. But it was beyond disorienting here at the flash point, and there was no way to avoid the impending crash of reintegration when the quarantine failed. The TARDIS would help . . .
His train of thought derailed momentarily. River didn't notice, staying strong and steady as he set his jaw and tightened his grip on her arm. The TARDIS. His beautiful ship, sunk forty miles deep in the black ocean of the outside world. Seven weeks he'd spent stitching over her aching absence in his mind, and the wound still tore open as easily as tearing through paper. Forty miles. He'd been anticipating something nearer to forty meters. He'd been so hoping to feel her time signature. Not that he knew exactly how she would seem to him in this state, but it would be something, at least a phantom echo to fill the void of their severed psychic link.
Wretched vise. Their lives were measured in time across eons, in space across galaxies, and now forty miles was a chasm between them, the shape of which he'd never, ever experienced. He hated it. He hated every last thing about this infuriating, vicious, human thing--
An unexpected obstacle at his feet sent him stumbling into River's side, and he clamped down mercilessly on his indignation. Focus on the task at hand. Outline the parameters for success and attempt to communicate them to the woman who'd been ready to take on an entire air force base for him with nothing more than audacity and a smirk. They had to stick to paths of low resistance; the more they tested the boundaries of this quarantine, the quicker the break point threatened to envelop him. The TARDIS . . . well, she would help cushion the blow, if they could reach her before it came time to burst this bubble.
He was just gaining his bearings again when River stopped and reached for something on the floor. Likelihoods spiked and his head swam. He clutched her shoulder and hissed "don't touch it!", squeezing shut his useless eyes. She argued--it was something they needed? A weapon, maybe. Useless as well. Whatever it was, its timeline was already intertwined with someone or something on the other side of the barrier. His stomach churned at the thought of trying to wrest it into the quarantine, and he wordlessly pulled River away before the barrier flexed too far.
She asked a question that set off a complex set of expectations across all her present potentials at once--a why--and he snapped "I'll explain later!" brusquely and probably loudly in her ear given her resulting flinch. Too many whys and hows were taking too much concentration to parse and too much energy to answer. No more time for particulars; they needed to move. Now. Faster. Forty miles, River!
River tensed under his grip, even as her potentials peaked determinedly. They turned away from the object, and she asked something simpler. It caused just a flickering split in her near term probability space, and the Doctor realized it wasn't a frivolous why: no, she needed to inform an immediate decision. The prediction followed at near certainty. Stupid Doctor. Even rubbish plans meant assessing supplies and assets, and now she'd had to leave an asset behind. She wanted to know, was everything off limits?
"Not everything," he managed. He did his best to explain the parameters, his thoughts spilling too fast past stubbornly slow words. He told her to stay with settled things, forgotten things, things the others wouldn't likely use or miss. Stick to the sidelines if they could. If not, he'd let her know what was safe to interact with.
She paused, considering, and then carefully took his hand and placed it on a smooth surface directly in front of them. Her goals shifted, the timelines tightening into new configurations, and with a quip and likely a smile, she asked one last question.
He concentrated but felt no signs of collision. "Have at it," he answered.
SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-F6-R620
AREA 51 EAST LABORATORY
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS
AUDIO ANNOTATION (19:08:30) ADDED 15 AUGUST 1969
TRANSCRIPT (CON'D): His accomplice doesn't appear to see the base personnel any more than we could see the pair of them. But note how she defers to subject thirty-six's perception. At nineteen-oh-nine hours she attempts to recover the SMM data pad only a few seconds before Doctor Duvall takes it to check the readings. But subject thirty-six holds her back. Why? The device was already dead from the effect of the alpha shockwave, but I don't think that's the reason they left it behind.
We have no idea what would have happened if both the escapees and the base personnel had attempted to use the same resource or occupy the same space at the same time. It never happened for the duration of the alpha shockwave effect.
Here, at nineteen-hundred-ten hours, forty seconds, she consults him before kicking open the examination room door.
In the warrens of the underground complex, River set a dizzying pace. The Doctor tried to stay oriented, but paying attention to anything except River Song was like trying to listen for the doorbell or the telephone while a symphony orchestra blared Beethoven's Ninth into his ears through padded headphones with the volume cranked up to maximum. He was soon hopelessly turned around, lost in a jumble of stuttering stops and starts predicated by the decisions guiding River's evolving escape route. Left, right, straight on, badge through, lift. Lift? No. No lift. Nicks and scrapes as she ducked him through a cramped doorway and placed his fingers on an access ladder. He blanched, and she thought better of it, spinning them both round and setting off again in a direction he wasn't prepared for. Then it was all stairways and heavy doors punctuating blank spans of disassociated steps--corridors, evident only by the absence of anything else.
Through it all, he clung to her like a castaway to a shattered raft in a storm. Now and again she tried to slow down for his sake, but he just gripped her tighter and urged her onward. The tide of time was manageable for now, but it was creeping inexorably toward the break point, and they needed to put distance between themselves and the eventual pursuit while they could. To him it felt like they were hurtling forward with reckless abandon, but he knew she could go ten times faster on her own.
Then there was the aching, exhilarating rush of finally moving after so much time spent at a standstill. The horror of the past months was catching up to him, and now that they were running, he wasn't sure he could stop. There were too many days of caged frustration and helplessness behind him. Too many sleepless, monotonous nights spent with his hands splayed flat against painted concrete blocks, pressing his cheek to the cold cell walls and feeling for footsteps, vibrations, generators--anything to ground his skin in something other than probabilities. And there was something else they'd left behind in that awful place, something that no amount of running could outpace, something . . .
Another jolt broke their stride, and then his bare feet scraped against a rough floor, sharp with some kind of debris. He gasped, more from surprise than pain, but River was already coming to a halt. He crashed against her and they steadied themselves. He was panting for breath, heartsbeat pounding in his ears, sweat stinging his eyes. River wasn't fazed at all by the flight. She asked after him but he just waved a hand at her; he couldn't muster the necessary concentration for words.
She let him catch his breath and then guided his hand to a metal railing. She said something that was a variation of "wait here" almost surely. He nodded at her, gripping the railing fiercely and trying to control the flood of panic that coursed through him as she turned away. Another set of words that was "I'll be right back" with eighty-seven percent probability, and he was alone.
River's time echo receded, and he tried to get his bearings. Was it warmer? Difficult to tell. The stairwells had seemed cooler than the corridors but his ability to gauge temperature had been sluggish from the start--an effect of the vise strangling his touch-telepathy. He felt forward on the railing and found a kink and a downward angle indicating a staircase in front of him. A downward staircase? That couldn't be right; they needed to get above ground. He cast out from his handhold, looking for an upward slope to match, but was blocked after three steps by another downward sloping handhold. There was no other way to go.
He stilled shaking muscles, and tried to concentrate. Had they run into a dead end? A disused annex, aged and falling to seed? They would have to turn around. How much time had they lost?
It wasn't until a draft across the quarantine barrier picked up into something stronger, ruffling through his hair and tickling the side of his face, that he realized where he was. His breath caught in his throat. His hands ached against the hard steel railing, and damn this vise, he couldn't see anything and he couldn't hear anything, and River was gallivanting off to who knew where doing who knew what and he just couldn't wait for her. He had to know, right now. He had to.
So he felt his way clumsily down the staircase--shorter and steeper than the others they'd navigated, its dense material swallowing any vibrations from his footfalls--and passed out of cold-soaked shadow into somewhere new.
It wasn't an annex, where he'd been; it was an access landing for a raised loading bay beyond a fire door. It wasn't debris under his feet; it was rough concrete scattered with gravel, giving way to rougher asphalt where the staircase ended. There was no kiss of sunlight on his face or head, but the ground that passed across the quarantine barrier was still warm with the memory of a scorched afternoon. Now it was closer to early evening. He was outdoors.
Dark, silent, stifling, outdoors. His first taste of freedom, and he could hardly tell the difference between it and a cell.
Panic surged forward again, this time rattling his hold on the timelines, and he backpedaled. His heel hit the staircase at an unexpected angle and he crashed down, jarring his side against the unforgiving concrete edges and unable to find which way was up again. Physical reaction warred with rational thought; was he even breathing? He couldn't hear himself gasp for air, he couldn't tell if the tasteless molecules were making it into his lungs. Unthinking, he went into respiratory bypass--fiery needles stung every nerve at once as the vise fought back. It forced a harsh cry from his throat and jolted him back to his limited senses. He pressed his fingers against his skull, instinctively tightening his grasp on the slipping temporal strands, and tried to ride out the overwhelming wave of dizziness and exhaustion that followed.
The air was fine. He needed to stay calm. He was no more impaired than he'd been for weeks; it was just a new perspective, that was all. They couldn't afford to lose the quarantine now. They had to make it off the base, past the perimeter at least, not just for his sake but for River's. They may not be able to escape the prison that lay in her future, but it wasn't here and it wasn't now. He had no choice but to keep himself together; if nothing else, that fact was abundantly clear in every present potential he could feel.
The Doctor forced himself to forget what he couldn't control, couldn't sense and couldn't do, and to concentrate all of his energy on the abilities he had left. He imagined a hand circling loose strands, closing to a strong fist and taking hold of the thin paradox that fueled the quarantine. Then he took several steadying breaths, in and out, and let the last of the sting from the vise recede. He sat up slowly on the stair, and studied his surroundings again.
He was outdoors. Probability surrounded him, in the details of chance that had formed this landscape, in the static earth that until now had been ubiquitous behind young prison walls. And there was more out here, even across the strange lens of the quarantine barrier; the effect was weaker here than at the flash point, and he just had to pay attention. The breeze that had initially alerted him to his location blew a fluid undirected chaos, dissipating up and up and up to the open sky. Pinprick stars dotted old cataclysms across the expanse, distorted and frozen and so very distant. Outdoors--the temporal view was suddenly like standing at the edge of a chasm. His head felt light with the space of it, and he nearly toppled over again on the stair before reining in his senses to a tighter focus around him.
Nearer, at his feet amid the passive erosion of stone, there was a collection of precisely organized animate potential; he reached out a hand and it brushed against the pointed leaves and soft tips of a sprig of common desert grass. With his fingers, he mapped out the network of its thin stalks pressed flush against the side of the staircase. He traced them down to the ground, to the dusty cracks where pavement met the rough, ill-formed edges that indicated where the concrete had escaped its foundation when it was poured. Some years ago, that. Fifteen? Twelve, at least.
His mind settled in these minute facts. His fingers stilled, and he let out a relieved breath. He focused his attention outward again to catch a hint of the rising symphony of River Song, still some meters away as she made her way back toward his position. Five minutes and twenty-two seconds had elapsed since she'd left him.
That was when he felt it. At first it was just a glimmer of something altogether impossible out of the corner of his temporal eye, muted by River's echo and the near press of the surrounding buildings. But even as brief as the feeling was, it was clear--like the view of a star through a telescope, heedless of the distortion arising from this paltry quarantine. Oh . . . oh, where was it? Where?
He realized he was moving when he staggered into a military truck, kicking his toes against the tire, but he didn't care. He lurched past the obstacle and felt his way along the wall beyond. Concrete scraped his fingers but the thread he was following was blossoming with every step he took away from this prison, every step that left the oppressive bedrock and walls behind. This blasted building was in the way, but behind that he could still feel it--feel her--dim but persistent, the fact of her so solid, as though he'd known all his life that this is how she was really meant to be understood. Even in shadow, her ancient likelihoods radiated surety and boundless potential all at once, soothing his raw, abused time sense like balm on a burn.
The wall ended, falling away to nothing under his fingertips. He stepped out into the black silence beyond, and there she was.
SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-E2-X930
EXTERIOR GROUNDS
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS
AUDIO ANNOTATION (19:20:18) ADDED 15 AUGUST 1969
TRANSCRIPT (CON'D): The subject and his accomplice briefly separated at approximately nineteen-twelve hours while she retrieved supplies. Surveillance at fifteen-hundred forty-nine hours shows her leaving the east laboratory building with a duffel bag and returning shortly thereafter empty-handed; she must have stashed it outside at that time in anticipation of their planned escape.
Here, we can see the subject, alone, appearing briefly onscreen from the building ten security camera and walking toward the supply airstrip. This is the last visual record of the subject from base security. When we triangulated his course on the map, it showed that the subject at this point was heading exactly in the direction of Nesbitt Lake.
All notes and annotations of these tapes have been prepared with full disclosure to the best of my abilities for the purposes of the inquiry.
*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*
River stared down at the small pack wedged behind the waste bins outside the enlisted mess hall, and hesitated. Changing their escape route meant that she'd had to double back on her own for her gear when they reached the surface, and she would just have to hope it had stayed hidden enough to count as a "forgotten thing" by the Doctor's inscrutable rules. It wasn't much, but what was there was desert essentials; they couldn't afford to leave it behind.
Decision made, she snatched the bag out of its hiding place and unzipped it. The sky didn't fall, which she took as an encouraging sign. She double checked the contents: water canteens, a torch, some pilfered MREs and a field kit with basic toiletries and first aid supplies. She hadn't been able to get her hands on any guns, but it did have a few items that could be used for defense. It also had a lightweight coat and, more importantly, a pair of boots for the Doctor--both of which he would hate on sight in any other circumstance.
Not that he'd be able to see them at all in this circumstance. Or possibly ever again, as they'd left the data pad back in the laboratory.
An unexpected sob forced itself up through her, and River tightened her grip on the pack, quelling any more. Here they were, weaponless and alone in a paradoxical eddy of a time stream, surrounded by enemies, and all she could think was that the Doctor was always so particular about shoes, and how would he ever successfully navigate the TARDIS boot cupboard again?
It was a silly thought, and premature. River forced it away. She closed the pack, slung it gingerly across her shoulder and headed back to the loading bay where she'd left the Doctor.
When she got there, he was gone.
River called to him and cursed herself for it; of course he wouldn't hear her. But where would he go on his own? She studied the dusky sky, looking for any sign that the quarantine bubble had burst. Twilight was creeping up on them--an effect, from what she could gather, of time bleeding across the edges of the bubble the farther they got from its focal flash point in the laboratory. But the base itself was still deathly silent. Even the evening thunderclouds hung nearly motionless above the western hills.
She was just set to start panicking in earnest when, stepping away from the building to look across the plain, she saw his thin frame silhouetted against a backdrop of tall field grass.
He was standing with his back to her, clear of the low, white laboratory buildings, at the edge of the supply airstrip. River hefted her pack and hurried toward him but as she approached she realized that he didn't seem lost or disoriented. He was just standing quietly, his chin upturned, his slight bow-legged posture giving him an air of nonchalance. He would have had his hands in his pockets, if the scrubs he was wearing had had any. Instead, he held his hands clasped lightly behind his back, his fingers at rest from their usual patternless rhythms of worry.
He must have felt the effect of her time stream as she came closer, because he turned his head and then waved her forward. When she took his hand, his eyes were closed and he was smiling.
"It's beautiful. I never imagined . . ." His voice wavered, and he didn't finish the thought.
River stared out at the desolate plain and the bone white lake bed. "It's just dust and dry brush. I don't know what it looks like to you, but--"
"Not that." With her hand still grasped in his, he pointed out to a spot of sky just above the hills. "Forty miles, northeast. That way. Hello, gorgeous."
"The TARDIS," River breathed, scanning the distant peaks anew. "You can sense her time signature from here?"
"Like a sunrise on the horizon." He turned toward her, grinning. "You know, I think this rubbish plan might actually work."
THIS TRANSCRIPT IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*
PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY
18 AUGUST 1969
RECORD OF SECURITY DEBRIEFING: JAMES, STAFF SERGEANT KEVIN J
AIR FORCE INTERNAL AFFAIRS
PRESENT REPRESENTATIVE PARTIES
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C
HARRIS, MAJOR REGINALD D (IA INVESTIGATOR)
MAJ. HARRIS: State your name and title for the inquiry.
SGT. JAMES: Staff Sergeant Kevin James, sir. Security supervisor, buildings three through eight.
MAJ. HARRIS: That includes the East Laboratory?
SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: Have you examined Major Ogden's annotations to the security camera reels during the night in question?
SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: Is there a reason why you didn't examine these tapes on the evening of August 4th?
SGT. JAMES: We did, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: Say that again, Sergeant?
SGT. JAMES: Security cameras were among the first things we checked, sir. I stationed troops at all the video monitors with orders to report any unusual sightings as soon as we recovered from the alpha shockwave.
MAJ. HARRIS: Sergeant, I don't need to remind you that two prisoners literally walked out of this detention center on your watch. It's all plain as day in the surveillance records, they practically waved 'hello' at the cameras. This is state of the art technology. You had ample opportunity to find and apprehend them from video surveillance.
SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: So, would you care to explain why none of your troops stationed at these monitors mentioned anything out of the ordinary? Why your eyes and ears simply let these detainees past?
SGT. JAMES: Sir, the surveillance tapes were altered.
MAJ. HARRIS: Altered? How?
SGT. JAMES: We don't know, sir. All we know is that at the time of live surveillance, the feeds only showed the bubble in the examination room. There was no indication of any escape or movement at all from the detainees until twenty-one-oh-eight hours. We think that's when the changes to the tapes occurred.
MAJ. HARRIS: But you aren't certain.
SGT. JAMES: No, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: Why not?
SGT. JAMES: We didn't rewind the tapes far enough to see evidence of the changes at the time. We only checked back to about twenty-one-hundred hours on surveillance. We assumed that any escape attempt that the detainees made started at or near twenty-one-oh-eight hours.
MAJ. HARRIS: Obviously, that was not the case.
SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir. Going by what we know now of the timeline, it's likely they were completely off the base by then.
MAJ. HARRIS: Twenty-one-oh-eight hours, that's--
SGT. JAMES: --the time of the bravo shockwave, yes, sir.
*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*
Part 5 | Part 7
**
THIS REEL IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*
PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY
SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-F6-R620
AREA 51 EAST LABORATORY
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS
AUDIO ANNOTATION: RECORDED AND ARCHIVED 15 AUGUST 1969
OGDEN, MAJOR CHARLES J N.R.O. SPECIAL ATTACHE
TRANSCRIPT (18:35): The surveillance feed is clear and uninterrupted until eighteen-thirty-three hours, twenty-two seconds, here, when subject thirty-six regains consciousness after the SMM probe begun by Doctor Duvall. Then we see the lights flicker, and at eighteen-thirty-three, twenty-nine seconds, surveillance is interrupted. We see the image distort briefly, and then the feed splices directly to eighteen-fifty-five, thirty-two, as though the camera were switched off and then on again. This is the point of initiation of what we are calling the alpha shockwave.
I'll pause the tape here for a second to explain in more detail. There is no visual record from any camera on the base of the period extending from eighteen-thirty-three hours, twenty-nine seconds to eighteen-fifty-five hours, thirty-two seconds. Furthermore, no one present on the base has any recollection of that stretch of time. Whatever temporal ability subject thirty-six activated, the effect seems to have wiped those twenty-two minutes completely off the map. We also know that the effect was not contained to the base alone. Residents reported noticeable time skips of varying intervals as far away as the towns of Rachel, twenty-five miles away, and Crystal Springs, fifty miles. Scientific instruments measured smaller temporal disturbances as far away as Salt Lake City.
Resuming the tape, we can plainly observe the secondary effects of the ability. His accomplice--the unknown foreign agent, alias Doctor Sarah Hamilton--frees subject thirty-six from the restraints with no interference from the security detail. In the chaos after the shockwave, Sergeant James' men regroup to form a perimeter, but the subject and his accomplice continue in their actions unimpeded.
The plain fact is, we didn't see them. After recovering from the alpha shockwave, base personnel--myself included--saw what could only be described as a 'bubble' of distortion surrounding the examination chair, the subject, and his accomplice. We detected no movement from within. We thought it was a defensive measure, a screen of some kind, and so we planned for a siege. At nineteen-hundred hours, twelve seconds, you can see Sergeant James examining the spot where the bubble appeared, at the same time that the subject's accomplice does. But the bubble itself is no longer on any of the visual records.
Psychological evaluation of the visual record of their conversation indicates that the subject and his accomplice clearly know each other and most likely have collaborated on previous missions. We think he uses a code name--likely 'River', as it corroborates airman Carillo's observation that he uttered the phrase earlier in the cell block, though we didn't realize it at the time. Physically, we can see that the subject is clearly in distress and is still operating within the parameters of sensory isolation, as his reactions are not responses to visual or auditory cues, and as you can see here, he obviously needs mobility assistance from his accomplice.
At nineteen-oh-five and ten seconds, the subject points to the position off-camera where the casualty occurred. This brief gesture is the only indication of it in the visual records.
'Run for it' was a generous description of this rubbish plan.
The Doctor would have told River as much, but he was too busy trying to stay on his feet as they picked their way carefully out of the laboratory. His balance reeled, and his nerves buzzed with the echo of the vise's renewed grip on his systems. Time was all out of sorts; he'd spent so long relying on little else, and now everything was bizarrely re-weighted relative to the likelihood of collision across his two hastily constructed time streams. Spatio-temporal motion didn't help. With each step, potentials rushed against him and receded away at unexpected angles. With each passing second, events swelled like waves against a break point, and he was fighting to keep that break point on the future horizon for as long as he could.
In the middle of it all blazed River Song, pristine and precise and impossible to ignore. Cushioned in the quarantine, her most minute decision points and interleaved potentials all stood out like brush strokes on a canvas that was usually so much more distant. The complex manifold of their history danced temporal summersaults around him, and he had to stop himself trying to adjust his grasp on that space. Its solidity was an illusion of the distorted, magnified view the vise had given him; trying to examine his future--her past--could unravel the delicate threads or disintegrate them outright. Instead, he brought the brunt of his concentration to bear on her immediate decisions and actions. He had to; it was either that or keel over before their escape had even truly begun.
They weaved around the other humans in the room, their stalled change points bending grotesquely around the barrier like images in a fish-eye lens. Awful plan. What had he been thinking? Well, he'd been thinking it was better than getting shot or recaptured, and anything was better than the interminable waiting. But it was beyond disorienting here at the flash point, and there was no way to avoid the impending crash of reintegration when the quarantine failed. The TARDIS would help . . .
His train of thought derailed momentarily. River didn't notice, staying strong and steady as he set his jaw and tightened his grip on her arm. The TARDIS. His beautiful ship, sunk forty miles deep in the black ocean of the outside world. Seven weeks he'd spent stitching over her aching absence in his mind, and the wound still tore open as easily as tearing through paper. Forty miles. He'd been anticipating something nearer to forty meters. He'd been so hoping to feel her time signature. Not that he knew exactly how she would seem to him in this state, but it would be something, at least a phantom echo to fill the void of their severed psychic link.
Wretched vise. Their lives were measured in time across eons, in space across galaxies, and now forty miles was a chasm between them, the shape of which he'd never, ever experienced. He hated it. He hated every last thing about this infuriating, vicious, human thing--
An unexpected obstacle at his feet sent him stumbling into River's side, and he clamped down mercilessly on his indignation. Focus on the task at hand. Outline the parameters for success and attempt to communicate them to the woman who'd been ready to take on an entire air force base for him with nothing more than audacity and a smirk. They had to stick to paths of low resistance; the more they tested the boundaries of this quarantine, the quicker the break point threatened to envelop him. The TARDIS . . . well, she would help cushion the blow, if they could reach her before it came time to burst this bubble.
He was just gaining his bearings again when River stopped and reached for something on the floor. Likelihoods spiked and his head swam. He clutched her shoulder and hissed "don't touch it!", squeezing shut his useless eyes. She argued--it was something they needed? A weapon, maybe. Useless as well. Whatever it was, its timeline was already intertwined with someone or something on the other side of the barrier. His stomach churned at the thought of trying to wrest it into the quarantine, and he wordlessly pulled River away before the barrier flexed too far.
She asked a question that set off a complex set of expectations across all her present potentials at once--a why--and he snapped "I'll explain later!" brusquely and probably loudly in her ear given her resulting flinch. Too many whys and hows were taking too much concentration to parse and too much energy to answer. No more time for particulars; they needed to move. Now. Faster. Forty miles, River!
River tensed under his grip, even as her potentials peaked determinedly. They turned away from the object, and she asked something simpler. It caused just a flickering split in her near term probability space, and the Doctor realized it wasn't a frivolous why: no, she needed to inform an immediate decision. The prediction followed at near certainty. Stupid Doctor. Even rubbish plans meant assessing supplies and assets, and now she'd had to leave an asset behind. She wanted to know, was everything off limits?
"Not everything," he managed. He did his best to explain the parameters, his thoughts spilling too fast past stubbornly slow words. He told her to stay with settled things, forgotten things, things the others wouldn't likely use or miss. Stick to the sidelines if they could. If not, he'd let her know what was safe to interact with.
She paused, considering, and then carefully took his hand and placed it on a smooth surface directly in front of them. Her goals shifted, the timelines tightening into new configurations, and with a quip and likely a smile, she asked one last question.
He concentrated but felt no signs of collision. "Have at it," he answered.
SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-F6-R620
AREA 51 EAST LABORATORY
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS
AUDIO ANNOTATION (19:08:30) ADDED 15 AUGUST 1969
TRANSCRIPT (CON'D): His accomplice doesn't appear to see the base personnel any more than we could see the pair of them. But note how she defers to subject thirty-six's perception. At nineteen-oh-nine hours she attempts to recover the SMM data pad only a few seconds before Doctor Duvall takes it to check the readings. But subject thirty-six holds her back. Why? The device was already dead from the effect of the alpha shockwave, but I don't think that's the reason they left it behind.
We have no idea what would have happened if both the escapees and the base personnel had attempted to use the same resource or occupy the same space at the same time. It never happened for the duration of the alpha shockwave effect.
Here, at nineteen-hundred-ten hours, forty seconds, she consults him before kicking open the examination room door.
In the warrens of the underground complex, River set a dizzying pace. The Doctor tried to stay oriented, but paying attention to anything except River Song was like trying to listen for the doorbell or the telephone while a symphony orchestra blared Beethoven's Ninth into his ears through padded headphones with the volume cranked up to maximum. He was soon hopelessly turned around, lost in a jumble of stuttering stops and starts predicated by the decisions guiding River's evolving escape route. Left, right, straight on, badge through, lift. Lift? No. No lift. Nicks and scrapes as she ducked him through a cramped doorway and placed his fingers on an access ladder. He blanched, and she thought better of it, spinning them both round and setting off again in a direction he wasn't prepared for. Then it was all stairways and heavy doors punctuating blank spans of disassociated steps--corridors, evident only by the absence of anything else.
Through it all, he clung to her like a castaway to a shattered raft in a storm. Now and again she tried to slow down for his sake, but he just gripped her tighter and urged her onward. The tide of time was manageable for now, but it was creeping inexorably toward the break point, and they needed to put distance between themselves and the eventual pursuit while they could. To him it felt like they were hurtling forward with reckless abandon, but he knew she could go ten times faster on her own.
Then there was the aching, exhilarating rush of finally moving after so much time spent at a standstill. The horror of the past months was catching up to him, and now that they were running, he wasn't sure he could stop. There were too many days of caged frustration and helplessness behind him. Too many sleepless, monotonous nights spent with his hands splayed flat against painted concrete blocks, pressing his cheek to the cold cell walls and feeling for footsteps, vibrations, generators--anything to ground his skin in something other than probabilities. And there was something else they'd left behind in that awful place, something that no amount of running could outpace, something . . .
Another jolt broke their stride, and then his bare feet scraped against a rough floor, sharp with some kind of debris. He gasped, more from surprise than pain, but River was already coming to a halt. He crashed against her and they steadied themselves. He was panting for breath, heartsbeat pounding in his ears, sweat stinging his eyes. River wasn't fazed at all by the flight. She asked after him but he just waved a hand at her; he couldn't muster the necessary concentration for words.
She let him catch his breath and then guided his hand to a metal railing. She said something that was a variation of "wait here" almost surely. He nodded at her, gripping the railing fiercely and trying to control the flood of panic that coursed through him as she turned away. Another set of words that was "I'll be right back" with eighty-seven percent probability, and he was alone.
River's time echo receded, and he tried to get his bearings. Was it warmer? Difficult to tell. The stairwells had seemed cooler than the corridors but his ability to gauge temperature had been sluggish from the start--an effect of the vise strangling his touch-telepathy. He felt forward on the railing and found a kink and a downward angle indicating a staircase in front of him. A downward staircase? That couldn't be right; they needed to get above ground. He cast out from his handhold, looking for an upward slope to match, but was blocked after three steps by another downward sloping handhold. There was no other way to go.
He stilled shaking muscles, and tried to concentrate. Had they run into a dead end? A disused annex, aged and falling to seed? They would have to turn around. How much time had they lost?
It wasn't until a draft across the quarantine barrier picked up into something stronger, ruffling through his hair and tickling the side of his face, that he realized where he was. His breath caught in his throat. His hands ached against the hard steel railing, and damn this vise, he couldn't see anything and he couldn't hear anything, and River was gallivanting off to who knew where doing who knew what and he just couldn't wait for her. He had to know, right now. He had to.
So he felt his way clumsily down the staircase--shorter and steeper than the others they'd navigated, its dense material swallowing any vibrations from his footfalls--and passed out of cold-soaked shadow into somewhere new.
It wasn't an annex, where he'd been; it was an access landing for a raised loading bay beyond a fire door. It wasn't debris under his feet; it was rough concrete scattered with gravel, giving way to rougher asphalt where the staircase ended. There was no kiss of sunlight on his face or head, but the ground that passed across the quarantine barrier was still warm with the memory of a scorched afternoon. Now it was closer to early evening. He was outdoors.
Dark, silent, stifling, outdoors. His first taste of freedom, and he could hardly tell the difference between it and a cell.
Panic surged forward again, this time rattling his hold on the timelines, and he backpedaled. His heel hit the staircase at an unexpected angle and he crashed down, jarring his side against the unforgiving concrete edges and unable to find which way was up again. Physical reaction warred with rational thought; was he even breathing? He couldn't hear himself gasp for air, he couldn't tell if the tasteless molecules were making it into his lungs. Unthinking, he went into respiratory bypass--fiery needles stung every nerve at once as the vise fought back. It forced a harsh cry from his throat and jolted him back to his limited senses. He pressed his fingers against his skull, instinctively tightening his grasp on the slipping temporal strands, and tried to ride out the overwhelming wave of dizziness and exhaustion that followed.
The air was fine. He needed to stay calm. He was no more impaired than he'd been for weeks; it was just a new perspective, that was all. They couldn't afford to lose the quarantine now. They had to make it off the base, past the perimeter at least, not just for his sake but for River's. They may not be able to escape the prison that lay in her future, but it wasn't here and it wasn't now. He had no choice but to keep himself together; if nothing else, that fact was abundantly clear in every present potential he could feel.
The Doctor forced himself to forget what he couldn't control, couldn't sense and couldn't do, and to concentrate all of his energy on the abilities he had left. He imagined a hand circling loose strands, closing to a strong fist and taking hold of the thin paradox that fueled the quarantine. Then he took several steadying breaths, in and out, and let the last of the sting from the vise recede. He sat up slowly on the stair, and studied his surroundings again.
He was outdoors. Probability surrounded him, in the details of chance that had formed this landscape, in the static earth that until now had been ubiquitous behind young prison walls. And there was more out here, even across the strange lens of the quarantine barrier; the effect was weaker here than at the flash point, and he just had to pay attention. The breeze that had initially alerted him to his location blew a fluid undirected chaos, dissipating up and up and up to the open sky. Pinprick stars dotted old cataclysms across the expanse, distorted and frozen and so very distant. Outdoors--the temporal view was suddenly like standing at the edge of a chasm. His head felt light with the space of it, and he nearly toppled over again on the stair before reining in his senses to a tighter focus around him.
Nearer, at his feet amid the passive erosion of stone, there was a collection of precisely organized animate potential; he reached out a hand and it brushed against the pointed leaves and soft tips of a sprig of common desert grass. With his fingers, he mapped out the network of its thin stalks pressed flush against the side of the staircase. He traced them down to the ground, to the dusty cracks where pavement met the rough, ill-formed edges that indicated where the concrete had escaped its foundation when it was poured. Some years ago, that. Fifteen? Twelve, at least.
His mind settled in these minute facts. His fingers stilled, and he let out a relieved breath. He focused his attention outward again to catch a hint of the rising symphony of River Song, still some meters away as she made her way back toward his position. Five minutes and twenty-two seconds had elapsed since she'd left him.
That was when he felt it. At first it was just a glimmer of something altogether impossible out of the corner of his temporal eye, muted by River's echo and the near press of the surrounding buildings. But even as brief as the feeling was, it was clear--like the view of a star through a telescope, heedless of the distortion arising from this paltry quarantine. Oh . . . oh, where was it? Where?
He realized he was moving when he staggered into a military truck, kicking his toes against the tire, but he didn't care. He lurched past the obstacle and felt his way along the wall beyond. Concrete scraped his fingers but the thread he was following was blossoming with every step he took away from this prison, every step that left the oppressive bedrock and walls behind. This blasted building was in the way, but behind that he could still feel it--feel her--dim but persistent, the fact of her so solid, as though he'd known all his life that this is how she was really meant to be understood. Even in shadow, her ancient likelihoods radiated surety and boundless potential all at once, soothing his raw, abused time sense like balm on a burn.
The wall ended, falling away to nothing under his fingertips. He stepped out into the black silence beyond, and there she was.
SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-E2-X930
EXTERIOR GROUNDS
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS
AUDIO ANNOTATION (19:20:18) ADDED 15 AUGUST 1969
TRANSCRIPT (CON'D): The subject and his accomplice briefly separated at approximately nineteen-twelve hours while she retrieved supplies. Surveillance at fifteen-hundred forty-nine hours shows her leaving the east laboratory building with a duffel bag and returning shortly thereafter empty-handed; she must have stashed it outside at that time in anticipation of their planned escape.
Here, we can see the subject, alone, appearing briefly onscreen from the building ten security camera and walking toward the supply airstrip. This is the last visual record of the subject from base security. When we triangulated his course on the map, it showed that the subject at this point was heading exactly in the direction of Nesbitt Lake.
All notes and annotations of these tapes have been prepared with full disclosure to the best of my abilities for the purposes of the inquiry.
*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*
River stared down at the small pack wedged behind the waste bins outside the enlisted mess hall, and hesitated. Changing their escape route meant that she'd had to double back on her own for her gear when they reached the surface, and she would just have to hope it had stayed hidden enough to count as a "forgotten thing" by the Doctor's inscrutable rules. It wasn't much, but what was there was desert essentials; they couldn't afford to leave it behind.
Decision made, she snatched the bag out of its hiding place and unzipped it. The sky didn't fall, which she took as an encouraging sign. She double checked the contents: water canteens, a torch, some pilfered MREs and a field kit with basic toiletries and first aid supplies. She hadn't been able to get her hands on any guns, but it did have a few items that could be used for defense. It also had a lightweight coat and, more importantly, a pair of boots for the Doctor--both of which he would hate on sight in any other circumstance.
Not that he'd be able to see them at all in this circumstance. Or possibly ever again, as they'd left the data pad back in the laboratory.
An unexpected sob forced itself up through her, and River tightened her grip on the pack, quelling any more. Here they were, weaponless and alone in a paradoxical eddy of a time stream, surrounded by enemies, and all she could think was that the Doctor was always so particular about shoes, and how would he ever successfully navigate the TARDIS boot cupboard again?
It was a silly thought, and premature. River forced it away. She closed the pack, slung it gingerly across her shoulder and headed back to the loading bay where she'd left the Doctor.
When she got there, he was gone.
River called to him and cursed herself for it; of course he wouldn't hear her. But where would he go on his own? She studied the dusky sky, looking for any sign that the quarantine bubble had burst. Twilight was creeping up on them--an effect, from what she could gather, of time bleeding across the edges of the bubble the farther they got from its focal flash point in the laboratory. But the base itself was still deathly silent. Even the evening thunderclouds hung nearly motionless above the western hills.
She was just set to start panicking in earnest when, stepping away from the building to look across the plain, she saw his thin frame silhouetted against a backdrop of tall field grass.
He was standing with his back to her, clear of the low, white laboratory buildings, at the edge of the supply airstrip. River hefted her pack and hurried toward him but as she approached she realized that he didn't seem lost or disoriented. He was just standing quietly, his chin upturned, his slight bow-legged posture giving him an air of nonchalance. He would have had his hands in his pockets, if the scrubs he was wearing had had any. Instead, he held his hands clasped lightly behind his back, his fingers at rest from their usual patternless rhythms of worry.
He must have felt the effect of her time stream as she came closer, because he turned his head and then waved her forward. When she took his hand, his eyes were closed and he was smiling.
"It's beautiful. I never imagined . . ." His voice wavered, and he didn't finish the thought.
River stared out at the desolate plain and the bone white lake bed. "It's just dust and dry brush. I don't know what it looks like to you, but--"
"Not that." With her hand still grasped in his, he pointed out to a spot of sky just above the hills. "Forty miles, northeast. That way. Hello, gorgeous."
"The TARDIS," River breathed, scanning the distant peaks anew. "You can sense her time signature from here?"
"Like a sunrise on the horizon." He turned toward her, grinning. "You know, I think this rubbish plan might actually work."
THIS TRANSCRIPT IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*
PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY
18 AUGUST 1969
RECORD OF SECURITY DEBRIEFING: JAMES, STAFF SERGEANT KEVIN J
AIR FORCE INTERNAL AFFAIRS
PRESENT REPRESENTATIVE PARTIES
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C
HARRIS, MAJOR REGINALD D (IA INVESTIGATOR)
MAJ. HARRIS: State your name and title for the inquiry.
SGT. JAMES: Staff Sergeant Kevin James, sir. Security supervisor, buildings three through eight.
MAJ. HARRIS: That includes the East Laboratory?
SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: Have you examined Major Ogden's annotations to the security camera reels during the night in question?
SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: Is there a reason why you didn't examine these tapes on the evening of August 4th?
SGT. JAMES: We did, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: Say that again, Sergeant?
SGT. JAMES: Security cameras were among the first things we checked, sir. I stationed troops at all the video monitors with orders to report any unusual sightings as soon as we recovered from the alpha shockwave.
MAJ. HARRIS: Sergeant, I don't need to remind you that two prisoners literally walked out of this detention center on your watch. It's all plain as day in the surveillance records, they practically waved 'hello' at the cameras. This is state of the art technology. You had ample opportunity to find and apprehend them from video surveillance.
SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: So, would you care to explain why none of your troops stationed at these monitors mentioned anything out of the ordinary? Why your eyes and ears simply let these detainees past?
SGT. JAMES: Sir, the surveillance tapes were altered.
MAJ. HARRIS: Altered? How?
SGT. JAMES: We don't know, sir. All we know is that at the time of live surveillance, the feeds only showed the bubble in the examination room. There was no indication of any escape or movement at all from the detainees until twenty-one-oh-eight hours. We think that's when the changes to the tapes occurred.
MAJ. HARRIS: But you aren't certain.
SGT. JAMES: No, sir.
MAJ. HARRIS: Why not?
SGT. JAMES: We didn't rewind the tapes far enough to see evidence of the changes at the time. We only checked back to about twenty-one-hundred hours on surveillance. We assumed that any escape attempt that the detainees made started at or near twenty-one-oh-eight hours.
MAJ. HARRIS: Obviously, that was not the case.
SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir. Going by what we know now of the timeline, it's likely they were completely off the base by then.
MAJ. HARRIS: Twenty-one-oh-eight hours, that's--
SGT. JAMES: --the time of the bravo shockwave, yes, sir.
*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*
Part 5 | Part 7
