![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve11Main Post and Chapter Index
**
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: DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)
AIR FORCE INTERNAL AFFAIRS
PRESENT REPRESENTATIVE PARTIES
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C
OGDEN, MAJOR CHARLES J N.R.O. SPECIAL ATTACHE
HARRIS, MAJOR REGINALD D (IA INVESTIGATOR)
MAJ. HARRIS: State your name and title for the inquiry.
DR. DUVALL: Henry Maurice Duvall, Senior Research Scientist with the National Reconnaissance Office, Xenobiology Directorate.
MAJ. HARRIS: And you're a civilian?
DR. DUVALL: Yes, civilian specialist. Major Ogden is the Mission Commander.
MAJ. HARRIS: But you have input in command decisions.
DR. DUVALL: When they pertain to my test subjects and the value of scientific knowledge that can be gained from them, yes.
MAJ. HARRIS: Did you give the hold fire order for the unit assigned for search and retrieval of the alien prisoner designated two three four dash eight H?
DR. DUVALL: It wouldn't have been necessary if we hadn't been detained in medical quarantine--
MAJ. HARRIS: We already have your protest on record. Answer the question, Doctor Duvall.
DR. DUVALL: The hold fire order was a joint decision between myself and Major Ogden. We obtained approval from the N.R.O. to override Colonel Caldwell's orders.
COL. CALDWELL: Despite the prisoner's proven destructive capabilities--
DR. DUVALL: Yes, and you have my testimony on record for that as well. The temporal effects were completely unpredictable based on any prior experimentation with the subject.
MAJ. HARRIS: Noted, Doctor--
COL. CALDWELL: Experiments that jeopardized my airmen and took--
DR. DUVALL: Subject thirty-six was worth the lives of every man on that base! I've said, I take full responsibility for every--
MAJ. HARRIS: Gentlemen! [There is a five second pause.] Colonel Caldwell, this deposition is solely in regards to the events of August fifth, approximately zero-seven-hundred hours. Doctor Duvall, please continue. You and Major Ogden overrode the live fire commands given by the Area 51 mission command officer. Why?
DR. DUVALL: The subject was too valuable to destroy. We advised the commanders to arm the unit with the approved adaptive sedatives for the subject, but they didn't listen. We had to clear quarantine and bring the sedatives ourselves, after receiving the new orders from our agency's chain of command.
MAJ. HARRIS: You shipped out with the helicopter crew, is that correct?
DR. DUVALL: Yes.
MAJ. HARRIS: The helicopter crew's orders were for aerial surveillance and emergency firepower for the recovery mission. Did you give the crew new orders as well?
DR. DUVALL: I used my best judgement and discretion. The convoy had the subject surrounded, and Colonel Caldwell's men were out for blood--
MAJ. HARRIS: What were those orders?
DR. DUVALL: I know how this looks, but at the time, Major Ogden and I were aboard and had the only approved methods of subduing the subject without destroying it!
MAJ. HARRIS: Just answer the question, Doctor Duvall. What were the new orders?
DR. DUVALL: We ordered them to land.
River Song never failed. She only fell for a while.
The lesson cut through even the murkiest of her childhood memories. You don't fail. You weren't bred for that. You only fall. It was imparted over countless combat sessions, each one longer and more brutal than the last. She would end up on her knees, again and again. She would be bloodied and beaten. She would land in a cell in the dark, and finally, locked limb by limb into the containment suit that stole her every move and forced every breath down into her lungs as it knitted her back together. But those circumstances were of no consequence to a living, breathing weapon. When she wasn't fighting--when she wasn't winning, she was falling.
Time didn’t matter. Distance didn’t matter. She always fell just long enough.
Long enough to survive, learn, adapt and strike.
She had been a very clever child. Her captors had made sure of it. They indulged her curiosity at first, giving her a library of books on anatomy, history, warfare, engineering and mathematics. She learned all of those lessons easily, and others besides. The same bright, analytical child, who had learned to spot the Silence from the corner of her eye, had also deduced that Madame Kovarian and her soldiers were not the protectors they claimed to be. She didn’t realize it at the time, but it was, of course, another lesson. Everyone was an enemy.
Silence muted the memories, but there was a point--there must have been--when bedrooms and books were stripped away in exchange for cells and combat. Even then, she had already learned enough to know their strategic goals. Their weapon now had resources and knowledge and tactics, but they had cultivated Melody Pond along with the rest. Now they were ready to cull all the feeling parts of her self away.
Survive. Learn. Adapt. Strike.
Session after session after session, with the suit stitching her up each time. There were no rewards for winning. The first and only lesson came from failing, and falling.
Survive. Learn. Adapt. Strike.
How she hated them. They wanted her to fight and so she did. She fought everyone and everything, but she fought the first lesson most of all. Whether lurching on a fractured ankle (one bone does not break you), or spitting blood through her teeth (draw breath before your foe takes it from you), she clung to every ounce of vitriol and venom that coursed through her. They were bigger and stronger, and they could beat her, but she wouldn't fall.
Survive. Learn. Adapt. Strike.
Over and over again, they struck her down, and all it did was fuel her fury. You’ll fall forever if you have to, Kovarian told her, but it was a lie. She was not theirs. She wouldn’t let go of herself, not for them.
Survive-Learn-Adapt-Strike.
SurviveLearnAdaptStrike.
SurviveLearnAdapt--
No one falls forever! Sometimes, she remembered it with pristine clarity. Sometimes it was hazy and different, like a variation on a theme. Always, the truth spun inside her like a black hole, siphoning all of her fear, rage and horror into its crushing abyss. And when the soldiers came again under the watchful eye of Madame Kovarian to drag her battered, dying body back to the waiting containment suit, she finally unleashed it. She took them by surprise, broke every bone in every body that tried to restrain her. There was no more pain; the void ate it away with everything else. She tore into her captors, and then with every ounce of her remaining strength, she tore the suit apart.
No more, she told them with her last, ragged breath. I win.
But instead of extinguishing the final sparks of her life, the abyss inside her erupted into a supernova.
The fury she had been carrying for so long exploded in scouring, golden fire. It coursed through every cell in her body, igniting her from the inside out and burning everything away. When it was gone she was healthy and whole again, staring into her cell's two-way mirror at a completely different face. She was a stranger, and nothing else had changed.
The intercom clicked on to the sound of Kovarian, laughing. You think this is your first attempt at escape? This isn’t even your first regeneration. You’ve been falling for a very, very long time.
And that, ultimately, was the lesson learned. They didn’t need the suit. They never had. She was the suit, and the weapon stared out of her stranger's eyes and moved her limbs and forced air into her lungs. It smiled with her stranger's mouth when it thought that smiling would provide an advantage. And when it wasn’t winning, it simply fell. Just long enough to--
Survive.
The command registered and she was moving. The sounds of the cab were muffled, her ears still ringing from the impact of the collision with the rock face. Pain (head, left arm, right ankle) was sharp but manageable. A visual sweep revealed they'd spun one hundred eighty degrees in the crash, and were now facing back toward their oncoming pursuers. Her eyes took in the shattered windscreen and the convoy of trucks fanning out along the roadway beyond. In moments the ambulance would be surrounded, its occupants clear targets. But she was moving; her muscles were fluid and quick, following orders even before the voice in her head could speak them.
Take cover and force the enemy with superior numbers into a close quarters fight.
The convoy was close enough that she could see the faces of the drivers in the leading trucks. There was only one place to go to get out of sight. But it was far from ideal. The lights were dead and the morning sunrise was already starting to bake the exterior and heat the air inside. It was a trap she didn't know how to escape.
Survive first. Then learn-adapt-strike.
She freed herself from her seat straps and thrust open the connecting door to the back compartment.
Gather assets and retreat. Asset. Scissors on the dash. Asset--
A cough and a few indecipherable attempts at speech drew her attention to the passenger seat. The Doctor was dazed, barely conscious, and obviously completely disoriented.
Critical asset. He’s the one the enemy wants alive.
She seized him by the shoulder, ignoring his surprised gasp and securing him upright. With the convoy forming a perimeter around them, she released him from the seatbelt and lunged both of them through the connecting door. They landed awkwardly and he cried out in pain, wordless, desperately searching for something to anchor himself. She bodied him aside and slammed the door behind them, shutting them both into the stifling dark.
Assets. She swept a hand out until she encountered the supply pack. Inside were a first aid kit, extra torch, the Doctor's damp scrub shirt from the night before, and a pair of handcuffs. She gathered the torch immediately. The cuffs she had swiped from a security station after she'd been unable to access the armory at the base. She'd told herself, as the long odds of Plan C cemented in her mind--they might be useful if she had to keep someone from following them. She'd known even then it was a hedge. Cuffs might buy them some time if they were recaptured, if she failed--
You don't fail. Learn. Hold a breath and listen.
She left the cuffs, took the shirt, and put an ear to the back door. The only sound was the Cayuse beating at the air, the pitch falling and then cutting out. It had come down to land, likely in the open space back along the way they'd come, no more than one hundred meters away. Then she heard the convoy engines idle, and a faint shout of "Hold your fire!" that may have been Major Ogden. Good. The troops would keep their distance for a few minutes at least.
The Cayuse was an asset. It could easily outpace the rest of the convoy once it was in the air, and it would make them tough targets for a rifle. But it wouldn't work for an escape plan. The trucks provided only limited cover, and the soldiers had them outnumbered and outgunned. It was too far for them to make a break for it.
Adapt. Back them off and split their attention. Take out the helicopter pilot from long range. Requirements--
There was a loud clatter behind her and the water canteen skittered across the floor. The Doctor hitched a breath, still trying to gain his bearings. She turned and flicked the torchlight toward his position. He was hunched on his knees, leaning against the compartment door and the far corner of the berth.
"Who's there?" He tried to put a hand out but collapsed back against the berth with a groan. "Where are we? Where are we going?"
A small, distant part of River Song sensed minute shocks in the timescape as he spoke, like a faint echo of the temporal crash the night before. Traces of doubt settled in her gut, picking at her bravado like pebbles cast up at a darkened window. His balance was totally shot, why? It had happened before they crashed the ambulance. It had happened on the motorway.
Irrelevant. He's useless in this fight. Requirements: gun, covering fire, diversion. Jam the door.
She wrapped the scrub shirt tightly around the metal arm bar and guide at the top of the back door, and set an ear to listen again. Outside, she could hear shouts and footsteps. The enemy was sending in a retrieval team of four, maybe five soldiers, advancing on the ambulance. She fetched the scissors from her cargo pocket, tightening her grip around the handle.
But the tiny inner voice persisted. Aftershocks. That's what all these memories must be. That's why they'd been stirred up so forcefully. It wasn't because she'd failed. It wasn't because they were out of options. It couldn't be. That was one of the Doctor's most important rules, rule number two--
Survive and you can always fall farther.
No, that wasn't how it went. It was the hardest rule he'd ever taught her, because it was so close to her training but so emphatically different. Rule number one was The Doctor lies and she understood that; she had been trained to expect that even before filling the very first blank page of her diary after Berlin. But rule number two turned all the spiraling despair from her childhood on its ear, much as the Doctor had done for her entire life. Because rule number two was Where there's life, there's--
Hope? Hope is just another lie. You've always known the truth.
Aftershocks. Her childhood horrors. Kovarian's voice from the depths of her nightmares. She knew how to fight those. But this voice--years in Leadworth with her parents hadn't been enough to bury it completely. And she knew it twisted the truth into daggers but that didn't mean she could face it.
You've been losing the Doctor for so long, watching his past come up to steal him away.
Despite the decades she had spent painstakingly separating her true self from this shell, the voice that remained was and always had been her own. The weapon in her mind knew how to fight, how to win, and how to fall. And it knew exactly how to hurt her the most.
That's not hope. That's living long enough to see no recognition in his eyes when you next meet.
A hand caught in her hair and brushed her face, before finding her shoulder and trying to hold on. "River, it's you? So much violence, why . . . why are we--?" He exhaled in the darkness, the unfinished question settling a strange stillness across his frame. "But we're not, are we?"
Irrelevant. Listen. They're at the back door.
She pushed him away. Useless in a fight, the weapon said, even as the feeling parts of River Song beat futile panic at the back of her mind. This plan wouldn't work. This wasn't hope, it was madness. The odds were too long; they couldn't make it. Not with the Doctor as he was--
He'll survive. He'll find a way, he always does. He doesn't need you for that.
She angled her body toward the door and braced herself against the berth. A commotion came from behind her--the Doctor, fumbling in the dark--but it didn't matter now.
He needs you to make sure they all pay. He needs you to survive-learn-adapt--
The latch rattled and the door started to open.
Strike.
It was a dream. Must have been. It was already fading, leaving just the barest impressions woven into the fabric of now. Breath fogging in the desolate cold. Isolated at the end of everything, farther away than he'd ever imagined. But not alone. Her face--impossible, mad, beautiful . . . who was she? Her touch shot an ache through his hearts and he didn't know why it hurt so much.
But it did. It hurt so much. And not just in his hearts. There was fire in his nerves, racing all the way down to fingers and toes. He couldn't breathe for it. He tried to move and pain caught him by the head, the neck . . . by the back of the neck.
It was a dream, and then it was a nightmare.
Hands grabbed him and suddenly the world was spinning and fractured and moving too fast. Everything was foreign--unidentified, terrifying, why couldn't he wake up? But no, as dizzy and obstructed as he was, he was awake. His equilibrium turned summersaults around him; each time he tried to find a set point, it would move or turn on an oblique axis and send him crashing down again. Every likelihood he could feel was steeped in the potential of impending violence. Its sharp change points worked against the pull of the present like jagged cliffs lancing out into the sea. Unanchored and adrift, he needed--
One fixed point in all of the chaos.
He reached out and found--was it her? The woman from the dream? No, no. The timelines were strange and attenuated. Her future, twisted around violence and unconscious reflex; her past, fading and slipping away. Something turned them again and he clutched her shoulder. He couldn't make sense of it but his hands told him it was River Song.
Too many questions set upon him. He could feel himself speaking but had no idea which ones were voiced. How could this be River? Where were they? Where were they going? Why was her past so dim? Or . . . no, was it her past? What had happened to her future? She wasn't driving, why were they--?
But you're not.
His perception turned on its temporal ear, and he drew a breath, concentrating. Then River sent him reeling and he fell, colliding into something lumpy and bulky. The world lurched around him again but it wasn't dizziness, was it? His equilibrium was just off because something had changed. Something he'd been relying on.
The violence started to coalesce from its potential, sending seismic spikes through the timelines. He tried to sit up but his hand was tangled in--in . . .
You need to know.
His hand was tangled in a canvas strap. He'd landed on the supply pack from their escape. Which meant that he and River were still in the back compartment of the ambulance. The ambulance that had lost two tires and then tipped off the road, spun around and crashed.
Daft old man, he finally realized. We're not moving.
River kicked the door full force outward, jamming the arm bar into its makeshift fabric stop to catch like a spring. A flash of light illuminated the compartment and glinted off of the helmet of the first soldier in the group as he took the step. The door swung out only a foot and snapped back, isolating her assailant before he could bring his weapon fully round to bear on her position. "Hands up!--" he shouted but it was too late; she was already moving. The door slammed into the soldier on one side, and she grabbed the barrel of his rifle and smashed it into the doorframe on the other, stunning him and slackening his grip. She forced the rifle aim up to the ceiling and then drove the scissors point first into his hand.
Requirements: gun. The soldier gave a startled cry of pain and let go the rest of the way. River stood, twisting the rifle in its shoulder strap up and around the body of her assailant, and used her momentum and position to drive the butt end down at his face. In a split second, the air was full of voices.
"She's got a gun!"
"Man down!"
"No, no, no, we're not moving--"
"Hold your fire!"
But River never landed the blow, because a strong grip caught her hand from behind.
"We're not moving!"'
The Doctor took her off balance and pulled her backward by her bad arm. She tried to shrug him off but he had somehow found his center again, solid and immovable. She lost hold of the rifle, the sudden lack of resistance sending her assailant falling back against the door and into the path of his trailing compatriots. Then she crashed down into the compartment.
A steel cuff snapped around her wrist. "You, me, it's always like this," came the Doctor's voice at her ear. He moved and in the sliver of light from the unlatched door she could see a manic grin on his face as he 'snick'-ed the other half of the cuffs around his own wrist. He started to say more, but whipped his head around when the door was wrenched open for good and the rest of the soldiers stormed in, shaking the whole compartment.
The Doctor threw up his hands, taking hers with him and bellowed "WE SURRENDER!" at the top of his lungs.
The weapon in River's mind short-circuited.
You weren't bred for-- Survive. You only--requirements: gun--Survive, Adapt--
The soldiers were upon them, shouting "Hands in the air!" and "Where I can see them!" and "Drop your weapons NOW!" but they didn't--God, River realized in a dizzying breath how close they'd come to disaster--they didn't fire. The Doctor cried out, "No violence! I'm not--" but cut off with an agonized scream when the soldiers tried to yank them away from each other. River tried to call to him but the soldiers' pull raced fire down her bad arm, and it was all she could do not to black out. When she came around again she could hear him struggling for breath behind her. She couldn't turn her head to see him.
It was the disc; something must have hit it. They wanted him alive.
"They're cuffed together!" was shouted right in her ear from a soldier who twisted her free arm behind her back, at the same time a chorus of affirmatives echoed through the compartment.
"Red team clear! All secure! Move out!"
The dim gray compartment gave way to a glare of sunlight and then empty blue sky as they were wrestled out of the truck and half-marched, half-dragged across the asphalt. River blinked away the brightness, counting and categorizing the combat teams as she caught sight of them or heard them check in over the radio. Assault, Comms, Perimeter, Transport. Too many to take on without an advantage.
Two jeeps had driven past the ambulance and were parked across the highway to turn away any westbound motorists. Two more were headed back the way they'd come, for the same purpose. The helicopter was perched in a field of scrubland one hundred meters distant. Ogden had made it to the road but Duvall was still hurrying across the desert, white coat flapping around him, carrying a steel medical specimen case in his hand.
"Hold them there!" he called out.
She was muscled to her knees. They spun the Doctor around and shoved him down beside her, holding his uncuffed hand behind his back. Eyes screwed shut, already hopelessly disoriented, he hit hard. The breath knocked out of him in a surprised grunt and he pitched forward, trying to use his other hand to brace for a fall. All it did was pull River off balance and put them both on the ground. Dust clogged her throat and stung her eyes. Her vision narrowed to gravel, dirt and blurred outlines. The Doctor's profile with the glint of the disc at the back of his neck. A pair of Army boots in front of them.
The weapon clawed at her thoughts. You don't fail. You make them pay, whatever the cost. You're not worth--
There was a tug on the cuffs and the Doctor's fingers found hers.
"It's all right," he gasped. "They're coming--"
"Keep your mouths shut!"
A hand took him by the hair and the Doctor cut off with a sharp intake of breath. "I'm not resisting!" He tried to forestall the movement but it was too late. His head was forced up and the words gave way to a cry of pain. Then their captors were hauling them both to their knees again. River blinked up into the dazzling sky at the shadowed outline of the soldier in front of them.
"Hello, Sergeant James," she ground out.
"One more word, 'sweetie', " he threatened.
"Just hold them still for God's sake," came the order from Major Ogden, outside of her field of view. "Then they'll sleep all the way back to the base."
There was a flash of a white coat at the corner of River's eye, and then Duvall was kneeling beside the Doctor, prepping a syringe.
They couldn't go back. Her stomach turned and she screamed in frustration, trying to work herself free, but her captors held fast. The weapon offered no alternatives.
Adapt. Back off--Attention. Take out the pilot from, from--Adapt.
Distant shouts echoed dimly in River's ears. There was some kind of activity out past the eastbound perimeter. Duvall ignored it but James must have heard it too, because his grip slackened and he turned his attention to the road, just enough for the Doctor to raise his head and knock Duvall's hand away for a second. The scientist cursed and went to reposition the syringe.
He wasn't looking at the Doctor's face. If he had been, he would have seen his prisoner's blank eyes flick toward River's position. He would have caught the slight raise in his brows and the shadow of that manic grin fighting to surface past speech and shallow breaths.
"I'm not . . . resisting."
Requirements: gun, covering fire--
A downshifting growl arose from the direction of the roadway, and River finally understood what she'd been missing all this time. What the Doctor was still trying to tell her, right now. She breathed the words the same time he did.
"They are."
With a resounding crash of metal and glass, one of the parked jeeps was spun aside out into the desert. An achingly familiar 1967 step-van delivery truck burst into view, barreling past the perimeter into the midst of the convoy. There was a horrendous screech of brakes. The wheels turned sharply and the van's tail end whipped around all the way across the road, sending soldiers scattering and scrambling for cover. Something huge, dark and shaped entirely unlike a projectile nonetheless catapulted sling-shot out of the back and slammed into the rock face like a battering explosive.
It was all the diversion River Song needed.
She smashed her head back full force into the chin of the soldier pinning her arm, shoving him backward, and used her newly freed hand as a pivot for springing up to a crouch. Before Duvall could stand she had snapped the syringe out of his hand and jammed its contents into his thigh. She spun and caught a rifle by the barrel, whipping around in one move low to the ground and using the butt end of it to sweep Sergeant James' feet out from under him.
Before she could fire, a yank at her wrist was pulling her upward.
"That's my girl!" The Doctor's sudden strength propelled both of them straight toward the chaos. He wasn't talking to River. Soldiers were regrouping all around them, bringing weapons to bear, but every ounce of perception he had left was aimed at one thing and one thing alone. River blinked blood and grit out of her eyes, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing, but running toward it all the same.
Because there, amidst the remains of the ambulance and the settling dust, stood the impossible, stalwart blue frame of the TARDIS.
**
Interlude IV | Part 12
**
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: DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)
AIR FORCE INTERNAL AFFAIRS
PRESENT REPRESENTATIVE PARTIES
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C
OGDEN, MAJOR CHARLES J N.R.O. SPECIAL ATTACHE
HARRIS, MAJOR REGINALD D (IA INVESTIGATOR)
MAJ. HARRIS: State your name and title for the inquiry.
DR. DUVALL: Henry Maurice Duvall, Senior Research Scientist with the National Reconnaissance Office, Xenobiology Directorate.
MAJ. HARRIS: And you're a civilian?
DR. DUVALL: Yes, civilian specialist. Major Ogden is the Mission Commander.
MAJ. HARRIS: But you have input in command decisions.
DR. DUVALL: When they pertain to my test subjects and the value of scientific knowledge that can be gained from them, yes.
MAJ. HARRIS: Did you give the hold fire order for the unit assigned for search and retrieval of the alien prisoner designated two three four dash eight H?
DR. DUVALL: It wouldn't have been necessary if we hadn't been detained in medical quarantine--
MAJ. HARRIS: We already have your protest on record. Answer the question, Doctor Duvall.
DR. DUVALL: The hold fire order was a joint decision between myself and Major Ogden. We obtained approval from the N.R.O. to override Colonel Caldwell's orders.
COL. CALDWELL: Despite the prisoner's proven destructive capabilities--
DR. DUVALL: Yes, and you have my testimony on record for that as well. The temporal effects were completely unpredictable based on any prior experimentation with the subject.
MAJ. HARRIS: Noted, Doctor--
COL. CALDWELL: Experiments that jeopardized my airmen and took--
DR. DUVALL: Subject thirty-six was worth the lives of every man on that base! I've said, I take full responsibility for every--
MAJ. HARRIS: Gentlemen! [There is a five second pause.] Colonel Caldwell, this deposition is solely in regards to the events of August fifth, approximately zero-seven-hundred hours. Doctor Duvall, please continue. You and Major Ogden overrode the live fire commands given by the Area 51 mission command officer. Why?
DR. DUVALL: The subject was too valuable to destroy. We advised the commanders to arm the unit with the approved adaptive sedatives for the subject, but they didn't listen. We had to clear quarantine and bring the sedatives ourselves, after receiving the new orders from our agency's chain of command.
MAJ. HARRIS: You shipped out with the helicopter crew, is that correct?
DR. DUVALL: Yes.
MAJ. HARRIS: The helicopter crew's orders were for aerial surveillance and emergency firepower for the recovery mission. Did you give the crew new orders as well?
DR. DUVALL: I used my best judgement and discretion. The convoy had the subject surrounded, and Colonel Caldwell's men were out for blood--
MAJ. HARRIS: What were those orders?
DR. DUVALL: I know how this looks, but at the time, Major Ogden and I were aboard and had the only approved methods of subduing the subject without destroying it!
MAJ. HARRIS: Just answer the question, Doctor Duvall. What were the new orders?
DR. DUVALL: We ordered them to land.
River Song never failed. She only fell for a while.
The lesson cut through even the murkiest of her childhood memories. You don't fail. You weren't bred for that. You only fall. It was imparted over countless combat sessions, each one longer and more brutal than the last. She would end up on her knees, again and again. She would be bloodied and beaten. She would land in a cell in the dark, and finally, locked limb by limb into the containment suit that stole her every move and forced every breath down into her lungs as it knitted her back together. But those circumstances were of no consequence to a living, breathing weapon. When she wasn't fighting--when she wasn't winning, she was falling.
Time didn’t matter. Distance didn’t matter. She always fell just long enough.
Long enough to survive, learn, adapt and strike.
She had been a very clever child. Her captors had made sure of it. They indulged her curiosity at first, giving her a library of books on anatomy, history, warfare, engineering and mathematics. She learned all of those lessons easily, and others besides. The same bright, analytical child, who had learned to spot the Silence from the corner of her eye, had also deduced that Madame Kovarian and her soldiers were not the protectors they claimed to be. She didn’t realize it at the time, but it was, of course, another lesson. Everyone was an enemy.
Silence muted the memories, but there was a point--there must have been--when bedrooms and books were stripped away in exchange for cells and combat. Even then, she had already learned enough to know their strategic goals. Their weapon now had resources and knowledge and tactics, but they had cultivated Melody Pond along with the rest. Now they were ready to cull all the feeling parts of her self away.
Survive. Learn. Adapt. Strike.
Session after session after session, with the suit stitching her up each time. There were no rewards for winning. The first and only lesson came from failing, and falling.
Survive. Learn. Adapt. Strike.
How she hated them. They wanted her to fight and so she did. She fought everyone and everything, but she fought the first lesson most of all. Whether lurching on a fractured ankle (one bone does not break you), or spitting blood through her teeth (draw breath before your foe takes it from you), she clung to every ounce of vitriol and venom that coursed through her. They were bigger and stronger, and they could beat her, but she wouldn't fall.
Survive. Learn. Adapt. Strike.
Over and over again, they struck her down, and all it did was fuel her fury. You’ll fall forever if you have to, Kovarian told her, but it was a lie. She was not theirs. She wouldn’t let go of herself, not for them.
Survive-Learn-Adapt-Strike.
SurviveLearnAdaptStrike.
SurviveLearnAdapt--
No one falls forever! Sometimes, she remembered it with pristine clarity. Sometimes it was hazy and different, like a variation on a theme. Always, the truth spun inside her like a black hole, siphoning all of her fear, rage and horror into its crushing abyss. And when the soldiers came again under the watchful eye of Madame Kovarian to drag her battered, dying body back to the waiting containment suit, she finally unleashed it. She took them by surprise, broke every bone in every body that tried to restrain her. There was no more pain; the void ate it away with everything else. She tore into her captors, and then with every ounce of her remaining strength, she tore the suit apart.
No more, she told them with her last, ragged breath. I win.
But instead of extinguishing the final sparks of her life, the abyss inside her erupted into a supernova.
The fury she had been carrying for so long exploded in scouring, golden fire. It coursed through every cell in her body, igniting her from the inside out and burning everything away. When it was gone she was healthy and whole again, staring into her cell's two-way mirror at a completely different face. She was a stranger, and nothing else had changed.
The intercom clicked on to the sound of Kovarian, laughing. You think this is your first attempt at escape? This isn’t even your first regeneration. You’ve been falling for a very, very long time.
And that, ultimately, was the lesson learned. They didn’t need the suit. They never had. She was the suit, and the weapon stared out of her stranger's eyes and moved her limbs and forced air into her lungs. It smiled with her stranger's mouth when it thought that smiling would provide an advantage. And when it wasn’t winning, it simply fell. Just long enough to--
Survive.
The command registered and she was moving. The sounds of the cab were muffled, her ears still ringing from the impact of the collision with the rock face. Pain (head, left arm, right ankle) was sharp but manageable. A visual sweep revealed they'd spun one hundred eighty degrees in the crash, and were now facing back toward their oncoming pursuers. Her eyes took in the shattered windscreen and the convoy of trucks fanning out along the roadway beyond. In moments the ambulance would be surrounded, its occupants clear targets. But she was moving; her muscles were fluid and quick, following orders even before the voice in her head could speak them.
Take cover and force the enemy with superior numbers into a close quarters fight.
The convoy was close enough that she could see the faces of the drivers in the leading trucks. There was only one place to go to get out of sight. But it was far from ideal. The lights were dead and the morning sunrise was already starting to bake the exterior and heat the air inside. It was a trap she didn't know how to escape.
Survive first. Then learn-adapt-strike.
She freed herself from her seat straps and thrust open the connecting door to the back compartment.
Gather assets and retreat. Asset. Scissors on the dash. Asset--
A cough and a few indecipherable attempts at speech drew her attention to the passenger seat. The Doctor was dazed, barely conscious, and obviously completely disoriented.
Critical asset. He’s the one the enemy wants alive.
She seized him by the shoulder, ignoring his surprised gasp and securing him upright. With the convoy forming a perimeter around them, she released him from the seatbelt and lunged both of them through the connecting door. They landed awkwardly and he cried out in pain, wordless, desperately searching for something to anchor himself. She bodied him aside and slammed the door behind them, shutting them both into the stifling dark.
Assets. She swept a hand out until she encountered the supply pack. Inside were a first aid kit, extra torch, the Doctor's damp scrub shirt from the night before, and a pair of handcuffs. She gathered the torch immediately. The cuffs she had swiped from a security station after she'd been unable to access the armory at the base. She'd told herself, as the long odds of Plan C cemented in her mind--they might be useful if she had to keep someone from following them. She'd known even then it was a hedge. Cuffs might buy them some time if they were recaptured, if she failed--
You don't fail. Learn. Hold a breath and listen.
She left the cuffs, took the shirt, and put an ear to the back door. The only sound was the Cayuse beating at the air, the pitch falling and then cutting out. It had come down to land, likely in the open space back along the way they'd come, no more than one hundred meters away. Then she heard the convoy engines idle, and a faint shout of "Hold your fire!" that may have been Major Ogden. Good. The troops would keep their distance for a few minutes at least.
The Cayuse was an asset. It could easily outpace the rest of the convoy once it was in the air, and it would make them tough targets for a rifle. But it wouldn't work for an escape plan. The trucks provided only limited cover, and the soldiers had them outnumbered and outgunned. It was too far for them to make a break for it.
Adapt. Back them off and split their attention. Take out the helicopter pilot from long range. Requirements--
There was a loud clatter behind her and the water canteen skittered across the floor. The Doctor hitched a breath, still trying to gain his bearings. She turned and flicked the torchlight toward his position. He was hunched on his knees, leaning against the compartment door and the far corner of the berth.
"Who's there?" He tried to put a hand out but collapsed back against the berth with a groan. "Where are we? Where are we going?"
A small, distant part of River Song sensed minute shocks in the timescape as he spoke, like a faint echo of the temporal crash the night before. Traces of doubt settled in her gut, picking at her bravado like pebbles cast up at a darkened window. His balance was totally shot, why? It had happened before they crashed the ambulance. It had happened on the motorway.
Irrelevant. He's useless in this fight. Requirements: gun, covering fire, diversion. Jam the door.
She wrapped the scrub shirt tightly around the metal arm bar and guide at the top of the back door, and set an ear to listen again. Outside, she could hear shouts and footsteps. The enemy was sending in a retrieval team of four, maybe five soldiers, advancing on the ambulance. She fetched the scissors from her cargo pocket, tightening her grip around the handle.
But the tiny inner voice persisted. Aftershocks. That's what all these memories must be. That's why they'd been stirred up so forcefully. It wasn't because she'd failed. It wasn't because they were out of options. It couldn't be. That was one of the Doctor's most important rules, rule number two--
Survive and you can always fall farther.
No, that wasn't how it went. It was the hardest rule he'd ever taught her, because it was so close to her training but so emphatically different. Rule number one was The Doctor lies and she understood that; she had been trained to expect that even before filling the very first blank page of her diary after Berlin. But rule number two turned all the spiraling despair from her childhood on its ear, much as the Doctor had done for her entire life. Because rule number two was Where there's life, there's--
Hope? Hope is just another lie. You've always known the truth.
Aftershocks. Her childhood horrors. Kovarian's voice from the depths of her nightmares. She knew how to fight those. But this voice--years in Leadworth with her parents hadn't been enough to bury it completely. And she knew it twisted the truth into daggers but that didn't mean she could face it.
You've been losing the Doctor for so long, watching his past come up to steal him away.
Despite the decades she had spent painstakingly separating her true self from this shell, the voice that remained was and always had been her own. The weapon in her mind knew how to fight, how to win, and how to fall. And it knew exactly how to hurt her the most.
That's not hope. That's living long enough to see no recognition in his eyes when you next meet.
A hand caught in her hair and brushed her face, before finding her shoulder and trying to hold on. "River, it's you? So much violence, why . . . why are we--?" He exhaled in the darkness, the unfinished question settling a strange stillness across his frame. "But we're not, are we?"
Irrelevant. Listen. They're at the back door.
She pushed him away. Useless in a fight, the weapon said, even as the feeling parts of River Song beat futile panic at the back of her mind. This plan wouldn't work. This wasn't hope, it was madness. The odds were too long; they couldn't make it. Not with the Doctor as he was--
He'll survive. He'll find a way, he always does. He doesn't need you for that.
She angled her body toward the door and braced herself against the berth. A commotion came from behind her--the Doctor, fumbling in the dark--but it didn't matter now.
He needs you to make sure they all pay. He needs you to survive-learn-adapt--
The latch rattled and the door started to open.
Strike.
It was a dream. Must have been. It was already fading, leaving just the barest impressions woven into the fabric of now. Breath fogging in the desolate cold. Isolated at the end of everything, farther away than he'd ever imagined. But not alone. Her face--impossible, mad, beautiful . . . who was she? Her touch shot an ache through his hearts and he didn't know why it hurt so much.
But it did. It hurt so much. And not just in his hearts. There was fire in his nerves, racing all the way down to fingers and toes. He couldn't breathe for it. He tried to move and pain caught him by the head, the neck . . . by the back of the neck.
It was a dream, and then it was a nightmare.
Hands grabbed him and suddenly the world was spinning and fractured and moving too fast. Everything was foreign--unidentified, terrifying, why couldn't he wake up? But no, as dizzy and obstructed as he was, he was awake. His equilibrium turned summersaults around him; each time he tried to find a set point, it would move or turn on an oblique axis and send him crashing down again. Every likelihood he could feel was steeped in the potential of impending violence. Its sharp change points worked against the pull of the present like jagged cliffs lancing out into the sea. Unanchored and adrift, he needed--
One fixed point in all of the chaos.
He reached out and found--was it her? The woman from the dream? No, no. The timelines were strange and attenuated. Her future, twisted around violence and unconscious reflex; her past, fading and slipping away. Something turned them again and he clutched her shoulder. He couldn't make sense of it but his hands told him it was River Song.
Too many questions set upon him. He could feel himself speaking but had no idea which ones were voiced. How could this be River? Where were they? Where were they going? Why was her past so dim? Or . . . no, was it her past? What had happened to her future? She wasn't driving, why were they--?
But you're not.
His perception turned on its temporal ear, and he drew a breath, concentrating. Then River sent him reeling and he fell, colliding into something lumpy and bulky. The world lurched around him again but it wasn't dizziness, was it? His equilibrium was just off because something had changed. Something he'd been relying on.
The violence started to coalesce from its potential, sending seismic spikes through the timelines. He tried to sit up but his hand was tangled in--in . . .
You need to know.
His hand was tangled in a canvas strap. He'd landed on the supply pack from their escape. Which meant that he and River were still in the back compartment of the ambulance. The ambulance that had lost two tires and then tipped off the road, spun around and crashed.
Daft old man, he finally realized. We're not moving.
River kicked the door full force outward, jamming the arm bar into its makeshift fabric stop to catch like a spring. A flash of light illuminated the compartment and glinted off of the helmet of the first soldier in the group as he took the step. The door swung out only a foot and snapped back, isolating her assailant before he could bring his weapon fully round to bear on her position. "Hands up!--" he shouted but it was too late; she was already moving. The door slammed into the soldier on one side, and she grabbed the barrel of his rifle and smashed it into the doorframe on the other, stunning him and slackening his grip. She forced the rifle aim up to the ceiling and then drove the scissors point first into his hand.
Requirements: gun. The soldier gave a startled cry of pain and let go the rest of the way. River stood, twisting the rifle in its shoulder strap up and around the body of her assailant, and used her momentum and position to drive the butt end down at his face. In a split second, the air was full of voices.
"She's got a gun!"
"Man down!"
"No, no, no, we're not moving--"
"Hold your fire!"
But River never landed the blow, because a strong grip caught her hand from behind.
"We're not moving!"'
The Doctor took her off balance and pulled her backward by her bad arm. She tried to shrug him off but he had somehow found his center again, solid and immovable. She lost hold of the rifle, the sudden lack of resistance sending her assailant falling back against the door and into the path of his trailing compatriots. Then she crashed down into the compartment.
A steel cuff snapped around her wrist. "You, me, it's always like this," came the Doctor's voice at her ear. He moved and in the sliver of light from the unlatched door she could see a manic grin on his face as he 'snick'-ed the other half of the cuffs around his own wrist. He started to say more, but whipped his head around when the door was wrenched open for good and the rest of the soldiers stormed in, shaking the whole compartment.
The Doctor threw up his hands, taking hers with him and bellowed "WE SURRENDER!" at the top of his lungs.
The weapon in River's mind short-circuited.
You weren't bred for-- Survive. You only--requirements: gun--Survive, Adapt--
The soldiers were upon them, shouting "Hands in the air!" and "Where I can see them!" and "Drop your weapons NOW!" but they didn't--God, River realized in a dizzying breath how close they'd come to disaster--they didn't fire. The Doctor cried out, "No violence! I'm not--" but cut off with an agonized scream when the soldiers tried to yank them away from each other. River tried to call to him but the soldiers' pull raced fire down her bad arm, and it was all she could do not to black out. When she came around again she could hear him struggling for breath behind her. She couldn't turn her head to see him.
It was the disc; something must have hit it. They wanted him alive.
"They're cuffed together!" was shouted right in her ear from a soldier who twisted her free arm behind her back, at the same time a chorus of affirmatives echoed through the compartment.
"Red team clear! All secure! Move out!"
The dim gray compartment gave way to a glare of sunlight and then empty blue sky as they were wrestled out of the truck and half-marched, half-dragged across the asphalt. River blinked away the brightness, counting and categorizing the combat teams as she caught sight of them or heard them check in over the radio. Assault, Comms, Perimeter, Transport. Too many to take on without an advantage.
Two jeeps had driven past the ambulance and were parked across the highway to turn away any westbound motorists. Two more were headed back the way they'd come, for the same purpose. The helicopter was perched in a field of scrubland one hundred meters distant. Ogden had made it to the road but Duvall was still hurrying across the desert, white coat flapping around him, carrying a steel medical specimen case in his hand.
"Hold them there!" he called out.
She was muscled to her knees. They spun the Doctor around and shoved him down beside her, holding his uncuffed hand behind his back. Eyes screwed shut, already hopelessly disoriented, he hit hard. The breath knocked out of him in a surprised grunt and he pitched forward, trying to use his other hand to brace for a fall. All it did was pull River off balance and put them both on the ground. Dust clogged her throat and stung her eyes. Her vision narrowed to gravel, dirt and blurred outlines. The Doctor's profile with the glint of the disc at the back of his neck. A pair of Army boots in front of them.
The weapon clawed at her thoughts. You don't fail. You make them pay, whatever the cost. You're not worth--
There was a tug on the cuffs and the Doctor's fingers found hers.
"It's all right," he gasped. "They're coming--"
"Keep your mouths shut!"
A hand took him by the hair and the Doctor cut off with a sharp intake of breath. "I'm not resisting!" He tried to forestall the movement but it was too late. His head was forced up and the words gave way to a cry of pain. Then their captors were hauling them both to their knees again. River blinked up into the dazzling sky at the shadowed outline of the soldier in front of them.
"Hello, Sergeant James," she ground out.
"One more word, 'sweetie', " he threatened.
"Just hold them still for God's sake," came the order from Major Ogden, outside of her field of view. "Then they'll sleep all the way back to the base."
There was a flash of a white coat at the corner of River's eye, and then Duvall was kneeling beside the Doctor, prepping a syringe.
They couldn't go back. Her stomach turned and she screamed in frustration, trying to work herself free, but her captors held fast. The weapon offered no alternatives.
Adapt. Back off--Attention. Take out the pilot from, from--Adapt.
Distant shouts echoed dimly in River's ears. There was some kind of activity out past the eastbound perimeter. Duvall ignored it but James must have heard it too, because his grip slackened and he turned his attention to the road, just enough for the Doctor to raise his head and knock Duvall's hand away for a second. The scientist cursed and went to reposition the syringe.
He wasn't looking at the Doctor's face. If he had been, he would have seen his prisoner's blank eyes flick toward River's position. He would have caught the slight raise in his brows and the shadow of that manic grin fighting to surface past speech and shallow breaths.
"I'm not . . . resisting."
Requirements: gun, covering fire--
A downshifting growl arose from the direction of the roadway, and River finally understood what she'd been missing all this time. What the Doctor was still trying to tell her, right now. She breathed the words the same time he did.
"They are."
With a resounding crash of metal and glass, one of the parked jeeps was spun aside out into the desert. An achingly familiar 1967 step-van delivery truck burst into view, barreling past the perimeter into the midst of the convoy. There was a horrendous screech of brakes. The wheels turned sharply and the van's tail end whipped around all the way across the road, sending soldiers scattering and scrambling for cover. Something huge, dark and shaped entirely unlike a projectile nonetheless catapulted sling-shot out of the back and slammed into the rock face like a battering explosive.
It was all the diversion River Song needed.
She smashed her head back full force into the chin of the soldier pinning her arm, shoving him backward, and used her newly freed hand as a pivot for springing up to a crouch. Before Duvall could stand she had snapped the syringe out of his hand and jammed its contents into his thigh. She spun and caught a rifle by the barrel, whipping around in one move low to the ground and using the butt end of it to sweep Sergeant James' feet out from under him.
Before she could fire, a yank at her wrist was pulling her upward.
"That's my girl!" The Doctor's sudden strength propelled both of them straight toward the chaos. He wasn't talking to River. Soldiers were regrouping all around them, bringing weapons to bear, but every ounce of perception he had left was aimed at one thing and one thing alone. River blinked blood and grit out of her eyes, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing, but running toward it all the same.
Because there, amidst the remains of the ambulance and the settling dust, stood the impossible, stalwart blue frame of the TARDIS.
**
Interlude IV | Part 12
