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eve11Main Post and Chapter Index
"Here goes. Amy, get ready--"
Amy sucked in a breath and tightened her hold on the console—left hand white-knuckled on the viewscreen handle, right hand on the zig-zag plotter controls, left trainer jammed for added leverage into a collection of wires and pipes between the copper feet anchoring the central columnl to the floor. Rory's voice cut out from the radio, which floated silently above her, testing the end of the twine tethering it to the central column.
The crash that followed shook the TARDIS interior even with the gravity offline. The viewscreen lurched out of her grasp, and Amy pinwheeled backward, catching herself by the corner of the zig-zag plotter at the last moment. She pulled herself up, grabbed clumsily for the handset in the zero-G space and hit the comms button, shouting a frantic "Rory! Are you all right?", before remembering that Rory had taped the comms button open on his radio and wouldn't be able to hear her, and that she needed to keep her radio receiving so they could get the timing right. Her hands flew back to the zig-zag plotter. The TARDIS creaked and groaned--the only inward sign that it was shoved face up into a delivery truck currently throwing itself into a sideways skid surrounded by armed soldiers--and the radio came to life again.
"--right. . . NOW!"
At the height of the turn, Amy worked the zig-zag plotter and re-engaged the gravity field. The force immediately pulled her down onto the console, and she held on for dear life as the TARDIS got a jolt from several million extra tons of weight suddenly moving at centripetal speed. It was enough of a momentum shove to get the blue box out of the van and standing upright. Or at least that was the plan. Rory had said it would act like a slingshot. He hadn't mentioned the part where it would feel like riding out an earthquake on a roller coaster.
"Rory--!" she wailed, and was ready to scream why did you think this was safer? when the TARDIS gave one final lurch and a jolt. The radio broke its tether and clattered to the floor. Amy fell hard against the console, her yelp of surprise echoing into the silence when everything suddenly stopped.
"Right!" The words were muffled, the radio speaker now aimed directly into the floor. "That worked a bit too well."
"Shut up!" Amy cried uselessly, trying at the same time to free her foot from the pedestal and disentangle her hair from about six different dials on the console so she could stand up again. "Do you see them?"
In the same instant she asked, Rory gave a shout over the comms. ”Doctor!”
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: OGDEN, MAJOR CHARLES J N.R.O. SPECIAL ATTACHE
AIR FORCE INTERNAL AFFAIRS
PRESENT REPRESENTATIVE PARTIES
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C
DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)
HARRIS, MAJOR REGINALD D (IA INVESTIGATOR)
(EXCERPT 9:12-13:45)
MAJ. HARRIS: This payload from the second accomplices. The “blue shed.” Major Ogden, you had the best look at it of anyone on the scene.
MAJ. OGDEN: Yes, Major Harris. Most of the company took cover when the accomplices’ truck broke through the perimeter, and Specialist Duvall was incapacitated shortly after that.
MAJ. HARRIS: You gave a very specific description of the object in your initial report.
MAJ. OGDEN: I did.
MAJ. HARRIS: You described it as a “London Police Box.” Can you elaborate?
MAJ. OGDEN: I spent enough time at RAF Lakenheath to make it from the base down into London. It was fifteen years ago, but I still know a police public call box when I see one. They’re on street corners across the city.
MAJ. HARRIS: And that’s what you’re claiming? That the prisoner’s accomplices attacked the convoy using a Police Box from London?
MAJ. OGDEN: (laughs) Well, I’m fairly sure it didn’t come from London.
COL. CALDWELL: Major Ogden, I will remind you that you are pledged to co-operate fully with this investigation.
MAJ. OGDEN: Yes, Colonel. What I meant was, it certainly looked like a Police Box. Obviously it was something more than that. You saw what it did to the M43 ambulance where it impacted.
MAJ. HARRIS: So it was a very sturdy Police Box?
MAJ. OGDEN: Major, I appreciate that Air Force IA is approaching this investigation with skepticism. But you have multiple eyewitnesses from Colonel Caldwell’s convoy who can corroborate my account of what happened.
MAJ. HARRIS: Appreciation noted, Major Ogden. From my perspective, I have multiple eyewitness accounts of approximately thirty-five seconds of utter chaos, and the one viewpoint that could tie things together is muddying the waters instead with fantastic conjectures and conclusions that don’t add up.
MAJ. OGDEN: In my report—
MAJ. HARRIS: In your report, you assert that this unusual projectile, of which we have no visual record other than eyewitness accounts, was, quote, “a complex temporal anomaly.”
MAJ. OGDEN: In my report, I support that assertion with evidence.
MAJ. HARRIS: That evidence being your observations regarding the alien prisoner?
MAJ. OGDEN: Subject 36 was time sensate. We learned this from the data that was recovered from the SMM device after the shockwave incidents. He used his sense of history to differentiate between objects and people. The more complex the history, the bigger the signal. And despite being blind and deaf to external stimuli, Subject 36 knew exactly when that Police Box was coming. He knew exactly how to reach it once it landed.
MAJ. HARRIS: He wasn’t being led by the second prisoner, his female accomplice?
MAJ. OGDEN: No. She was engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the security detail. He pulled her away. Whatever was inside that box, it was as if he could see it in front of him, clear as day. And he knew without a doubt that all he had to do was get through that door.
MAJ. HARRIS: But, according to multiple eyewitnesses, he didn’t get through the door. Did he?
MAJ. OGDEN: No. No one did.
The TARDIS crashed.
Compared to such a history of travels as hers, a displacement of sixty feet through the air over an elapsed one point four six seconds was nigh indistinguishable from not moving at all. The crush of metal and solid rock that met her outer shell caused no more damage than a speck of dust. But in the seven dimensions beyond linear spacetime, this particular infinitesimal journey struck with seismic force. The temporal potential that had been building reached a critical inflection, narrowing the timescape like a funnel and pulling her perceptions in with it. She spun frantic integrations to cushion the blow, but the TARDIS crashed into the present moment with far greater impact than could ever be caused by striking a rock wall.
Her psyche jarred into constrained linear consciousness through the fold of a fixed point, and she wasn't prepared for the memories that came with it. A severed psychic link throbbed in her thoughts. Something was missing--and then she remembered her Pilot as more than just a sparkline in the continuum. She remembered innovation and wonder and why, why, always why? Something was converging. Something was close, but we won't be remembering it later and why was she still waiting?
Her systems were shuttered but for rudimentary external sensors built more for her Pilot's benefit than her own. With their link severed, she had no means of telepathic communication with any external sentience, and no differential reserves for active movement. Even the simple act of opening her doors at the snap of his fingers relied less on the snap and more on the transfer of potential from his mind to hers. She had no way to orient in linear spacetime without his perception as a guid. She could only correlate readings with her time sensitive matrix.
She was waiting, but the timelines were not. Something was missing that needs to have been remembered. The immediate temporal landscape was new, raw and reconfigured by the strength of one will and the force of a mutual exclusion barrier that never should have existed. Time was fragile--as mountains shaped in seconds | new earth surfaced in settling dust | cracked and shuddering. Her matrix offered the image up to the empty ache in her mind. She recognized her own cautious footprint in the eruption. She had blanketed this raw landscape of likelihood like fog rolling through a valley, learning every peak and crevasse with the barest breath before dissipating. She had gathered all remaining energy she could find in order to reach this point. To do no more than she must, lest she risk more fractures.
She was here now, and she was still waiting. Meanwhile, everything fell just almost surely . . . short of her predictions.
She heard, without hearing.
The step-van came to the end of its skid, and its overworked engine finally cut out to ticking silence. A familiar voice reverberated both externally and through the control room radio. "Right! That worked a bit too well"--Rory's understated panic, as he realized sixty feet of no-man's land lay between him and the safety of the TARDIS doors. Soldiers were shouting orders, picking themselves up from hardscrabble and asphalt to train their rifles on the new threat. Shouts of "Hold your fire!" echoed across the roadway but were drowned out by more immediate calls for backup and covering fire. The TARDIS extrapolated the timeline through a change point. In one future, Rory abandons the truck and makes a run for it on foot, but his entire future potential is cut short with twelve feet left to go. In another, he spends precious seconds turning the ignition while the engine grinds, and the truck is surrounded by armed soldiers who will not be taken by surprise again.
When Rory caught sight of two figures at the side of the road, both futures faded away. The TARDIS’ tympanic sensor processed a familiar configuration in the syllables he called out, and her attention shifted.
She saw, without sight.
Animated change-point potentials had scattered away from her shell into near-term uncertainty and confusion, so time-blind that they had been taken completely unaware by her arrival. People dropped to the ground, seeking cover behind rocks or vehicles, their perceptions overloaded in the immediate aftermath of her collision and then turning, laser-focused, on the incomprehensible blue box standing silently in the middle of the commotion. All of them were re-grouping, their decision surfaces shifting from unconscious self-preservation into the jagged peaks of impending violence. All except for one.
One, whose familiar sparkline resonated in the local measure with perfect focus. One who had no reaction at all to her physical crash, but who leaped up with a cry of "That's my girl!" when the timelines narrowed into the nexus point around her shell. The Doctor took hold of River's wrist, still shackled to his own, and bolted straight for the TARDIS doors. And in that instant, all the aching, empty spaces in her matrix flared as one--a house with no rooms | dimensionless and hollow --and she remembered every part of herself that had been lost in their separation.
But she didn't remember how to save him.
Because as the Doctor ran--feet light, fast as he could, pulling a bewildered River Song behind him--four rattled soldiers who still had no idea what they were looking at raised their rifles. The TARDIS extrapolated a path to safety along the thinnest of margins. Every step had to be sure; the timeline was unraveling all around them. Aftershocks buffeted the continuum and she remembered with growing horror how her Pilot was relying on just his frayed time sense to guide him.
Fly, she urged, hurling a thousand memories of hairsbreadth escape and sanctuary down their broken psychic link, trying by brute force to reach through to him. But there was nothing she could do. Her shell stood unmoving, its temporal brilliance a beacon he could see for miles. He didn't see the glitch in the timeline from one loose rock on the ground, until it was too late.
She saw without sight, heard without hearing. She felt, without . . .
The Doctor's foot caught the top of the rock mid-stride and slid out from under him, bringing him crashing down to the ground within an arm’s reach of safety. River gasped in pain as his pull on her wrist dragged her down with him. It was enough to bring the cascade of impending violence to a head. Voices rose to panicked shouts and curses. Still in the van, Rory ducked for cover. A cry of "Don't move!" pierced the chaotic noise, and a rifle shot rent the air--a miss, ricocheting off her shell to parts unknown. The immediate future was peppered with more.
Agony tore through her matrix, but the TARDIS could only bear blind, mute witness. The Doctor reached a hand out to her, the timeline converging with an echo of almost, almost . . . and she felt--
--She took his outstretched hand, wondering how she could ever forget the intimacy of this sensation--
She felt, without--
--She drew his hand up--
Without . . .
"When I need to know what this feels like."
Temporal potential flared to supernova before collapsing into the nexus point. The last remnant of a helical path spanning eons and lightyears settled, and the last memory slotted into place. A final lesson from her foray into flesh and bone, his hand brushing her cheek, connected the TARDIS and her Pilot across an unfathomable divide.
Translation: for one fleeting moment in the dry Nevada dust, she felt his palm laid flat against her outer shell. And the time for waiting was over.
The fall came before River had fully regained her bearings. There was no time to react; one moment, she was being pulled along by the Doctor, and the next, they were both on the ground. Searing pain shot down her injured arm, but the Doctor didn’t let go. River saw him reach his free hand, scraped and bleeding, toward the base of the TARDIS. Staccato shouts erupted from the soldiers surrounding them, and the crack of gunfire exploded in her ears. There was nowhere left to go.
In the midst of the pain and panic, a whisper flashed across her mind. It felt like . . . but that was impossible because right now there was no way the Doctor's grip on her wrist could bloom into--
Contact.
A dazzling flash whited out her vision, and then the outside world faded away.
Inside the blue box, a pulse of light shot up through the time rotor, bursting out from the top of the column with a force that sent Amy staggering back from the console. A surge of power lit lights and set dials in motion as the derelict control room hummed to life. The viewscreen blinked on, its speakers hissing static, its image flickering between white noise and grainy images of vehicles and soldiers. And right alongside the TARDIS, was that--?
Amy had barely taken a step toward the door when the dematerialization lever clacked down. She whirled around.
“No, not now!” she cried.
The central column began its asthmatic churn. The roundel walls phased in and out with a competing view of desert, asphalt, soldiers and dust, while three shapes took form in the near space between Amy and the TARDIS doors.
**
Part 12 | Interlude V
"Here goes. Amy, get ready--"
Amy sucked in a breath and tightened her hold on the console—left hand white-knuckled on the viewscreen handle, right hand on the zig-zag plotter controls, left trainer jammed for added leverage into a collection of wires and pipes between the copper feet anchoring the central columnl to the floor. Rory's voice cut out from the radio, which floated silently above her, testing the end of the twine tethering it to the central column.
The crash that followed shook the TARDIS interior even with the gravity offline. The viewscreen lurched out of her grasp, and Amy pinwheeled backward, catching herself by the corner of the zig-zag plotter at the last moment. She pulled herself up, grabbed clumsily for the handset in the zero-G space and hit the comms button, shouting a frantic "Rory! Are you all right?", before remembering that Rory had taped the comms button open on his radio and wouldn't be able to hear her, and that she needed to keep her radio receiving so they could get the timing right. Her hands flew back to the zig-zag plotter. The TARDIS creaked and groaned--the only inward sign that it was shoved face up into a delivery truck currently throwing itself into a sideways skid surrounded by armed soldiers--and the radio came to life again.
"--right. . . NOW!"
At the height of the turn, Amy worked the zig-zag plotter and re-engaged the gravity field. The force immediately pulled her down onto the console, and she held on for dear life as the TARDIS got a jolt from several million extra tons of weight suddenly moving at centripetal speed. It was enough of a momentum shove to get the blue box out of the van and standing upright. Or at least that was the plan. Rory had said it would act like a slingshot. He hadn't mentioned the part where it would feel like riding out an earthquake on a roller coaster.
"Rory--!" she wailed, and was ready to scream why did you think this was safer? when the TARDIS gave one final lurch and a jolt. The radio broke its tether and clattered to the floor. Amy fell hard against the console, her yelp of surprise echoing into the silence when everything suddenly stopped.
"Right!" The words were muffled, the radio speaker now aimed directly into the floor. "That worked a bit too well."
"Shut up!" Amy cried uselessly, trying at the same time to free her foot from the pedestal and disentangle her hair from about six different dials on the console so she could stand up again. "Do you see them?"
In the same instant she asked, Rory gave a shout over the comms. ”Doctor!”
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: OGDEN, MAJOR CHARLES J N.R.O. SPECIAL ATTACHE
AIR FORCE INTERNAL AFFAIRS
PRESENT REPRESENTATIVE PARTIES
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C
DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)
HARRIS, MAJOR REGINALD D (IA INVESTIGATOR)
(EXCERPT 9:12-13:45)
MAJ. HARRIS: This payload from the second accomplices. The “blue shed.” Major Ogden, you had the best look at it of anyone on the scene.
MAJ. OGDEN: Yes, Major Harris. Most of the company took cover when the accomplices’ truck broke through the perimeter, and Specialist Duvall was incapacitated shortly after that.
MAJ. HARRIS: You gave a very specific description of the object in your initial report.
MAJ. OGDEN: I did.
MAJ. HARRIS: You described it as a “London Police Box.” Can you elaborate?
MAJ. OGDEN: I spent enough time at RAF Lakenheath to make it from the base down into London. It was fifteen years ago, but I still know a police public call box when I see one. They’re on street corners across the city.
MAJ. HARRIS: And that’s what you’re claiming? That the prisoner’s accomplices attacked the convoy using a Police Box from London?
MAJ. OGDEN: (laughs) Well, I’m fairly sure it didn’t come from London.
COL. CALDWELL: Major Ogden, I will remind you that you are pledged to co-operate fully with this investigation.
MAJ. OGDEN: Yes, Colonel. What I meant was, it certainly looked like a Police Box. Obviously it was something more than that. You saw what it did to the M43 ambulance where it impacted.
MAJ. HARRIS: So it was a very sturdy Police Box?
MAJ. OGDEN: Major, I appreciate that Air Force IA is approaching this investigation with skepticism. But you have multiple eyewitnesses from Colonel Caldwell’s convoy who can corroborate my account of what happened.
MAJ. HARRIS: Appreciation noted, Major Ogden. From my perspective, I have multiple eyewitness accounts of approximately thirty-five seconds of utter chaos, and the one viewpoint that could tie things together is muddying the waters instead with fantastic conjectures and conclusions that don’t add up.
MAJ. OGDEN: In my report—
MAJ. HARRIS: In your report, you assert that this unusual projectile, of which we have no visual record other than eyewitness accounts, was, quote, “a complex temporal anomaly.”
MAJ. OGDEN: In my report, I support that assertion with evidence.
MAJ. HARRIS: That evidence being your observations regarding the alien prisoner?
MAJ. OGDEN: Subject 36 was time sensate. We learned this from the data that was recovered from the SMM device after the shockwave incidents. He used his sense of history to differentiate between objects and people. The more complex the history, the bigger the signal. And despite being blind and deaf to external stimuli, Subject 36 knew exactly when that Police Box was coming. He knew exactly how to reach it once it landed.
MAJ. HARRIS: He wasn’t being led by the second prisoner, his female accomplice?
MAJ. OGDEN: No. She was engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the security detail. He pulled her away. Whatever was inside that box, it was as if he could see it in front of him, clear as day. And he knew without a doubt that all he had to do was get through that door.
MAJ. HARRIS: But, according to multiple eyewitnesses, he didn’t get through the door. Did he?
MAJ. OGDEN: No. No one did.
The TARDIS crashed.
Compared to such a history of travels as hers, a displacement of sixty feet through the air over an elapsed one point four six seconds was nigh indistinguishable from not moving at all. The crush of metal and solid rock that met her outer shell caused no more damage than a speck of dust. But in the seven dimensions beyond linear spacetime, this particular infinitesimal journey struck with seismic force. The temporal potential that had been building reached a critical inflection, narrowing the timescape like a funnel and pulling her perceptions in with it. She spun frantic integrations to cushion the blow, but the TARDIS crashed into the present moment with far greater impact than could ever be caused by striking a rock wall.
Her psyche jarred into constrained linear consciousness through the fold of a fixed point, and she wasn't prepared for the memories that came with it. A severed psychic link throbbed in her thoughts. Something was missing--and then she remembered her Pilot as more than just a sparkline in the continuum. She remembered innovation and wonder and why, why, always why? Something was converging. Something was close, but we won't be remembering it later and why was she still waiting?
Her systems were shuttered but for rudimentary external sensors built more for her Pilot's benefit than her own. With their link severed, she had no means of telepathic communication with any external sentience, and no differential reserves for active movement. Even the simple act of opening her doors at the snap of his fingers relied less on the snap and more on the transfer of potential from his mind to hers. She had no way to orient in linear spacetime without his perception as a guid. She could only correlate readings with her time sensitive matrix.
She was waiting, but the timelines were not. Something was missing that needs to have been remembered. The immediate temporal landscape was new, raw and reconfigured by the strength of one will and the force of a mutual exclusion barrier that never should have existed. Time was fragile--as mountains shaped in seconds | new earth surfaced in settling dust | cracked and shuddering. Her matrix offered the image up to the empty ache in her mind. She recognized her own cautious footprint in the eruption. She had blanketed this raw landscape of likelihood like fog rolling through a valley, learning every peak and crevasse with the barest breath before dissipating. She had gathered all remaining energy she could find in order to reach this point. To do no more than she must, lest she risk more fractures.
She was here now, and she was still waiting. Meanwhile, everything fell just almost surely . . . short of her predictions.
She heard, without hearing.
The step-van came to the end of its skid, and its overworked engine finally cut out to ticking silence. A familiar voice reverberated both externally and through the control room radio. "Right! That worked a bit too well"--Rory's understated panic, as he realized sixty feet of no-man's land lay between him and the safety of the TARDIS doors. Soldiers were shouting orders, picking themselves up from hardscrabble and asphalt to train their rifles on the new threat. Shouts of "Hold your fire!" echoed across the roadway but were drowned out by more immediate calls for backup and covering fire. The TARDIS extrapolated the timeline through a change point. In one future, Rory abandons the truck and makes a run for it on foot, but his entire future potential is cut short with twelve feet left to go. In another, he spends precious seconds turning the ignition while the engine grinds, and the truck is surrounded by armed soldiers who will not be taken by surprise again.
When Rory caught sight of two figures at the side of the road, both futures faded away. The TARDIS’ tympanic sensor processed a familiar configuration in the syllables he called out, and her attention shifted.
She saw, without sight.
Animated change-point potentials had scattered away from her shell into near-term uncertainty and confusion, so time-blind that they had been taken completely unaware by her arrival. People dropped to the ground, seeking cover behind rocks or vehicles, their perceptions overloaded in the immediate aftermath of her collision and then turning, laser-focused, on the incomprehensible blue box standing silently in the middle of the commotion. All of them were re-grouping, their decision surfaces shifting from unconscious self-preservation into the jagged peaks of impending violence. All except for one.
One, whose familiar sparkline resonated in the local measure with perfect focus. One who had no reaction at all to her physical crash, but who leaped up with a cry of "That's my girl!" when the timelines narrowed into the nexus point around her shell. The Doctor took hold of River's wrist, still shackled to his own, and bolted straight for the TARDIS doors. And in that instant, all the aching, empty spaces in her matrix flared as one--a house with no rooms | dimensionless and hollow --and she remembered every part of herself that had been lost in their separation.
But she didn't remember how to save him.
Because as the Doctor ran--feet light, fast as he could, pulling a bewildered River Song behind him--four rattled soldiers who still had no idea what they were looking at raised their rifles. The TARDIS extrapolated a path to safety along the thinnest of margins. Every step had to be sure; the timeline was unraveling all around them. Aftershocks buffeted the continuum and she remembered with growing horror how her Pilot was relying on just his frayed time sense to guide him.
Fly, she urged, hurling a thousand memories of hairsbreadth escape and sanctuary down their broken psychic link, trying by brute force to reach through to him. But there was nothing she could do. Her shell stood unmoving, its temporal brilliance a beacon he could see for miles. He didn't see the glitch in the timeline from one loose rock on the ground, until it was too late.
She saw without sight, heard without hearing. She felt, without . . .
The Doctor's foot caught the top of the rock mid-stride and slid out from under him, bringing him crashing down to the ground within an arm’s reach of safety. River gasped in pain as his pull on her wrist dragged her down with him. It was enough to bring the cascade of impending violence to a head. Voices rose to panicked shouts and curses. Still in the van, Rory ducked for cover. A cry of "Don't move!" pierced the chaotic noise, and a rifle shot rent the air--a miss, ricocheting off her shell to parts unknown. The immediate future was peppered with more.
Agony tore through her matrix, but the TARDIS could only bear blind, mute witness. The Doctor reached a hand out to her, the timeline converging with an echo of almost, almost . . . and she felt--
--She took his outstretched hand, wondering how she could ever forget the intimacy of this sensation--
She felt, without--
--She drew his hand up--
Without . . .
"When I need to know what this feels like."
Temporal potential flared to supernova before collapsing into the nexus point. The last remnant of a helical path spanning eons and lightyears settled, and the last memory slotted into place. A final lesson from her foray into flesh and bone, his hand brushing her cheek, connected the TARDIS and her Pilot across an unfathomable divide.
Translation: for one fleeting moment in the dry Nevada dust, she felt his palm laid flat against her outer shell. And the time for waiting was over.
The fall came before River had fully regained her bearings. There was no time to react; one moment, she was being pulled along by the Doctor, and the next, they were both on the ground. Searing pain shot down her injured arm, but the Doctor didn’t let go. River saw him reach his free hand, scraped and bleeding, toward the base of the TARDIS. Staccato shouts erupted from the soldiers surrounding them, and the crack of gunfire exploded in her ears. There was nowhere left to go.
In the midst of the pain and panic, a whisper flashed across her mind. It felt like . . . but that was impossible because right now there was no way the Doctor's grip on her wrist could bloom into--
Contact.
A dazzling flash whited out her vision, and then the outside world faded away.
Inside the blue box, a pulse of light shot up through the time rotor, bursting out from the top of the column with a force that sent Amy staggering back from the console. A surge of power lit lights and set dials in motion as the derelict control room hummed to life. The viewscreen blinked on, its speakers hissing static, its image flickering between white noise and grainy images of vehicles and soldiers. And right alongside the TARDIS, was that--?
Amy had barely taken a step toward the door when the dematerialization lever clacked down. She whirled around.
“No, not now!” she cried.
The central column began its asthmatic churn. The roundel walls phased in and out with a competing view of desert, asphalt, soldiers and dust, while three shapes took form in the near space between Amy and the TARDIS doors.
**
Part 12 | Interlude V
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