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eve11Part 14 was trending upwards of 6000 words so I've split it into two parts. This is the first part.
Main Post and Chapter Index
**
THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*
NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE: DIRECTORATE OF APPLIED EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL RESEARCH
20 SEPTEMBER 1969
SUPPLEMENTAL MEMO TO INVESTIGATION FINAL REPORT DS-#234-8H FACILITY BREACH INCIDENT
AUTHOR: DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)
We have thoroughly analyzed the archived data retrieved from the SMM device after the incident. Retrospectively, we have correlated the device's learned readings with earlier data points. Dr. Ogden hypothesizes that we mapped a sense of past history, without realizing the sense and sense ability also extrapolated paradoxically to future history under different temporal frames of reference. But at the time, there were no statistically significant raw readings to indicate that the support of the SMM model was incomplete across the subject's stimuli. In short, we could not have anticipated this error from the data alone.
There were only two environmental elements that we observed to have an inverse "past is future" relationship to SMM probes or controls. Both of these signals were validated only from the one hundred and twelve second window of data collection that occurred after we introduced the SMM dampening effect on the evening of August 4, and before the alpha shockwave overloaded the device's sensors.
The first was the physical presence of the subject's unknown accomplice. This signal was indistinguishable from random noise until it was correlated with the post-dampening reading, at which point it became clear that the subject sensed she was born approximately three thousand years in the future. The reading was unambiguous and statistically significant at six standard deviations. A second, weaker signal was extracted over the last few weeks via data mining using the laboratory's Cray CDC 7600 supercomputer. This signal was only detected after aggregation and smoothing across several co-occurrences and was significant only to 2.5 standard deviations after correlating to a post-dampening reading. The correlated reading was very close to the flash point of the alpha shockwave and so it was short and noisy. Nonetheless, the data suggests that it involved perceptions related to the presence of Airman Frank Kelley, who was part of the base security detail assigned to the subject.
The source of this correlation is still unclear. We suspect that Airman Kelley used an alias to enlist underage, which has caused difficulty with the investigation. Extensive interviews with his flight group on base have uncovered no useful information, and his medical file lists no emergency contacts or next of kin.
END CLASSIFIED MATERIAL
Rory didn't panic when River collapsed into his arms. That was a bad sign. Amy couldn't see the details, but Rory's steel stillness meant whatever it was, it was medical and serious. He looked up at them, his voice calm and clinical, but urgent.
"She's losing blood fast. Help me carry her."
Amy was already sprinting to River's unsupported side before she even registered the bright red smear across Rory's palm, or the dark stain blooming across River's army fatigues. There was no time to let the shock settle in her mind or stop her heart from racing. Think later, do now, as the Doctor would say in a crisis. 'Course, with his big old brain, he could afford to do both at the same time.
Except right now, he didn't seem to be doing either. Amy kept moving, trying to ignore the dread that sank into the pit of her stomach. Because the only sign worse than Rory not panicking was when the Doctor did.
"Something's wrong! Med bay, hurry!" He had an awkward hold on River's other side and tugged them all in the wrong direction at first, stumbling over his own two feet before correcting clumsily and moving with them toward the central hub and far corridors. He was staring nearly at the floor while they struggled for equilibrium and speed. Amy couldn't see his face but could hear him muttering. "Med bay, med bay's not enough, her timeline, it's . . . "
"What happened out there?" she asked, but the Doctor didn't look up.
"Doctor, did you see?" Rory asked. "There were a lot of soldiers--"
They hit the bottom of the first staircase and the Doctor crashed down onto the step, losing his grip just before he could drag them down with him.
"Doctor!" Amy called out, taking the full brunt of the weight he'd let go. She tried to stop to help him up, but Rory just shifted his hold, grabbed Amy's wrist from beneath River's unconscious form to cradle her between them, and pulled them both with him up the staircase.
"Amy, we need to move."
The Doctor swiped a hand at them from the floor. "Go!" he shouted. "I'll catch up!"
Think later, do now. Amy repeated the mantra all the way across the central hub, up the far staircase and down the corridor toward the med bay. She kept up with Rory's lead, and tried not to think about River, pale and silent between the two of them. But the thoughts came anyway. River, who had saved her from the Weeping Angels when she was blind on the Byzantium. Who carved messages in mountains, who fought Daleks at the end of the universe, and who knew how to pilot the TARDIS without leaving the brakes on. Who was obviously the Doctor's future space wife, no matter how much she tried to sidestep the details. But with the two of them--with Amy and Rory--she kept a different kind of distance. Their long weeks spent together in Washington D.C. and on the road across the United States had made it all the more evident. No matter how open or strong she seemed, there was always something guarded in River's eyes, as though she were protecting herself every time she looked at them. It was like they were echoes of something else--
A loud clang reverberated down the corridor, startling Amy back to the moment. The locks on the Time Rotor were disengaging. The Doctor was sending them into the Vortex.
She was expecting the usual slow groan and grind of the engines, but instead something suddenly slammed into the ship hard enough to jolt all of the dimensions inside. Amy careened toward the corridor wall, digging her fingers into Rory's wrist to keep River in their hold. She locked eyes with Rory for a split second, and then another crash sent her to her knees and she had to let go. Rory had enough presence of mind to hug River to himself as he fell backward, grunting in pain at a hard landing but cushioning her from the floor with his own body.
"What the hell was that?" she managed to say, gaining her feet and staring down the empty corridor. The TARDIS was shuddering all around them. The engines strained and whined like a dog pulling the end of its lead, and in the intermittent ebb she could hear a fizzing, whispering noise filling the silence.
"No idea," Rory groaned from behind her, and then his tone changed immediately to concern. "Should--should she be doing that?"
Amy turned around, and immediately dropped back down to River's side. The strange whispering sound was coming from River. She was ghostly white, almost glowing. Surrounding her skin was a tangled, twisting anemone of ethereal strands. The TARDIS engines stuttered again and the strands brightened, tendrils passing through both their arms where they held her. The whispers gained voice--River's voice, distant and echoing a hundredfold over itself, impossible to make out except for a low murmuring chorus of "Spoilers."
Then something in the engines snapped, tether broken, and a ripple of crackling energy swept down the corridor and straight through the three of them.
Amy shivered. A wave of vertigo washed over her, making her head light. It felt like the most overwhelming sense of deja vu she had ever known, as though she were watching herself from the future, actively living yet remembering at the same time. She watched her hand smoothing across River's brow, brushing her cheek and stroking her hair. There were no distinct memories, but a wellspring of emotions surged through her, foreign yet intimately her own. Grief, anger, joy. Pain that seized her chest and made her want to scream. Love, unconditional, effortless as breathing.
It only lasted for a second. The strands grew blindingly bright and then contracted, twisting away and disappearing beneath River's skin. She gasped awake like taking a first breath after drowning and sat half-way up between them, clutching at both of them with all her remaining strength before collapsing back down onto the floor, unconscious again. The TARDIS engines smoothed into normal flight.
"Oh my God," Rory choked out. "River."
Amy met his eyes and saw red-rimmed shock. She must have looked the same. Her hands trembled. She realized she was crying. "What just happened? Did you just feel--?"
"I don't know what that was," he interrupted her, ignoring the tears falling freely down his cheeks and pressing his hand to River's side. His shirt was streaked with blood from where he'd been holding her. "But this is a gunshot wound, and it's still bleeding."
Panic clutched at Amy's chest. A keening wail built inside her that would never ever stop if she let it out. "She can't die here, Rory. We can't let this--we can't know this and--"
"Think later, do now." Rory sprang to his feet, scooped River up in his arms with a strength that belied his size, and carried her the rest of the short way down the corridor. They barged through the med bay doors. Half a dozen futuristic-looking bays of equipment sat among the room's old fashioned metal frame beds and antique cabinets. Rory headed unerringly for the operating theater, toward a pod-like bed surrounded by strings of blue lights.
"Surgical Containment Web," he called to Amy who was hurrying behind. "Press the gold button on the side to activate the nanites and tissue repair."
Amy's breath hitched. Her ears were ringing. "The Doctor said that only worked on Time Lords."
"It has to work," Rory said, breathless. "It's the only thing here that can save her life."
Muscles straining, Rory still managed to gently lay River down into the pod. Amy held her hand while Rory connected a set of blue strands to her temples and to the wound on her side. He glanced at Amy with a slight nod, and she pressed the gold button.
Machines whirred to life. The pod's hard clear shell rose up from under the bed to close like a carapace over River's still form, forcing Amy to release her hold. Blue strands spun and multiplied in the space underneath until she could hardly make out River's shape through the web. Screens lit up, sounding a series of blaring alarms. Amy didn't know what any of them meant. She pressed her hand against the cold material and closed her eyes, letting her head fall forward the top of the shell. Her whole body felt bereft and adrift, listening to the wailing monitors and unable even to touch the person they were trying to save.
She stayed that way for a while. At some point, Rory pulled two chairs over to the bed, took her other hand and guided her to sit in one. She wouldn't go out of reach, even if only to touch the machine that was hopefully keeping River alive. Rory kept a hand on her shoulder the whole time, standing solid and strong behind her. Waiting.
She couldn't say how long it took, but the alarms eventually slowed and faded into a series of steady blips. Like her own heart, Amy realized, but beating outside of her body.
"She's stabilized." Rory broke the silence, collapsing into the chair beside her with a sigh of relief. His arms and hands were a mess of bruises and dried blood. His shirt was stiff with it. He didn't seem to notice.
"You're sure?" Amy asked, blinking out of her fugue.
He pointed at the monitors. "She's healing."
By that point, the web was clearing and Amy could see for herself through the shell. River's bloody clothes were gone, her modesty saved by two wide strips of gauzy white cloth stretched across her chest and hips. The web was clacking away, synthesizing more. There was an angry pocked scar between her hip and her ribcage on her left side, surrounded by puffy pink skin. But she was gaining color and breathing evenly, her eyes peacefully closed.
Amy sat back from the bed, and it no longer felt as though her world was ripping apart to do so. But her limbs felt like lead. She swiped at her eyes and pressed her fingers to her forehead, before looking blearily around at their surroundings.
At their quiet, empty surroundings. Her head was still muzzy from the shock of whatever had seized onto her emotions in the corridor. But this was suddenly sharp and clear.
"He said he'd catch up."
"What?" Rory breathed, and then sat up as well when he parsed her words, staring at the stillness with her. The only sound was the containment web, quietly monitoring and clacking away.
"The Doctor," Amy answered, but by then it was obvious. "He said he'd catch up, so why isn't he here?"
This, the Doctor told himself, finding the railing of the staircase that had felled him. This was why you didn't meddle with paradoxes if you could help it. The vise throbbed fire at the back of his neck, lighting his nerves, and all his body wanted to do was stop--stop moving, stop thinking, stop feeling anything. But River needed him. He forced himself to focus, keeping up an internal dialogue to steady his mind in the present task. This was why you didn't tamper with foreknowledge, or superposition, or fixed points or any of it. This was why no one in their right mind would ever think it was a good idea to wrench the fabric of time out of its natural order as part of their rubbish escape plan, no matter how terrifying the alternative. Because however clever you might think you are, Time was always a step ahead.
Reeling, he pulled himself to his feet and started up, step by slow step, toward the bright contained chaos that told him where to find the Time Rotor. The Ponds were hopefully far ahead by now, on their way with River to the med bay. But it was more than just physical trauma that was draining her future away. In the ambulance and the desert, he hadn't been able to sense things properly. Inside the TARDIS, it was easier. Safe, no longer buffeted by the all-consuming waves of presence that had drawn everything into the nexus of his ship's fixed point, he'd finally been able to sense the problem with River's timeline. It was a schism.
He reached the top of the stair and cast out, searching for the main console. Amy and Rory could save River from her physical injury, but that was just a symptom. Really it was Time, trying to cauterize an open wound. Schisms happened when causality was stretched beyond its usual linear progression, through bootstrap paradoxes or time loop trickery, or simple overuse of foreknowledge. Likelihoods thinned over past events, sending them suddenly from certainty into temporal flux. Anyone whose history intersected with a causal nexus point risked Time correcting itself. It was of most concern for paths that were otherwise simple linear cause and effect, but even for the most seasoned time travelers, a schism could open in their personal timeline. And when that happened, the resulting rift siphoned their future potential to shore up newly created anomalies in their past.
Sometimes, that meant a life cut short by happenstance. But even if it wasn't becalmed by untimely death, a siphoned future would simply calcify, leaving the survivor trapped within an infinitesimal present moment stretched out to eternity. There would be no room for agency, thought, actions or senses. There would be nothing but an empty shell of the person who was meant to be.
He collided with the console and steadied himself in the black. Their telepathic connection was gone, but he could sense the TARDIS humming at his fingertips. Oh my girl, he thought. What have we done? They'd been too clever by half, the both of them. He'd used the anomalies from his antithetical history with River as a catalyst to jumpstart the quarantine, and then the TARDIS had set her in the middle of a lynchpin fixed point to close the whole loop and set events back on course. Plenty of fodder there for a schism to take hold, even in River's complex history. And it didn't matter how it happened, only that it was there now, and that it was killing her.
He ran his hands across the jumble of dials and switches until he was oriented with his mental map of the controls. Then he set to work. There was no undoing a schism once it had run its course. Fixed events would have to stay that way; any more backtracking or meddling to change future consequences would just rip causality to shreds where it had already worn thin, and Time would literally break apart. No, the only way to cure a schism was to defibrillate the affected time stream before its future flatlined. Wake it back up, give it a zap of complexity to disrupt the drain from future to past.
And the best way to do that, he knew, pressing a palm into the engine primer's plunger switch on the panel in front of him, was with a nice big jolt of paradoxical time. Something like say, hurling one's dimensionally transcendental traveling machine through the wall of the Time Vortex with its chronon neutralizers turned off. Panel three, two rows down, third switch from the left, turn it off. Set the zig-zag plotter and turn the middle dial on the right side of panel two counterclockwise until it wouldn't turn any further. Set the risk engine switches on panel four to minimal and flick the fifth switch from the left to engage the randomizer. Find the dematerialization lever and brace for a rough ride.
The TARDIS' cadence sped up. She knew what he was planning, and though she surely knew that it was necessary, she didn't like it. He could feel her worry thrumming from his boots to near electric shocks at his fingers. For a brief moment, he hesitated, his free hand hovering up to the back of his neck. It would be a rough ride for everyone, but his paradoxical time sense was strung out, still dialed up past eleven, and right now it was the only thing that was keeping him connected to anything beyond what he could touch. An unshielded trip through the Vortex would be all but blinding. It might cause irreparable damage.
It's all right, he tried to tell her. We can sort it afterward.
No time to lose. River would surely die or calcify without this. The Doctor took a deep breath, closed his useless eyes and held tight to the TARDIS console.
"One more trip today, eh, old girl?" he spoke aloud into the silence, and pulled the lever.
**
Interlude V| Part 15
Main Post and Chapter Index
**
THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*
NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE: DIRECTORATE OF APPLIED EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL RESEARCH
20 SEPTEMBER 1969
SUPPLEMENTAL MEMO TO INVESTIGATION FINAL REPORT DS-#234-8H FACILITY BREACH INCIDENT
AUTHOR: DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)
We have thoroughly analyzed the archived data retrieved from the SMM device after the incident. Retrospectively, we have correlated the device's learned readings with earlier data points. Dr. Ogden hypothesizes that we mapped a sense of past history, without realizing the sense and sense ability also extrapolated paradoxically to future history under different temporal frames of reference. But at the time, there were no statistically significant raw readings to indicate that the support of the SMM model was incomplete across the subject's stimuli. In short, we could not have anticipated this error from the data alone.
There were only two environmental elements that we observed to have an inverse "past is future" relationship to SMM probes or controls. Both of these signals were validated only from the one hundred and twelve second window of data collection that occurred after we introduced the SMM dampening effect on the evening of August 4, and before the alpha shockwave overloaded the device's sensors.
The first was the physical presence of the subject's unknown accomplice. This signal was indistinguishable from random noise until it was correlated with the post-dampening reading, at which point it became clear that the subject sensed she was born approximately three thousand years in the future. The reading was unambiguous and statistically significant at six standard deviations. A second, weaker signal was extracted over the last few weeks via data mining using the laboratory's Cray CDC 7600 supercomputer. This signal was only detected after aggregation and smoothing across several co-occurrences and was significant only to 2.5 standard deviations after correlating to a post-dampening reading. The correlated reading was very close to the flash point of the alpha shockwave and so it was short and noisy. Nonetheless, the data suggests that it involved perceptions related to the presence of Airman Frank Kelley, who was part of the base security detail assigned to the subject.
The source of this correlation is still unclear. We suspect that Airman Kelley used an alias to enlist underage, which has caused difficulty with the investigation. Extensive interviews with his flight group on base have uncovered no useful information, and his medical file lists no emergency contacts or next of kin.
END CLASSIFIED MATERIAL
Rory didn't panic when River collapsed into his arms. That was a bad sign. Amy couldn't see the details, but Rory's steel stillness meant whatever it was, it was medical and serious. He looked up at them, his voice calm and clinical, but urgent.
"She's losing blood fast. Help me carry her."
Amy was already sprinting to River's unsupported side before she even registered the bright red smear across Rory's palm, or the dark stain blooming across River's army fatigues. There was no time to let the shock settle in her mind or stop her heart from racing. Think later, do now, as the Doctor would say in a crisis. 'Course, with his big old brain, he could afford to do both at the same time.
Except right now, he didn't seem to be doing either. Amy kept moving, trying to ignore the dread that sank into the pit of her stomach. Because the only sign worse than Rory not panicking was when the Doctor did.
"Something's wrong! Med bay, hurry!" He had an awkward hold on River's other side and tugged them all in the wrong direction at first, stumbling over his own two feet before correcting clumsily and moving with them toward the central hub and far corridors. He was staring nearly at the floor while they struggled for equilibrium and speed. Amy couldn't see his face but could hear him muttering. "Med bay, med bay's not enough, her timeline, it's . . . "
"What happened out there?" she asked, but the Doctor didn't look up.
"Doctor, did you see?" Rory asked. "There were a lot of soldiers--"
They hit the bottom of the first staircase and the Doctor crashed down onto the step, losing his grip just before he could drag them down with him.
"Doctor!" Amy called out, taking the full brunt of the weight he'd let go. She tried to stop to help him up, but Rory just shifted his hold, grabbed Amy's wrist from beneath River's unconscious form to cradle her between them, and pulled them both with him up the staircase.
"Amy, we need to move."
The Doctor swiped a hand at them from the floor. "Go!" he shouted. "I'll catch up!"
Think later, do now. Amy repeated the mantra all the way across the central hub, up the far staircase and down the corridor toward the med bay. She kept up with Rory's lead, and tried not to think about River, pale and silent between the two of them. But the thoughts came anyway. River, who had saved her from the Weeping Angels when she was blind on the Byzantium. Who carved messages in mountains, who fought Daleks at the end of the universe, and who knew how to pilot the TARDIS without leaving the brakes on. Who was obviously the Doctor's future space wife, no matter how much she tried to sidestep the details. But with the two of them--with Amy and Rory--she kept a different kind of distance. Their long weeks spent together in Washington D.C. and on the road across the United States had made it all the more evident. No matter how open or strong she seemed, there was always something guarded in River's eyes, as though she were protecting herself every time she looked at them. It was like they were echoes of something else--
A loud clang reverberated down the corridor, startling Amy back to the moment. The locks on the Time Rotor were disengaging. The Doctor was sending them into the Vortex.
She was expecting the usual slow groan and grind of the engines, but instead something suddenly slammed into the ship hard enough to jolt all of the dimensions inside. Amy careened toward the corridor wall, digging her fingers into Rory's wrist to keep River in their hold. She locked eyes with Rory for a split second, and then another crash sent her to her knees and she had to let go. Rory had enough presence of mind to hug River to himself as he fell backward, grunting in pain at a hard landing but cushioning her from the floor with his own body.
"What the hell was that?" she managed to say, gaining her feet and staring down the empty corridor. The TARDIS was shuddering all around them. The engines strained and whined like a dog pulling the end of its lead, and in the intermittent ebb she could hear a fizzing, whispering noise filling the silence.
"No idea," Rory groaned from behind her, and then his tone changed immediately to concern. "Should--should she be doing that?"
Amy turned around, and immediately dropped back down to River's side. The strange whispering sound was coming from River. She was ghostly white, almost glowing. Surrounding her skin was a tangled, twisting anemone of ethereal strands. The TARDIS engines stuttered again and the strands brightened, tendrils passing through both their arms where they held her. The whispers gained voice--River's voice, distant and echoing a hundredfold over itself, impossible to make out except for a low murmuring chorus of "Spoilers."
Then something in the engines snapped, tether broken, and a ripple of crackling energy swept down the corridor and straight through the three of them.
Amy shivered. A wave of vertigo washed over her, making her head light. It felt like the most overwhelming sense of deja vu she had ever known, as though she were watching herself from the future, actively living yet remembering at the same time. She watched her hand smoothing across River's brow, brushing her cheek and stroking her hair. There were no distinct memories, but a wellspring of emotions surged through her, foreign yet intimately her own. Grief, anger, joy. Pain that seized her chest and made her want to scream. Love, unconditional, effortless as breathing.
It only lasted for a second. The strands grew blindingly bright and then contracted, twisting away and disappearing beneath River's skin. She gasped awake like taking a first breath after drowning and sat half-way up between them, clutching at both of them with all her remaining strength before collapsing back down onto the floor, unconscious again. The TARDIS engines smoothed into normal flight.
"Oh my God," Rory choked out. "River."
Amy met his eyes and saw red-rimmed shock. She must have looked the same. Her hands trembled. She realized she was crying. "What just happened? Did you just feel--?"
"I don't know what that was," he interrupted her, ignoring the tears falling freely down his cheeks and pressing his hand to River's side. His shirt was streaked with blood from where he'd been holding her. "But this is a gunshot wound, and it's still bleeding."
Panic clutched at Amy's chest. A keening wail built inside her that would never ever stop if she let it out. "She can't die here, Rory. We can't let this--we can't know this and--"
"Think later, do now." Rory sprang to his feet, scooped River up in his arms with a strength that belied his size, and carried her the rest of the short way down the corridor. They barged through the med bay doors. Half a dozen futuristic-looking bays of equipment sat among the room's old fashioned metal frame beds and antique cabinets. Rory headed unerringly for the operating theater, toward a pod-like bed surrounded by strings of blue lights.
"Surgical Containment Web," he called to Amy who was hurrying behind. "Press the gold button on the side to activate the nanites and tissue repair."
Amy's breath hitched. Her ears were ringing. "The Doctor said that only worked on Time Lords."
"It has to work," Rory said, breathless. "It's the only thing here that can save her life."
Muscles straining, Rory still managed to gently lay River down into the pod. Amy held her hand while Rory connected a set of blue strands to her temples and to the wound on her side. He glanced at Amy with a slight nod, and she pressed the gold button.
Machines whirred to life. The pod's hard clear shell rose up from under the bed to close like a carapace over River's still form, forcing Amy to release her hold. Blue strands spun and multiplied in the space underneath until she could hardly make out River's shape through the web. Screens lit up, sounding a series of blaring alarms. Amy didn't know what any of them meant. She pressed her hand against the cold material and closed her eyes, letting her head fall forward the top of the shell. Her whole body felt bereft and adrift, listening to the wailing monitors and unable even to touch the person they were trying to save.
She stayed that way for a while. At some point, Rory pulled two chairs over to the bed, took her other hand and guided her to sit in one. She wouldn't go out of reach, even if only to touch the machine that was hopefully keeping River alive. Rory kept a hand on her shoulder the whole time, standing solid and strong behind her. Waiting.
She couldn't say how long it took, but the alarms eventually slowed and faded into a series of steady blips. Like her own heart, Amy realized, but beating outside of her body.
"She's stabilized." Rory broke the silence, collapsing into the chair beside her with a sigh of relief. His arms and hands were a mess of bruises and dried blood. His shirt was stiff with it. He didn't seem to notice.
"You're sure?" Amy asked, blinking out of her fugue.
He pointed at the monitors. "She's healing."
By that point, the web was clearing and Amy could see for herself through the shell. River's bloody clothes were gone, her modesty saved by two wide strips of gauzy white cloth stretched across her chest and hips. The web was clacking away, synthesizing more. There was an angry pocked scar between her hip and her ribcage on her left side, surrounded by puffy pink skin. But she was gaining color and breathing evenly, her eyes peacefully closed.
Amy sat back from the bed, and it no longer felt as though her world was ripping apart to do so. But her limbs felt like lead. She swiped at her eyes and pressed her fingers to her forehead, before looking blearily around at their surroundings.
At their quiet, empty surroundings. Her head was still muzzy from the shock of whatever had seized onto her emotions in the corridor. But this was suddenly sharp and clear.
"He said he'd catch up."
"What?" Rory breathed, and then sat up as well when he parsed her words, staring at the stillness with her. The only sound was the containment web, quietly monitoring and clacking away.
"The Doctor," Amy answered, but by then it was obvious. "He said he'd catch up, so why isn't he here?"
This, the Doctor told himself, finding the railing of the staircase that had felled him. This was why you didn't meddle with paradoxes if you could help it. The vise throbbed fire at the back of his neck, lighting his nerves, and all his body wanted to do was stop--stop moving, stop thinking, stop feeling anything. But River needed him. He forced himself to focus, keeping up an internal dialogue to steady his mind in the present task. This was why you didn't tamper with foreknowledge, or superposition, or fixed points or any of it. This was why no one in their right mind would ever think it was a good idea to wrench the fabric of time out of its natural order as part of their rubbish escape plan, no matter how terrifying the alternative. Because however clever you might think you are, Time was always a step ahead.
Reeling, he pulled himself to his feet and started up, step by slow step, toward the bright contained chaos that told him where to find the Time Rotor. The Ponds were hopefully far ahead by now, on their way with River to the med bay. But it was more than just physical trauma that was draining her future away. In the ambulance and the desert, he hadn't been able to sense things properly. Inside the TARDIS, it was easier. Safe, no longer buffeted by the all-consuming waves of presence that had drawn everything into the nexus of his ship's fixed point, he'd finally been able to sense the problem with River's timeline. It was a schism.
He reached the top of the stair and cast out, searching for the main console. Amy and Rory could save River from her physical injury, but that was just a symptom. Really it was Time, trying to cauterize an open wound. Schisms happened when causality was stretched beyond its usual linear progression, through bootstrap paradoxes or time loop trickery, or simple overuse of foreknowledge. Likelihoods thinned over past events, sending them suddenly from certainty into temporal flux. Anyone whose history intersected with a causal nexus point risked Time correcting itself. It was of most concern for paths that were otherwise simple linear cause and effect, but even for the most seasoned time travelers, a schism could open in their personal timeline. And when that happened, the resulting rift siphoned their future potential to shore up newly created anomalies in their past.
Sometimes, that meant a life cut short by happenstance. But even if it wasn't becalmed by untimely death, a siphoned future would simply calcify, leaving the survivor trapped within an infinitesimal present moment stretched out to eternity. There would be no room for agency, thought, actions or senses. There would be nothing but an empty shell of the person who was meant to be.
He collided with the console and steadied himself in the black. Their telepathic connection was gone, but he could sense the TARDIS humming at his fingertips. Oh my girl, he thought. What have we done? They'd been too clever by half, the both of them. He'd used the anomalies from his antithetical history with River as a catalyst to jumpstart the quarantine, and then the TARDIS had set her in the middle of a lynchpin fixed point to close the whole loop and set events back on course. Plenty of fodder there for a schism to take hold, even in River's complex history. And it didn't matter how it happened, only that it was there now, and that it was killing her.
He ran his hands across the jumble of dials and switches until he was oriented with his mental map of the controls. Then he set to work. There was no undoing a schism once it had run its course. Fixed events would have to stay that way; any more backtracking or meddling to change future consequences would just rip causality to shreds where it had already worn thin, and Time would literally break apart. No, the only way to cure a schism was to defibrillate the affected time stream before its future flatlined. Wake it back up, give it a zap of complexity to disrupt the drain from future to past.
And the best way to do that, he knew, pressing a palm into the engine primer's plunger switch on the panel in front of him, was with a nice big jolt of paradoxical time. Something like say, hurling one's dimensionally transcendental traveling machine through the wall of the Time Vortex with its chronon neutralizers turned off. Panel three, two rows down, third switch from the left, turn it off. Set the zig-zag plotter and turn the middle dial on the right side of panel two counterclockwise until it wouldn't turn any further. Set the risk engine switches on panel four to minimal and flick the fifth switch from the left to engage the randomizer. Find the dematerialization lever and brace for a rough ride.
The TARDIS' cadence sped up. She knew what he was planning, and though she surely knew that it was necessary, she didn't like it. He could feel her worry thrumming from his boots to near electric shocks at his fingers. For a brief moment, he hesitated, his free hand hovering up to the back of his neck. It would be a rough ride for everyone, but his paradoxical time sense was strung out, still dialed up past eleven, and right now it was the only thing that was keeping him connected to anything beyond what he could touch. An unshielded trip through the Vortex would be all but blinding. It might cause irreparable damage.
It's all right, he tried to tell her. We can sort it afterward.
No time to lose. River would surely die or calcify without this. The Doctor took a deep breath, closed his useless eyes and held tight to the TARDIS console.
"One more trip today, eh, old girl?" he spoke aloud into the silence, and pulled the lever.
**
Interlude V| Part 15
