Written by Zack Crane
The Tomorrow Children
Episode Two
“Perhaps they will kill each other.”
“We cannot allow that to happen.”
“But what can we do?”
“We can only wait, and hope this…Doctor can overcome this obstacle. The real threat is soon to make its presence known.”
“What of Bartholomew? Surely he can intervene…Peter’s condition grows weaker…”
“If Bartholomew were to unleash a large scale energy reading, than our place here would be given away. He cannot risk such a thing.”
“So we wait, then, Jude?”
“We’re so close, Simon. We can wait a short while longer.”
The screams had faded now, as most of the public had run at the first explosion. There were distant sirens, and some shouts every now and then, and though the flames still roared around them, it was almost eerily quiet.
The Doctor scrambled to his feet, “Last I heard, the Fury had forced you into an early retirement…most others who watch their teammates get slaughtered take that as a hint.”
The Special Executive halted their advancement, their faces visibly showing their concern over the Doctor’s last words. But Wardog chuckled and clapped with both hands.
“Well done, Doctor!” Wardog’s smile showed gleaming white, pointed teeth, “It’s always been said behind that legendary tongue is an even greater mind. But, neither will help you in this situation, I’m afraid. So, please, keep that tongue still before I’m forced to rip it out?”
The Doctor nodded, held up a finger for Wardog to wait, and then turned to Merry, “You remember a couple of seconds ago, when I told you to run?”
Merry’s eyes stayed wide, reflecting the flames all around them, and she nodded.
“It would be smashing if you could do that…right now.”
With his other arm, the Doctor reached into his coat pocket, pulling out the sonic screwdriver again. He pressed a button on the hilt, and in the next instant, Wardog let out a gruesome howl and dropped to his knees. Merry saw wolf-man grasping his pointed ears so tight, she thought he was going to rip them off in panic.
But the Special Executive was quick. The skeletal man clad in black threw his arm up as soon as Wardog was incapacitated.
“Executive!” Zeitgeist shouted, “Quickly! So we can be out of here!”
The Special Executive charged with rage in their step, fire as much in their intent as there was around them, and the Doctor turned to Merry once more.
“I cannot believe you’re still standing there.”
Merry clutched the child more tightly, “But what about y—”
“I said move!” the Doctor swung her by the shoulder and sent her running toward the TARDIS.
In the same moment, the Doctor ducked clear of Thug, the bulky toad-like man with elongated appendages. As Thug flew over him, the Doctor was able to see the positions of the other members of the Executive.
It was a containment position Thug had sprung on him, and all the others looked they were in defensive postures as well; they were trying to take him alive. Lucky me, the Doctor mused. He could still see Thug’s body over him, as he looked to each member of the Executive around him.
Lady Burning Fish, the flying slab of gelatin, soared over him, sending bright, smooth bursts of energy that burnt the concrete around him. They were meant to be a distraction, shot in a specific pattern to keep the Doctor from running. The Doctor smiled to himself and looked away from her.
Wardog was struggling to his feet, fighting off the waves that were still erupting from the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor kept his smile.
And then, Merry screamed.
The Doctor turned just in time to see Merry drop to her knees, sending Bartholomew diving to the concrete. The boy actually rolled and kept his momentum, eventually landing on his feet. But Merry kept groaning, clutching her head in her hands like a vise. The Doctor looked over from her to see Fascination, the gorgeous psychic, keeping Merry from accessing the TARDIS.
The Doctor leaned to his feet and seized a chunk of upturned concrete. With a graceful arc, he launched to rock at Fascination, and it came to contact her right in the forehead.
The psychic let out a high yelp and also fell to her knees near Wardog, still whimpering like a pup. Merry released her head but she still was on her knees, regaining her senses.
“Doctor!”
The voice was at first unknown to him, but it didn’t take the Doctor long to figure who had yelled for him. It was the boy. Bartholomew.
And he was pointing. Behind him.
The Doctor turned around, but wasn’t fast enough to stop Zeitgeist. The mercenary’s ethereal form flew straight through the Doctor’s chest. The strategy was simple enough. All Zeitgeist wanted to do was solidify, if only slightly. The Doctor prepared himself for immense pain.
It never came.
Instead, throughout the spirit that was Zeitgeist, there was a surge of blue energy, and none of it touched the Doctor. When Zeitgeist screamed, there was no sound, but the pain was palpable. He only became tangible when his unconscious body hit the ground.
The Doctor looked around himself and saw that Thug, who was in the process of rebounding from the missed tackle, was suspended in mid-air by the same blue energy. Lady Burning Fish, hovering a bit above Thug, was also incapacitated by it.
The Doctor turned to Bartholomew, confident in what he was going to see. Sure enough, the surges of blue energy swirled from Bartholomew’s eyes, to his fingertips, and to the Special Executive.
And the Doctor said, “What are you, boy?”
If the boy had heard the question, he was not looking to answer it, “Our signature has been revealed. We must depart immediately.”
The Doctor didn’t understand what the boy meant with those words, but there was a logical panic behind them that he didn’t doubt.
Nodding, the Doctor said, “Let’s get them into the TARDIS.”
Elijah Pryce yelled, “Got them! Epsilon troop 6! Do you copy?”
There was static for a second but then the earpiece echoed the recognizable grunt of Field Commander Ashbury.
“Yes, sir. Proceeding toward target. The connecting energy flow allows us to recognize the other three targets as well, sir. They are not far from one another.”
“And what of the anomalies?” Pryce said aloud, knowing his earpiece would pick it up.
“The anomalies are close, sir.” Ashbury said, “But we will only engage the objective, unless engagement is necessary. The anomalies have also declined in number, it seems…we’re only reading two now.”
“Perhaps that is a blessing in disguise, Commander.” Pryce said quickly, “Engage and get back here.”
“Understood. Epsilon troop 6 out.”
Pryce took the earpiece and dropped it on his desk. He took a few deep breaths, hoping to work up the nerve to let him know the progress. Pryce just didn’t want to go up there…and look at him again.
Elijah Pryce stood upright, straightened his tie, and then, as calmly as he could, he strode out of his office toward the upstairs.
The Executive had been surprisingly easy to move into the TARDIS. Neither of them said a word to each other as they did so. And Bartholomew watched it all.
Finally as the Executive was together in the middle of the TARDIS (even Wardog who had finally succumbed to unconsciousness) the Doctor made his way to the control panel and pressed a quick pattern of flashing buttons.
Over the Executive, Merry could see the faint outline of a forcefield shimmer into view over them.
The Doctor walked over to her, keeping his voice low, “Inside that field, the air level will be low, so they should stay unconscious.”
Merry nodded at him, “Believe it or not…the five monsters who tried to kill me are not what I am terrified of at the moment.”
“Really?” the Doctor said flatly and he turned toward Bartholomew, not smiling, “Oh, I think he’s cute.” He walked slowly over to the boy.
“We must collect my brothers.” Bartholomew said, “They are in certain danger.”
The Doctor shook his head, “We aren’t leaving here. We need real answers now.”
Bartholomew turned his face toward the Doctor, his golden hair framing his pale face, “Isn’t it enough that I have said they are in danger? And you humans won’t ask the right questions anyway.”
The Doctor’s frown drew tighter, but he didn’t say anything. He just spun on his heel quickly and opened the doors to the TARDIS. Bartholomew followed quickly after the Doctor had stepped out, and Merry shut the doors behind her.
The fire squadrons had arrived and were doing their jobs around them, so in the blazing heat of the flames, they all felt sprinklings of water over their faces. The firemen seemed to be having a bit of trouble navigating around the lone police box near the inferno, but none of the three paid this any mind.
Merry caught up with the Doctor, “So…what now?”
The Doctor kept walking, “I can’t answer that question.”
“Oh.” Merry said, so she turned and looked toward Bartholomew, “So…what now?”
Bartholomew looked up at her, and smiled.
“Oh, god, what is that?”
“We’re in a sewer, Merry. What do you think that is?”
Merry brought her hand to her nose and followed the dim outline of Bartholomew ahead of her. As it got darker, Merry could have sworn that the boy started to glow just so she could see him.
The Doctor followed Merry and had not said much of a word, except for the occasional snide remark, since they had left the TARDIS. Bartholomew had brought them away from the din of the wreckage scene, and down a thin alley to an open sewer drain. He had kept them at a fast pace the entire time. Merry was having a hard time keeping up with him even now.
But finally, and without warning, Bartholomew stopped. Merry came to an abrupt halt behind him, trying to stop in time to keep from sending the boy into the river of sewage that flowed next to them. She looked back to the Doctor, and saw he was fiddling with the sonic screwdriver almost absent-mindedly. Merry turned her head back ahead but it was much too dark to see more.
“Hello, Doctor.”
The words came from two boys who looked in every way identical to Bartholomew, Merry saw, and she completely forgot about the Doctor’s fiddlings. Bartholomew floated over the sewage and landed next to them on the other side.
“We must act quickly, Doctor.” All three boys spoke in unison.
“So you’ve said.” the Doctor nodded, as though he had been expecting this entire conversation, “I’ll be quick about this, naturally.”
The Doctor raised the sonic screwdriver, which now didn’t look like the sonic screwdriver at all. The top was pronged into two points, and there was a tangled mess of wiring connecting it to the rest of the screwdriver. The Doctor pressed a button along the hilt, and there were sudden sparks of light between the pronged points at the top.
And the children suddenly fell to the ground, shuddering violently. Merry gazed at them wide-eyed and then looked at the Doctor. He still held the sonic screwdriver up, and had a bit of a grin on the corners of his mouth.
“What are you doing to them?” Merry shouted, and still the children shuddered, now covered in stretching blue streams of energy. It was like some kind of…seizure.
The Doctor dropped into the sewage and crossed it, wading to the other side. He didn’t even look back at Merry as he hopped up to where the children were still having convulsions.
One of the boys, though the Doctor had lost which was Bartholomew, looked up at him, trying to control himself, “Stop…you don’t understand…”
“Doctor!” Merry yelled, “What the hell are you doing? They’re just children!”
“They are hardly children, Merry.” the Doctor grunted, “The energy unleashed upon the Special Executive earlier was not the charging of particles in air between two targets, as a human genetic mutate could produce. It simply didn’t behave the same. It wasn’t as erratic. No, this was energy that was focused, powered from an alternate source, through these children.”
Merry jumped into the sewage and started to cross closer to the Doctor. She had heard the Doctor’s explanation, but it didn’t matter to her, “Alright then. So they’re not mutants. You’ve made your point. Cut it out. Now.”
“Have I made my point?” the Doctor cocked his eye and then kneeled toward the children, “I’ve reconfigured the sonic screwdriver to emit a tiny electromagnetic pulse, disrupting whatever gives you your powers and, from the looks of things, your life source as well.”
The Doctor clicked the button on the sonic screwdriver again. The charges stopped and the children no longer shook with electricity.
“Let me make one thing clear.” the Doctor said simply, “The times when I want answers are very few indeed. So when I request them, I expect to have them.”
The children sat up, albeit slowly, “We…understand.”
“Good.” The Doctor said, allowing the children to come to their feet.
Merry only stared at the Doctor with an appalled look on every detail of her face, and he tried to pay her no mind.
The children were standing shoulder to shoulder now, at first glancing from one another, perhaps to make sure the Doctor didn’t cause too much damage to either of them. Then, they tilted their heads to the side and stared at Merry and the Doctor.
When they explained, their voices rang in the same unison, “We are called Simon, Jude and Bartholomew. What do you know of the Prodigy Group?”
The Doctor looked to Merry, but she just shook her head. The Doctor turned back to the children, “I recognize the name. They’re a…think tank of some sort. What of them?”
The children continued, “They seek to kill us.”
The Doctor eyed them cautiously and said his next word even more so, “Why?”
“We have been engineered to be the last keys in a weapon that could conceivably destroy this world.”
The Doctor groaned, “Oh, naturally.”
Merry scoffed at the Doctor’s response and shook her head at him. The Doctor was visibly shocked by the look. Merry turned back to the boys, “What sort of weapon is this?”
“We are not certain.” the boys’ echoed one another, “All we remember is, one day, waking up, completely unchained and unrestricted from our rooms, with a voice screaming through our shared mind. It told us to run. So we did.”
“What does this have to do with Merry and me?” the Doctor asked.
“You have extra-dimensional transport.” the children said simply, “We sensed the extra-dimensional energies upon you and your companion, just as we sensed them upon that other anomaly…the Special Executive, as they were.”
The Doctor nodded, “Anomalies. Things new to this dimension from another. Right.”
“Doctor,” the children continued, “you must not allow us to be taken.”
Merry turned quickly to the Doctor, “We have to help them.”
The Doctor frowned at her, “Not so fast, Merry. There are still too many unanswered questions. Who sent the Special Executive, since they weren’t after Bartholomew? What is this weapon? Not to mention the fact we don’t know if these children are actually telling the truth to us!”
“Would you stop being so suspicious?!” Merry yelled, “They’re just children! Children who’ve been manipulated! And lied to! Playing a role in a game they didn’t ever want any part in! They’re…they’re…”
The Doctor’s shoulders dropped a little, and he sighed, “Merry, you can’t…they’re not like you.”
“They’re exactly like me!” Merry shouted at him, “You know it! Created for a purpose out of their control, completely helpless to stop it. But you helped me. Why not them?”
The Doctor couldn’t look at Merry after that outburst, but he tried to continue, “Merry, please, I’m not even sure if they’re really children…”
Merry frowned at that, and opened her mouth a little, hoping to respond. But she was stopped when the boys behind her dropped to their knees, shivering with blue energy once more. Their cries of pain were audible this time, increasing as each surge of energy went through them.
Merry turned back to the Doctor, “Stop it!”
The Doctor looked down at the sonic screwdriver still in his hands. It wasn’t operating. “I’m not causing this!”
Merry looked past the convulsing children at her feet and down the corridor through which she and the Doctor had come. There were beams of red light littering the walls of the tunnel, and the footfalls were echoing around a bend.
“They have…found us…” the boys said, struggling with the words, like a television struggling with static.
“Soldiers…” Merry said, looking back to the Doctor, “Just like they showed me*. We have to get them out of here now!”
(*in her vision, last issue- Zack)
The Doctor looked from Merry to the corridor, where the red lights were becoming brighter and footfalls were becoming louder. He shook his head as he looked back at her.
“We can’t do that now, Merry.” the Doctor said quickly, “They’ve become unstable. I wouldn’t touch them or move them. I’m sorry, but we have to go now!”
The Doctor started to back up and he grabbed Merry’s arm to have her follow. Merry jerked her arm away from him.
“I’m not going to leave them.” Merry said, and she turned back to the children, still convulsing on the ground.
She reached over to grab one of the boys. But the boy reached out with his small hand and grabbed her instead. He was still convulsing and shivering, but the energy didn’t seem to be streaming over him any longer, and his piercing blue eyes stared brightly into Merry’s.
“Find Peter. Save him. Leave us.” They were flat words directed in distorted quickness. The boy released Merry from his clutch, and dropped back to the ground and the energy returned to torture him.
“Stay where you are!”
Down the corridor, Merry looked up and saw soldiers, all clad in black, carrying gigantic rifles. They were just like the ones from the dream. It was coming true again. Dots of red light began to litter Merry’s chest.
“Come on!”
The Doctor’s voice rang through her ears before his hand returned to wrench her arm again. He pulled her away from the red dots, just before bullets invaded the space where she had stood.
Merry ran with the Doctor and she frantically tried to keep with his furious pace. When gunshots rang through the canals again, Merry was barely able to keep her legs from collapsing beneath her.
“Here, Merry!” the Doctor said, as they finally came to another open sewer drain. Merry was gasping for breath, and still there were footfalls echoing behind them. The Doctor pushed Merry in front of him, “Try to get up there. Maybe I can reconfigure the sonic screwdriver into something that can hold them off…”
Merry nodded and was just about to lift herself out of the drain, when she spied something next to her. Something bright.
“Doctor! Look!” Merry pointed down the corridor, very close to them.
The Doctor looked up from the sonic screwdriver and was almost as taken aback as Merry had been.
It was another boy. A child, just like the others. Blonde hair to shoulders, crisp suit and dazzling eyes. But…this one was different in a way. The way he carried himself. As though he were sick. The Doctor could see it in his shoulders, and from the unhealthy dark circles around those sparkling blue eyes.
“Peter…” Merry said softly.
And the boy smiled.
There were five of them. All in perfect formation, each anticipating the others’ thoughts. This was everything they had trained for.
Field Commander Eric Ashbury felt and heard his feet echo
off the thick concrete walls of the
They were within his grasp. They were closer than they had been for months. Just a bit farther down the corridor. Only one more till mission accomplished.
There was something up ahead of him. Maybe forty yards and closing. There was the final child! But there were other subjects with him. Ashbury recognized the man in the long, black overcoat and slick hair. He also recognized the young girl with him. They must have been the ones Ashbury was warned about.
“Team!” Ashbury said aloud as they closed the gap toward them, “We have located the anomalies! Shoot only on my mark!”
The five soldiers stopped ten yards from the target, with their rifles ready against their shoulders. The three didn’t move, though there was an open sewer drain next to them. The man in the overcoat moved into a protective stance in front of the target and the girl.
“Hold your hands high!” Ashbury yelled, feeling his voice bounce off the sewer walls around him, “Step away from the boy! I’m going to give you until the count of three!”
The man in the overcoat only smiled and raised his hands. They were completely empty.
“Honestly, can’t we talk about this?”
“Three!”
“We’re all adults here. Let’s act like it.”
“Two!”
“Please, allow me to introduce myself. I am…”
“One!”
“…the Doctor!”
It happened in under a second. The order to fire was about to leave Ashbury’s lips, when he saw the Doctor flick his wrist. From behind his hand, probably hidden there the entire time, came a device, looking curiously like a medical reflex hammer, flipped expertly into his fingers. Then, there came the flash, shooting from the device faster than a bullet and unleashing a wave of pain upon the soldiers’ eyes, which were hidden under night vision goggles.
When Ashbury and his men had recovered, they were alone in the sewers, with only noise from the street echoing from the open drain. Ashbury grunted, pulled himself to his feet, and looked over the state of his men. Seeing that the only thing remotely injured was their pride, Ashbury pressed the device in his ear.
“This is Pryce.”
“Sir…mission compromised.” Ashbury bit his lip.
“And what the hell happened this time?” Pryce roared into his ear.
“The anomaly, sir.” Ashbury spoke quickly.
Pryce was quiet for a moment, but then his voice refilled Ashbury’s ear, “What kind of an anomaly are we dealing with here?”
Ashbury sighed and then looked at his fallen men, still picking themselves up, and then looked at the open sewer drain. He picked his next words carefully.
“He called himself the Doctor.”
NEXT ISSUE: The Doctor and Merry try to figure out exactly what Peter is, and come to a shocking discovery! And…one of our cast is kidnapped!
DOCTOR’S NOTES:
Well, I’m not going to lie to you. The Special Executive angle takes a back seat in upcoming issues for a while. Not because I think it was a mistake to introduce them, but rather because I just wanted the foundation for much future storylines to be set in the first few issues. But, I hope to write a few Special Executive issues for Tales of the Pendragons, as to hint what they want with the Doctor, and what’s happened to them between when they got their ass whooped by the Fury and now.
Take it easy, and remember the words of Joe Connell: more feedback, more fanfic.
-ZACK! (drcrozack@yahoo.com)