Continued from Part 1

The air in the Underground City smelled of tourists and crowds, sweating the summer out of their pores and shivering as their skin went clammy in the sudden climate-control of the subterranean shopping district. Body Shop fragrances mixed with potpourri and the spicy air wafting out of the Kwik-Kurry franchises in the food courts.

It was nothing Trish hadn’t smelled before, many times; it was the smell of the city. She forged ahead through the crowds, glancing at her watch, as the man walking beside her glanced at his own. Trying to think of anything other than John.

Her thoughts were going in circles. She would have blamed Isabel, if she’d been the kind of person who blamed other people for her own mind. Oh, if only she couldn’t see where Isabel was coming from, and feel pity for it. How could she explain what was so obvious? How to describe to the unseeing a compassion which was first nature to her? Like discussing colour with a blind man, or believing whole-heartedly in the existence of sitting down.

What do you see in him?

I don’t see anything in him. I see him.

She was starting to feel flustered. She glanced at her watch again, as did the man beside her. Try not to think about John. Concentrate on getting to Union, to catch the subway to work, where she’d see John again. Dammit!

She sped up a little as if that would help her to outrun the thoughts circling around her head, looking for a weakness, waiting to pounce. It wasn’t as if her feelings about John were all that complicated. It was as simple as sight, as the play of colour in a rainbow or the face of the man in the moon. She could see the tenderness in him, a kindness born of his pain, his pain born of she knew not what, but in him all the same and making her ache with the echo of it. She could see in his face that he turned from those who would hurt him, whether they would or not.

How much longer can you keep trying?

As long as it takes, Isabel, as long as it takes to get through to him.

If she could get through this crowd first. She’d never felt so claustrophobic. The crowd surrounded her, clustered around her, moving as one — a mass of people all together, each alone. As if somehow their individuality made them vulnerable, just as their closeness made them a threat. A threat? Where had that thought come from? John would know. It was the kind of thought he’d understand, just as she could understand the thought of kindness. But there was something else here, now, something that knew she was alone. Something closing in on her. Something bad, hunting her in the crowd; something she couldn’t let herself think about. Keep your head down; don’t be noticed; don’t stand out, or they’ll get you. She felt it, knew it on a level deeper than words, more ancient than emotions.

Brittle now, barely thinking at all about anything other than John and Union, she stepped up the pace and glanced at her watch again. As did the man beside her. And the woman behind him. And almost everyone else in the crowd, including those who weren’t wearing watches.

And something growled, and the spell of sanity broke. A wave of panic swept through the crowd and suddenly a river of humanity was pouring through the Underground City, a near-silent running without a word, just the whisper and squeak of sandals and sneakers and shoes, a rough drumming burr as hundreds of feet pounded across the marble and tile floors.

People walking north faltered as they saw the faces flooding towards them, and turned and ran to get clear of the crowd and, just like that, were a part of it. Trish was in the middle of the crowd now, just a fire-haired drop in the ocean. The man beside her glanced at his watch, tripped and went under the running feet with a wet, stick-snapping crunch, and nobody stopped, nobody broke the rhythm. Get away from the hunters, find the one who will understand. Everything would be all right when they got to union, when they got to union, get to union, get to union! Union! Union!

? ? ?

“Union,” said Ace.

The Doctor glanced up and saw her staring at the name on the wall of the station. “Yes, quite. A good place to start and a remarkably appropriate name, all things considered. Central location, handy for the buses.”

He glanced at the tracking unit he’d knocked together out of a pile of spare parts while Mark watched him with what had started out as scepticism and had ended up as something like awe-stricken catatonia. Ace had been there and done that and bought the badge years ago, and as the Doctor waved the tracker about, politely ignoring the people around him and peering at the blinking lights, she was just trying to avoid thinking of it as a pKe-meter.

“You’re keeping pretty silent about the plan,” she said. “And where I fit into it.”

“Really?” The Doctor didn’t look up from the tracker. She would have found that suspicious even if the tracker had been doing something interesting. “I think it’s too early in the game to go making any grand plans, don’t you? As I said at UNIT, for the moment we’re just here to observe.”

“And that’d be a lot more convincing if you’d whipped up two of those things. Look…” She pointed at one of the central pillars on the platform, at a ragged-edged, slightly rusting map which showed the subway stops in yellow and white, and also informed everybody who cared to know that DEREK heart BRENDA. “We’re at the south end of a horseshoe shape, right? So if we’re supposed to be scouting out the city for signs of trouble, why don’t we split up and take two different directions?”

The Doctor sighed. “For a start, Ace, that’s a map of the subway line. If we followed it we’d simply be travelling under the city, not exploring the heart of the downtown area.”

“Principle’s the same, though. Why don’t we split up? Cover more area?” Ace tapped him on the shoulder, suddenly serious. “You’re worried I’m going to fall to it again, aren’t you? You’re trying to protect me.”

“Am I? Where did you get that idea?”

“Go on, then. Give me one good reason why I’m wrong.”

The Doctor held up the tracker. “Well, the UNIT stores only had enough equipment to build one of these…”

“Like that could have stopped you. You could have taken the time to make something, if you’d wanted. So why the rush to get down here just to wander around looking for something which you don’t even know what it is?”

A pained expression flitted across the Doctor’s face. “Ace, I know you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, if not of speaking English. Do you really think that was just an empty excuse to keep you out of trouble?”

“Oh, come on, Professor. Hold it up to your ear, see if you can—”

The tracker started to weeble.

The Doctor held up a hand, his attention suddenly fixed on the unit. He made a small adjustment to the controls, and the alarm sound stopped.

And the other sound became clear.

Something was coming. A rushing, sweeping sound, as of the rain on the street or the sound of many feet running in rhythm. The Doctor’s hand suddenly lashed out, grabbed Ace by the wrist, and squeezed.

Ace gasped, and her eyes came back into focus. She hadn’t even felt herself go. But the people on the platform were all standing still, necks craned up, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Nobody was commenting on the noise, nobody was looking around themselves in surprise, or puzzlement. They were frozen like deer in the headlights, as the rushing roaring noise grew louder and louder; they stood in silent fear, waiting for the thing to come and fall upon them.

“You can hear the ocean,” said the Doctor.

? ? ?

It was a warm day, and the doors between Union Station and the Underground City had been left open. That didn’t change the outcome of things, but it did move it further south. With a roar of shoes on concrete the stampede poured into the station, and the ticket inspectors who looked up from their work later woke to find themselves clawing at the walls of their booths, unsure why.

The first to reach the turnstiles tried to vault them, but few were fit enough to make the leap. The metal arms held fast against those who would trespass on transit commission ground without paying, and the people slammed up against them and were held fast by the weight of those behind. Bodies pressed against the turnstiles until they broke. Eventually, so did the turnstiles, and the bottleneck flooded into the station, hammering feet carrying unthinking bodies to the stairwells.

And failing to break pace even there.

? ? ?

The Doctor didn’t even look up as the first bodies started to rain down the stairs.

“Something,” he muttered. “What is it? What is it? No structure to it.” He hit the tracker on its side, as if that would make sense of what it was telling him. “It’s telepathic. It has to be, but there’s no clear source—”

More bodies hurtled down the stairs, tripping over their own feet, tumbling head over heels onto the platform, followed by more, and more. Ace staggered back from the stairwell and the snapping sounds of shattered limbs. “Oh, God! Doctor—”

“But what? Post-hypnotic influence, telepathic implants? The Master? No, it can’t be, he’s not…”

The Doctor stepped over one of the flailing bodies without noticing, peering at the screen of the tracker. Ace stared at him in horror.

“It’s present. But diffuse. What are these other readings? Outside? I’m too close to the source. Lost in the crowd—”

And still more people were running down the stairs, stampeding over the fallen and milling about the platform. People were lying where they had fallen, staring blankly ahead of them, their legs twitching as they still tried to run on broken limbs. One woman was walking in a circle while lying down. The Three Stooges visit the E.R., thought Ace with a shiver of horror. And still more people were arriving, crowding over the first. People were falling down the up escalator, rolling down the squirming mass of bodies packed into the stairwell.

“I can’t find out what’s doing this!” the Doctor shouted in helpless rage, and then the first person stumbled and fell off the platform, onto the rails.

As if a signal had been given, suddenly the people were leaping from the platform in droves, clearing the way for those behind. The Doctor looked up for the first time, and his eyes widened as he took in the scene. “Oh, no,” he breathed. He nearly dropped the tracker as he realised what he’d done. What he hadn’t done. “Ace!”

There was a spark and a snap and a crackling scream as someone touched the live rail.

“No!” The Doctor jammed the tracker back into his pocket and looked around wildly.

Just in time to see Ace leap off the platform.

? ? ?

Ace’s first instinct — her only thought — was to help; at least, as soon as she’d started thinking again, it was. When the people had arrived she’d been frozen by the suddenness of it, the horror of the mob, faces stripped of individuality, of all that made them whoever they were. Was that what happened to me? Was that what —

Then they started falling over the edge, and her brain began working again.

An old man had fallen badly and was twisting about on the rails, the pain from his twisted leg drowned out by whatever force had dragged or driven him here. Even now, Ace could feel it, something tugging at her, calling her to come to Union. Later, much later, when she had a chance to think about it all, she’d decide that it had probably helped that she was already at Union when the Doctor had broken the spell; she might not have been able to resist otherwise.

She leapt over the edge of the platform and grabbed the old man by his shoulders, trying to lift him up and over. But the man kept twitching beneath her, pulling himself away — not so much struggling as simply obeying the call, failing to notice she was there, trying to help.

“Stop it,” she begged, but her voice was lost in the crowd.

“Doctor! I could use a bit of help here!”

She looked up, just as the Doctor pressed his hand against the ragged edge of the subway map and drew it sharply down. The old man in Ace’s grasp stretched out his hand and moved it downwards, as did everybody else in the crowd. The Doctor winced in pain, and a gasp as loud as a gust of wind rushed through the station. The old man slumped in Ace’s arms. For a moment she began to feel relieved — he’d done it, somehow, he’d driven the thing away, whatever it was — and then the people with broken limbs started to scream.

Suddenly the crowd was no longer a single entity. Union Station was filled with individuals. Frightened, panic-stricken individuals, who’d just been walking through the mall, minding their own business, and had blinked and found themselves in the subway, their arms twisted, their legs crushed, bleeding from their heads.

Suddenly everything was much worse.

The old man really was struggling now. “What are you—” he gasped, “keep away from — what have you done to my leg? My—”

“You have to get back onto the platform!” Ace shouted. “I’m trying to help you! You have to get back up!”

And then there were arms reaching down from above, a helping hand holding the man under his shoulders. Ace let go and helped to push the man’s leg back up over the edge, out of danger — but there were still so many people lying on the tracks and screaming.

She saw people, their panic now self-generated, try to run up the stairs out of the insanity in the station; she saw people stumble over the injured and twist out of the way and fall onto the tracks themselves; she saw the Doctor holding out his hands, shouting for calm, pleading for peace, too little too late. She saw a woman try to pull herself back up onto the platform, only to fall back and strike her head against the rail when someone stepped on her fingers.

And then she saw the light, at the end of the tunnel.

Getting closer.

People started to scream — or was it the screech of metal, on metal?

Too many people on the tracks. She couldn’t save them all, she knew it like a punch in the gut. Without thinking — trying not to think — she grabbed the closest (it could have been anybody, she thought over and over again later; just the closest one, it could have been anybody but their paths just happened to intersect, decisions and chance adding and subtracting and leading them both here), as Ace grabbed the dazed, flame-haired woman under her arms and lifted her as the light flared and became two, growing in size, and the tunnel exhaled with the rush of its approach.

“You have to climb back up,” Ace chanted like a mantra, lost in the moment and the details highlighted by the clarity of the disaster to come — the blood on the woman’s head, the closeness of her, the scent of her hair, like the sun coming out on a cloudy day…

The Doctor was there, pulling the woman back onto the platform, clearing a way as the great grey beast hurtled forward, snarling; as Ace grabbed the edge of the platform and swung her leg up and over and a polite recorded female voice spoke out over the squeal of brakes and the screams of those, still on the rails, who could see what was coming for them—

“For your safety, please remain behind the yellow line until the train has come to a complete stop. Thank you for riding the Rocket!”

She’d been everywhere with the Doctor, seen so many new things, so many new memories that would stay with her for the rest of her life; and now, one more.

The train entered the station.

She could still hear it after it stopped. It wasn’t just the brakes screaming in her ears.

“It’s all right,” the Doctor told her, holding her as she shuddered in his arms. “It’s going to be all right.” He stroked her hair, his eyes empty. “We’ll find out what’s happening here. We’ll stop it.”

In this body, she could tell when he was lying.

? ? ?

Friday (late afternoon)

Today, John Tofler’s day began at four o’clock.

His cat sprang awake at the unfamiliar sound, yowling at the angry black ringing thing, which was probably what really woke him. He hadn’t been sleeping well, his dreams haunted by distant cries for help that sounded like his own. However, some underused part of him recognised the sound of the phone for what it was and sent his hand out towards it. Perhaps if he’d been fully awake he would have let it ring, knowing that if it was really important they’d leave a message he could answer later, when he was equipped to do so; half asleep, he let his hand pick the receiver from the cradle and bring it to his ear before he knew what it was doing.

“Hello?” he mumbled.

“Is this Mr John Tofler of Caledon Hills?”

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Sir, I’m calling from the Prince William Hospital in Toronto. Are you the Mr John Tofler listed by a Patricia Douglas as the person to contact in case of emergencies?”

John sat up in bed, the word hospital sounding as a beacon in his head, pulling the rest of his thoughts towards it. “Who? Patri… Wait, do you mean Trish? Did you say you’re calling from the hospital?”

“Sir,” the voice said, calmly, professionally — “I’m afraid there’s been an accident on the subway.”

“An accident? What? Is she all right?”

“She’s going to be fine, sir. She’s suffered from a mild concussion, but there’s no need to keep her overnight. She’s going to need someone to help her home, however, and as you’re the person on her—”

“Yes — yes. Of course. I’ll be there. Thank you.”

He let the receiver drop back into place, the movements taking place by themselves, as if he were still asleep, dreaming all of this; the waking, the phone call, the conversation. Even as his hand drifted back into place by his side the details of the conversation were already breaking up and mixing in with the dreams from which it had woken him. Woolly-headed, he sat where he was on the bed, eyeing his cat as it pawed at the phone suspiciously, daring it to attack.

What fully woke him was the dawning realisation that he was in real danger of falling asleep again.

Trish had called to him for help.

He had to go help Trish.

That much he understood.

He leapt from his bed, suddenly wide awake — or feeling wide awake as the adrenaline rushed through him — and then as he started to pull on his pants he stopped, suddenly, staring at nothing. His cat, spooked, leapt from the side table and bolted from the room.

He sometimes felt as if all of the important parts of his life had drifted by without his noticing, and he’d just realised that that’s just what had happened on the phone.

“I’ll be there,” he said out loud, repeating himself. He’d said that without thinking, his mind full of the knowing that she’d asked for him. Person to contact in case of emergencies — was he really Trish’s next of kin? He knew she was an orphan, but he also knew she had so many other friends in the city… good friends. Did she really trust him more than any of them?

Dear God, why?

He finished dressing, but slowly. He hadn’t asked for the responsibility. He didn’t want it. But he did want it, more than he didn’t. He was going to have to go.

Even though the hospital was right in the heart of the city.

Downtown Toronto.

Strange how hard his heart beat just to think about it. The pain of walking past fifty or so people in the airport had been bad, the worst he’d felt for as far back as he dared to remember; and now he was being asked to go of his own accord into the middle of a city of over three million…

He closed his eyes and put an image of Trish in his head, lying unconscious in her hospital bed, waiting for him to come to her. Some traitor part of him started to ask how she could be waiting for him while unconscious, but he told it to shut up. Baby steps. Break it down into easily managed sections. And it’ll be over before you know it.

“I’ll be there,” he said, and hoped it wasn’t a lie.

? ? ?

Once he got out on the road he knew he wouldn’t make it.

The freeway stretched out before him like a black, cracked tongue of tar, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The city lurked over the edge of the horizon, crouched in the grass and waiting to pounce. He could feel the weight of it even from here, so much louder, so much more alive than at deep night.

It was just past four — rush hour — but work was no longer as centralized as it used to be and the veins of the city were nearly as clogged as the arteries. Hundreds of cars jostled for position, each driver sure as sure that their right to be on the road superseded all others.

Miles to go before he could rest, and his knuckles were ghosting with tension, carving imaginary grooves in the steering wheel. He remembered the stress of his first driving lessons, the unspoken fear his instructor tried to bury every time she got into a car with a well-meaning youth who could potentially kill them both just by failing to look to the left. But what had the alternative been? Public transport? Yeah. He’d have been dead by now, he was sure.

So perhaps not such a bad idea.

It was surprising how often his trains of thought ended up at that station these days.

Trains of thought, public transit… he clutched at the idea like a drowning man grasping an ice floe. Downsview station wasn’t all that far. Normally the thought of public transport would have driven him into an ague — witness five seconds ago for example — but again, what was the alternative? He couldn’t keep driving in this condition.

Right. To the subway. Park and ride. Only one quantity-surveying game to play to get there; why, he was practically there already!

Down the highway. Past the bored, self-centred children playing license-plate games to distract themselves from the long asphalt yawn stretching out over the horizon. I saw a cow! Not in the city, stupid! Mommmmm, Danny just called me stupid…

The off-ramp curled away from the highway like a finger beckoning him towards the city. Past the factory outlets and the convenience stores, past Downsview CFB where a dark cloud in the shape of a Land Rover was turning in through the gates. He shied away from the faces of the two people in the back — a young woman, her head resting against the chest of a tall thin man, two pairs of eyes dead to the world.

Don’t think about it! Don’t don’t don’t — almost there.

He pulled into the park ‘n’ ride lot with a gasp of relief. Fumbling fingers shivered with the keys, and the engine of his car quit with a grumbling cough. The loss of the white noise only seemed to make the rest of it louder, but he wouldn’t think about it. Can’t stop now. Nearly there!

Open the door, foot out, trembling — supporting himself on the roof of his car, scorching his hand on the fried-egg heat of it, resting himself on the hammer of the sun. A curl of summer air wafted across the parking lot, carrying the smell of grass, petrol and discarded cigarette butts to him. Fumbling for change in his pocket, crushing invisible eggshells under his feet, and the station entrance gaped open before him. How much was the fare now? That much?

Through the turnstiles, across the tiles, down the stairs. Wait on the platform. Southbound platform. Northbound trains go to York University and into the suburbs of Vaughan, away from Trish. A train roared into the station and he forced himself to stride up to it, trying to act casually. The doors parted and he stepped into the last car, sweat chilling in the ice of the air conditioning, sitting down right at the back.

Nearly there now. Nearly there. Close your eyes, go to sleep… he should have brought his Cardboy. Twenty hours of compressed music would have drowned out everything else. He could see the passengers looking at him, even with his eyes closed. Staring. And who could blame them? A pale, sweating stranger — unshaven, unwashed, unclean. Unclean!

Don’tmakeeyecontact — pretendheisn’tthere —

A three-tone chime sang out from the subway’s public address system. He looked up, hope gleaming in his eyes. The train was about to start moving…

“Attention, subway passengers. Due to an incident at Union Station, all trains on the University-Spadina line have been delayed. Emergency crews are on the scene and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Thank you for riding the Rocket!”

They were looking at him oddly. He’d said something out loud, or gasped, or possibly even screamed. He didn’t know which. He couldn’t even remember doing it.

He slumped against the window, his skin pale and clammy; his sweat dripping down the glass; his hair sticking to his head in clumps. Not even halfway there.

? ? ?

“Coffee,” said Beatrice. “Black. Hot.” She placed the mug on the table before of the Doctor, gently resting it between his hands. “Just what the Doctor ordered.”

The Doctor sat where he was, hands resting lightly on the dead plastic of his tracking unit, eyes staring an hour into the past. “Thank you,” he said distantly. “That was delicious.”

Sharp sat down next to him. “Are you ready to tell me what happened out there?”

“I was too late,” the Doctor said.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Sharp slapped her hand on the table. “Pull yourself together, Doctor, you’re no good to us like this. You’re no good to anybody like this!”

The Doctor turned dead eyes towards her. “How good was I before?” he demanded. “I stood by, I did nothing. I took notes while people died…”

“And what did they tell you?”

“They just screamed, and — oh. Yes.” He lowered his gaze to the tracking unit. “There was panic this time. Real terror. It was different. I’m still not sure what the purpose was, what the force wanted — what it is. What it’s doing. I need something to compare it to, but I can’t…” he hesitated, “I can’t allow another incident to take place. But that’s the only way I’m going to find out how to stop it. If only I could have seen the incident on the highway…”

“Well, why don’t you go have a look? You’ve got a time machine. Go back in time, see for yourself.”

The Doctor shook his head wearily, as if he’d had this conversation many times before. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wasn’t there. I can’t go back and be there if I wasn’t there to begin with…”

“You do realise that makes no sense.”

“Oh, doesn’t it?” he snapped. “And you’re the one with the practical and theoretical experience of four-dimensional topographical event analysis?”

Sharp drew her hand back; she hadn’t really been aware that it had been resting on the Doctor’s arm, until then. “Sorry, I’m sure,” she said quietly. “I’m just trying to help.”

The Doctor took a long, deep breath. “Yes,” he said, more calmly. “Yes, of course you are. I’m sorry.” He stood up. “First things first. How’s Ace doing?”

“Don’t we have more important things to—”

The Doctor looked at her.

“She’s fine. She’s doing well. She’s recovering. She’s still in a state of shock.” Sharp turned away from the Doctor’s gaze. “Nobody should have to see what she did.”

Somehow, even though she was looking away, she could still see the bleak expression cross the Doctor’s face. “No. She wanted to help.” He looked down at the tracker, turning it over and over in his hands. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have taken her out there. I’ve had better ideas. Nobody deserves that. Not for—well.”

This time, Sharp remained silent.

At last, the Doctor sighed, dropped the tracker into his pocket, squared his shoulders. “Priorities. I’ve analysed the readings as best I can on this thing. I’m going to need to get out there again. Alone, this time.”

“You’re sure you don’t need to brood a bit more?”

A ghost of a smile twitched the Doctor’s lips. “I’m a Time Lord. We sulk transcendentally. Might I trouble you for the loan of a helicopter?”

? ? ?

Imagine it, because that’s the only way you can see it. Curling through the city like a swirl of milk through coffee, before it gets swallowed up by the big brown of it. Like a puff of cigarette smoke curls through the clear air of a room — or, if such a thing were possible, like a puff of clear air would curl through a room choked with smoke.

Pressed down from all directions, locked in and shut out at the same time, surrounded and hunted by those that would consume; teeth flashing in the shadows, lurking hidden from the sun, while outside, a seeking, a searching, for the one who shares this feeling — the one who understands. Who is of a mind with this questing, lost, increasingly desperate thought.

Somewhere in the city this is happening:

Trish turns in her bed, bunching up the blankets, away from the curtain which blocks out the rest of the ward (because you can’t heal yourself in the sight of others’ pain); and John Tofler is standing there, beside the bed, smiling at her.

“Hey, you,” he says quietly. “I made it.”

And her delight is like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, so bright and warm and obvious; and perhaps this is why John winces slightly, squints and turns his head down, the smile stretching into a rictus. His skin is pale and clammy, his hair a different kind of mess than the one she’s come to know and… It’s bunched together and glistening along his forehead, where he’s dragged a short-sleeved arm across his face to wipe the worst of the sweat away.

“Good God, John, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he says, and both of them know it’s a lie.

Not reaching out, closing in, closing in on itself as the thought closes in on it; but here, this is the one who would understand, who must be made to see, to help. The ether is disturbed with invisible howls, fins in the water, glowing yellow eyes in the deep, wild grass. The city is haunted.

It calls out. Again.

? ? ?

For a moment, as the ground dropped away beneath the Doctor, all his troubles seemed to fall away with it. It was a comforting illusion, as long as he didn’t let himself remember about relative motion; as long as he could forget that the ground was staying just where it was, and that it was he who was fleeing from it. As long as he didn’t know that it would still be there, and that he had to return to it.

As long as he could forget about gravity.

He decided to turn on the telempathic tracker.

The pilot leaned over. “So,” he shouted over the whip-whip-whip of the blades, “what’s the plan?”

“Fly downtown,” the Doctor shouted back. “Circle around. Look for anything unusual.”

“Anything else?”

“Try not to hit the Goodyear blimp.”

The pilot nodded. “Good plan.”

“I’m noted for them.”

The Doctor turned his eyes back to the city for a moment, as if he could send his mind questing out, leaping through the space between the skyscrapers, faster and more agile than the clumsy metal bird whipping him through the thick summer air. Where are you, he thought savagely, what are you? How could you do that to Ace, to us? What is it you want?

He gripped the tracker as if trying to throttle answers out of it, but all he could see when he looked down at the screen was his own face, reflected.

? ? ?

The borrowed pen spilled ink onto the dotted line, in the approximate shape of John’s name. The nurse frowned at him. “Are you quite sure you feel ready to leave, sir?”

John’s jaw clenched, choking down the words. I’ve been here too long already, he didn’t say. Thank you for your show of concern but I really have to be going and it’s not out of a selfish belief that I know better than you even though you’ve been doing your job here for so long but you don’t care any more and I know it and you know it and this is just a…

He’d lost track of where the sentence had started out, and now even his teeth felt as though they were sweating. “Yes,” he mumbled, “quite sure.”

Trish tugged gently on his arm. “Are you really okay, John? I gotta say, you look like hell. I can stick around for a while as if…”

So much concern. He was drowning in it. “I have to get out of the city,” he coughed out, the pen trembling in his grip. “That’s it. I just have to get away.”

The nurse leaned forward. “You really don’t look at all—”

The slap of flesh on the desktop echoed thinly through emergency admitting, loud enough that people started to pretend they hadn’t heard it. “Why won’t you listen?” John demanded, the words squeezing through his throat, forced out by the pressure within. “I said… I just have to leave!”

He could feel Trish staring at him in shock, could see the invisible shutters closing behind the nurse’s eyes. “Very well,” the nurse said stiffly. No skin off her nose, then, let him drop in the heat outside if he doesn’t want to let her help… oh, God. John shoved the papers back across the desk at the nurse.

“Not your fault,” he gasped, unsure who he was talking to.

He turned and stalked away from the desk, feeling Trish beside him; her hand on his arm, feeling the tension there, its shaking and cramping with the effort of not holding onto her. “John, what on earth was—”

“Do you know how many people she sees in a day?” he gasped out. “Hurt people, people in pain, families and friends, she tries to help them, make it better, they lash out at her — she wants to help but there are so many of them, Trish, she closes herself off from them so she doesn’t get hurt by them and she can’t help when she’s like that and she knows it—”

He could feel her misery. Wanting to help, making it worse, why, why did he always do this? “You have to get away from me, Trish, you have to…”

“Don’t, John. Look, I’m here. I’m right here. Let’s get you home.”

“…it withers and dies, it…”

“Ssh. It’s going to be all right.”

“Don’t ever be like that, Trish, don’t ever let yourself be like that, don’t ever let that happen to you—”

? ? ?

The nurse at the admitting station watched them go, leaning on each other as they stumbled towards the doors, and was uncertain which of them was using the other for support. If she didn’t have the forms before her she wouldn’t have been able to tell which of them had been admitted for concussion; wouldn’t have known that it was the girl who’d been released far too early, because her condition wasn’t immediately critical and the hospital was filled to overflowing already.

But that was an all-too-familiar complaint, and one she could do nothing about. She stared at the forms, trying not to think about it.

And then, she wasn’t thinking of anything at all.

Trish held John’s elbow as the doors opened automatically before them, all of her attention on him, her own pain forgotten; so much so that she failed to notice as the nurse rose from her seat and walked towards them.

As did everyone else in the waiting room.

? ? ?

For a moment the Doctor thought that he had something. He raised the tracker, his eyes widening in anticipation — but there was nothing there, just a spark of sunlight reflecting from the screen. He lowered it again, scowling.

He hated this — this inactivity, busyness in the guise of motion. Not motion forward, but around in circles, his mind preying on itself even as the helicopter looped about the buildings. Military technology watching out for other aircraft, permitting the Doctor and his pilot to wander across the skyscape with no flight plan. With no plan at all.

His last self wouldn’t have let this happen. Wouldn’t have ignored the milling masses as they fell before him. Wouldn’t have ended up sitting here, dull and helpless, his mind fluttering against the constraints of ignorance like a caged bird sensing disaster, beating the bars in a—

Eyes widening again, he snapped his fingers at the pilot. “Quick! Phone! Er, radio. Talking-into thing.”

It took the UNIT operator a few minutes to locate Major Sharp and get her to the comms room. “Doctor?” her voice crackled from the headset at last. “What is it? Have you—”

“Why didn’t I see it before?” he shouted. “Blind panic, like a deer caught in headlights, like a flock or a herd fleeing a predator — it’s an animal! No conscious thought, no reason, just instinct. They aren’t being controlled, not consciously; these are the behavioural patterns of a telepathic animal.”

“Are you sure? What brought this on?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Call it an intuitive revelation. That sounds so much better than a wild guess. The wild instinct of the pack… How many of these are… Major, those reports you were studying. Similar incidents. Have any of them taken place simultaneously, in different areas of the city?”

“You think there could be more than one of them?”

“Let’s hope so. If there’s a pack that could actually make our job easier. Crowd control and herding are sciences entirely different from tracking down a haystalk in a pile of needles. But at least it’s something, it’s somewhere to start.”

Her weariness came across even through the static. “So we’re only just starting now, are we? I’ll get my people on it. Sharp out.”

“Er, Doctor Roger. Over easy. Um, goodbye.”

He started to hand the receiver back to the pilot, and then realised that he was waving the tracker at him instead and switched hands. An animal, he thought. Why hadn’t he seen it before? He remembered taking afternoon tea with Jo Grant, talking of past adventures, describing his mental link with the vicious alien Waro, getting carried away in the retelling and accidentally soul-catching her budgerigar. The sense of panic and confusion had been like this. He’d been picking imaginary caraway seeds out of his teeth for days afterwards.

A trapped animal. Lost, panic-stricken, frightened, alone — not necessarily malevolent. No hostile intentions.

Killing people.

He wasn’t sure whether that made it better or worse.

There has to be a way out of this, he thought, there has to be a way to save them all; there has to be. But for the life of him, he couldn’t see what it was.

? ? ?

And finally, there it was. After all the searching, drifting, lost hopelessly and helplessly in a crowd that would not listen to a scream for help. Finally the like thought was here, the one who understood, one who felt the same; one who was the same.

It cried out, and those who heard responded.

As John and Trish supported each other away from the hospital, a man walking past them slowed, hesitated, paused for a moment, and then turned and walked away from the doors, as though he’d decided he didn’t like the person he’d been coming to visit after all. The doors slid open behind him, and the nurse from the reception desk stepped out, followed by another man, and a woman, and another, and another, and…

All stepping in time, walking to the same beat. And one more followed, and another behind him, and another behind her. The people on the street were turning, errands and directions forgotten, lives abandoned to the shuffle of the crowd. The flow of the city street curled in a new direction as everyone turned to follow John and Trish.

The first car went through a red light moments later.

? ? ?

The Doctor’s tracker made a weebling sound.

For a moment he just stared at it. Lost in thought, he’d forgotten what he was supposed to be looking for. He sat up in his seat. “That’s it,” he shouted. “Storm crowds brewing!” He waved the tracker at the pilot. “Follow that weeble!”

The pilot looked at him.

“Er, left,” the Doctor mumbled. He coughed and brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the tracker. “To your left.”

? ? ?

The noise was everywhere, silent and overwhelming, like the sea crashing against the shore; the whining toddler too hot in the sun and wanting out of it now, and the man who needed his tax refund to buy new shoes, and the woman on her way to cheat on her husband; and all of them locked down and shouting with the pain of it.

John tried to ignore them, he tried. He’d already stopped babbling at Trish, feeding her pain and confusion and adding to his own with it. How many more steps to the subway? How many more blocks? He fixed his mind on that, and it seemed to help; the shouting seemed to diminish, drawing away from him at last, as if he was hearing it from underwater.

It took him a moment to realise how odd this was.

He stumbled to a halt, looking around in surprise. The noise level continued to drop. Fewer people blocked his way. Only the distant sounds of surrounding streets, but the silence was spreading to them even as he stared at the people around him; the people staring at him.

It was the wrong kind of silence, a sick kind of silence. Not the silence of the country where the wind blows on the grass and the birds call to each other; this was dead air, the kind that filled his ears with the buzz of their own working as they tried to give themselves something to listen to.

Everyone was staring at him.

The sidewalk was packed with people, all of them staring right at him. All of them standing still as if planted in position, some holding briefcases, some wearing Discmen or Cardboys, all their belongings hanging limp in their hands. All stares were glass, all faces slack, limp and empty.

Not a thought in their heads.

John reached out for Trish. “Trish…” he mumbled.

She reached out her right hand, and took his shoulder. Just as he was reaching out to take hers.

Everybody in the crowd stretched out their arm.

John took a step back in fear.

The crowd took a step forward.

“Stop it,” he mumbled.

A child stared solemnly up at him, the ice cream drooling out of the forgotten cone and over her hand. “Stop it,” she whispered back at him.

A soft gasp whispered out from the crowd, and John’s nerve broke. “Stop it!” he screamed, and grabbed Trish’s hand and made a break for it, running desperately towards the steps to the subway — his sanctuary from the noise now become a sanctuary from the silence, from whatever it was that was happening here.

Trish kept pace with him as the crowd broke into a run behind him, the street erupting with the echo of an impromptu marathon. He could see more of them, out of the corner of his eye, turning out of the courtyard to his right, breaking off their conversations, more and more people turning to follow him.

Turning the corners ahead of him.

Behind him.

All around him.

He slowed to a halt, surrounded. The crowd stopped as well. He stared at them, shaking, from the effort, the heat, the shock, the… everything. He felt something vital go out of him, the strength sapped from his knees. Dimly, as his legs gave out beneath him and dropped him into the street, he found himself thinking that people’s legs didn’t really give out from fear, did they? That was just a story, and this was just a dream, and—

And everybody around him dropped to a crouch around him, and raised their arms to defend themselves, just as he now realised he’d done.

“What do you want from me?” he tried to scream through the buzz in his ears, and then, only then, did he realise that Trish had fallen too, beside him, and that she was staring blankly at him, and that now he knew why and how she’d kept pace with him, why she hadn’t said a word as they ran—

And then he realised that the buzzing wasn’t just in his ears after all, and he looked up to see a helicopter falling out of the bright blue sky, towards him.

? ? ?

There was a crowd on the sidewalk of University Avenue. From this perspective the patterns were evident. Order imposed on chaos. This time, the Doctor noted with interest, they were converging on a point. A still eddy in the centre of the whirlpool of humanity.

The source?

The people were crouching on the sidewalk, arms stretched up as if defending themselves from something. The Doctor held the tracker out before him, waving it at the crowd. “Do you think you could get a little closer—” he began to ask.

The helicopter tilted gently to the left, and kept tilting.

“Er—” said the Doctor, alarmed. He tried to look back at the pilot, but the helicopter suddenly lurched beneath him and the engine began to make a noise like seventeen angry cats in a blender. The Doctor slipped from his seat as gravity tugged him in the wrong direction. He clawed for purchase, and the tracker dropped from his hands. His hearts skipped a beat as, beneath or beside him, he saw the tracker falling towards the asphalt, too many metres below. Under these circumstances anything more than one was too many.

Dangling from his safety harness, the Doctor twisted to look up at the pilot, and saw the man staring blankly ahead, his feet drawn up into a crouch, his hands stretched out to defend himself.

“Ah,” the Doctor gasped as the helicopter plummeted towards the crowd. “Right. Of course. Obvious, really.”

? ? ?

When John looked up, the rest of the crowd looked with him. The helicopter grew larger in his sight, and all he could do was stare without moving and think, somehow, this is all a part of it, this is all of a piece.

Later, he would swear that the helicopter turned entirely upside down before making a complete and impossible 180 degree roll back to the vertical.

The landing struts settled into place on the avenue median, touching down amidst the silent pigeons without disturbing a single one. John stared at the aircraft, his mouth moving uselessly, his vision blurring. A tan river of fabric poured out of the doorway and resolved itself into the figure of a tall man in a trenchcoat, clambering over the recumbent pilot.

The stranger landed lightly on his feet, brushed himself off, and nodded to himself in satisfaction at a job well done. And then he started walking, straight towards John. As he came, a wave rippled through the crowd. People on the outskirts were the first to turn their gaze from the stranger to John. As the stranger drew closer, more and more of the people began to swivel around. John could feel the weight of the stranger from here, like a stone on a rubber sheet, pulling the crowd into a new shape as he approached, as he plunged his hands into the pockets of his trenchcoat and looked at John with something like suspicion, something like curiosity.

“How are you doing this?” John whispered.

He’d meant to scream it, but his throat wouldn’t let him. Nevertheless, the sound carried in the unnatural stillness, and the stranger heard him. He looked as though he’d been about to say something himself, but he hesitated, and stared at John with a puzzled expression.

“Snap,” he said. “You’ve no idea what’s happening to these people, do you?”

John waved a hand at the crowd, and those closest to him did the same. Some of them hit the people standing next to them. “Is this something you did? Is this…”

“Oh, no.” The stranger smiled at him. “I’m here to stop it. Ssh. Watch this.”

He pulled a hand from his coat and flung it into the air. John’s gaze turned to follow without thinking. Somehow he found himself surprised when a dove didn’t fly out of the man’s hand; instead, he caught a brief glimpse of a sparking cardboard cylinder before it blew with a clap that echoed back and forth from the buildings on either side of the street.

Apart from that, nothing happened.

The stranger’s face fell. “Oh dear,” he muttered. “It’s getting worse.”

John took a shuddering step forward. “What,” he began, and something brushed by him — some nothing, a sense of anger that wasn’t there. Something cold and hostile, and more than one — a plurality of predators, a moment of near contact with something as dark and malevolent as the sight of a distant fin in the water, narrowing towards the crowd and towards—

“NO!” John shouted, instinctively moving to cover Trish.

The spell was broken — more than broken, shattered into pieces. Shards of awareness splintered back into the mob, and suddenly the air was full of silent shouting. Something was fleeing, clouds of confusion eddying in its wake, and all the voices of the world crashed back down upon John at once.

What am I doing here where am I what happened what just HAPPENED what was done how was this done I want my mommy and why did this happen to me to me to me to Me, ME ME ME ME ME —

Trish was beside him, confused but waking back to herself, and he stumbled into her arms and clutched her to him as the pleas echoed and filled him with others’ pain. “Make it stop,” he babbled as he fell, “make it stop oh please make it STOP—”

But it didn’t stop, and he put his hands over his mind, closed his thoughts, and fell into the darkness.

? ? ?

Continued in Part 3