First Steps: Chapter Two
May. 11th, 2011 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charameiTitle: First Steps (2/5)
Rating: PG-13
Trigger warnings: Everything but Chapter Three is clean. Chapter Three: Miscarriage/infant death. Also, severe burning and dehydration.
Genre: Babyfic! No, wait. Action/Horror.
Characters/Pairings: Snail, Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong. Or, in adult-speak: the Doctor, Braxiatel, and the Master.
Wordcount: Chapter: 3,698. Fic: 21,925
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who; I'm just playing in the BBC's sandbox for fun and practice.
Summary: There's being born, and then there's being born into a world with no adults, no clothes, no food and a terrifying alien Thing upstairs. When their Looms birth them straight into the middle of an emergency, can Our Heroes muddle through?
Beta'ed by the amazingin_lighter_ink and finished thanks to the brilliant people over at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
writethisfanfic.
Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF
The Loomlings' tiny bare feet slap on the cold floor as they run. By the time they lose the Thing, Snail has gone from hypothermic to toasty warm. His lungs burn as he gasps for air, and his legs ache and strain; not only from the running but also because he hasn't quite got co-ordination sorted out yet. He's trying really, really hard not to trip over his own feet.
He pulls Flabbaduckarusa flat against the wall and sidles for a look back. The shadow belongs to a huge, faceless mannequin of dark wood. It's standing outside the room they were born in, scanning telepathically for them. An ancient memory from one of his psychodonors tries to surface, but as it does so the howl comes from upstairs again, and just as that happens the mannequin notices him, turns, and begins to bear down on them. Snail grabs Flabbaduckarusa's hand again, and pulls him onwards. They run flat-out for nearly a minute, following the curve of the corridor. Doors pass in a blur as toasty warm becomes unbearably hot and sweaty; his breath comes in ever shorter, faster gasps and his feet sting from hitting the cold, hard floor. There are two things going thumpa-thumpa loudly in his chest that he thinks must be his hearts, and he's getting so dizzy –
He catches one foot on the other. The next thing he knows he's on the floor, every particle of him in agony. Flabbaduckarusa falls on top of him, sobbing a little.
The faceless mannequin is close behind them – they didn't even lose it! – and bears down on them, its hands reaching down to pick them up. Not a single muscle in his body will move right now. He squeezes his eyes shut as the mannequin picks him and Flabbaduckarusa up, and hopes against hope that it won't hurt either of them.
The mannequin's arms are surprisingly warm and comfortable as it glides along, its smooth, rhythmic movement and the spicy scent of its wood lulling him. He feels safe. Secure. Sleepy...
The Thing upstairs wails again. There's a new undercurrent to its alien fury; a sensation of such fear and misery that he jolts awake again. In the mannequin's other arm, Flabbaduckarusa's already dozing happily. Snail kicks his brother. "Wake up!"
"Ow!"
"Sorry."
"You kicked me."
"I said sorry." Before Flabbaduckarusa can complain any more, Snail adds hastily, "It's tricking us. Making us feel all safe."
Flabbaduckarusa gives him a long look. "Well, yes. That's its job, I think."
He knew it. It's some kind of evil Loomling-snatching robot monster: it's going to take them away and force them to be slaves, or experiment subjects, or make them eat nothing but vegetables for the rest of their lives and clean their rooms every day. They have to escape right now.
When he voices these views, his brother stares at him and says, "It's a Drudge."
That niggling little memory that has been trying to surface since he first saw the mannequin slides into place at last. Snail looks up at the Drudge, which looks down at him in its faceless way.
"Oh," he says, then, feeling that this isn't quite enough, "well, it's a scary Drudge, and how was I to know? And anyway, it doesn't count as a real person, so where are all the grown-ups?"
"It's probably taking us to them," Flabbaduckarusa says, and nestles deeper into the crook of the Drudge's arm.
The Drudge carries them down steep stairs that twist and turn endlessly downwards. The Thing's racket fades as they move away from it. Just as Snail thinks they'll keep going down forever, they stop and a door swings open into Paradise.
Paradise is a large bowl-shaped room, with warm green-blue walls. Its centrepiece is a long, low buffet table, piled high with fruit, nuts and pastries; all around it, scattered rugs and cushions mingle with assorted toys, toolkits and chemistry sets. Still no people, though. If anything, the nursery looks to have been hastily evacuated.
The Drudge carries them down a set of steps and puts them down at the foot before gliding over to one of the many cupboards set into the wall. Snail is on his way to investigate the buffet table when it returns bearing two bundles of clothing, and hands them over.
Flabbaduckarusa sits down, opens his bundle and begins to sort his clothes carefully. "Yes, it's definitely evil."
"Shut up," Snail says, and rips his bundle open. He's colder than ever now that he's no longer exerting himself, and he doesn't think he can bear it another minute. They've only got one set of things here; not even nightclothes, just something to wear until someone arrives to take them home. If someone arrives to take them home.
The clothes fit perfectly. He wonders about that, until he finds the tag sticking out of the bundle's wrapping and observes that it has the same identifier on it as his Loom. They must have been tailored to his genetic code. This is worse than when they were just wandering about on the upper floors, cold and scared. The grown-ups have gone to great lengths to make this nursery perfect. They clearly weren't meant to be abandoned, and yet they have been. Whatever that Thing is upstairs, it's scared away a whole building full of Time Lords...
The Drudge has retired to a station at the foot of the stairs, apparently content to wait for new instructions. Snail goes over to it and, unsure how to get its attention, knocks on its skirt. It angles its head down towards him.
"Please," he says, "do you know where all the grown-ups are?"
The sensation he gets from it is overwhelmingly negative.
Snail sighs. "Never mind, then. Thank you."
"There's a console over there," Flabbaduckarusa says, and takes a plate from the buffet table. "We might be able to – hey, they've labelled all the food so we know what it is! That's considerate."
Snail hurries over to grab a plate. The food is labelled; not only that, but there are laminated handouts showing cross-sections of the various fruit and vegetables, and someone's left an open copy of The Chemical Composition of Your Body: A Loomling's Guide to Nutrition next to a half-emptied plate. Snail glances through its pages, then shuts it and fills his plate with as many different sweets and cakes as he can find.
They sit on the floor and guzzle their food down. By the time they finish eating, crumbs are strewn in a wide radius around them, there's icing on Snail's nose, and Flabbaduckarusa has sticky magenta juice all around his mouth and even, mysteriously, in his hair.
Flabbaduckarusa yawns widely; Snail follows suit. His legs still feel funny from all that running, and now that he's warm and fed and relatively safe, he can barely keep his eyes open.
All thought of getting news from the console forgotten, the two brothers curl up into a sticky, crumby mess and fall fast asleep.
/\/\/\
Snail wakes with a panic-stricken jolt. Flabbaduckarusa's snuggling against him, gripping a tuft of Snail's hair so tightly that it hurts; Snail has to yank his hair out of his brother's sticky, hot palm before he can sit up, searching instinctively for the Drudge's telepathic signature. He can't sense it; he looks frantically about the nursery, but the Drudge isn't anywhere. It's completely gone. He casts his mind wider, but it's no good; the Drudge has disappeared into the mass anonymity of Gallifrey's collective subconscious.
Something else responds instead, and it's not the Thing. It's more friendly, and yet more scary; more natural, and yet it terrifies him on a deep, animal level that he's vaguely aware real Time Lords pretend not to have. It's in so much pain! It's screaming and screaming, and it's that screaming, Snail realises, that woke him up. Someone's got to go and get that other Loomling, now. Snail scrambles away from Flabbaduckarusa, apologising silently when his brother whimpers and curls into a tight little ball, and hurries over to the first piece of blank paper he sees, on one of the nursery tables. The note that he writes is barely legible, but he's too frightened to care; he drops it on Flabbaduckarusa's head and runs up the nursery steps.
Abruptly, the screaming stops. Snail freezes in the doorframe. What's happened? Someone screaming like that wouldn't just stop, would they? Unless... unless that's where the Drudge went. But what if it didn't? What if the Thing got the Loomling? He can't just not go because the Loomling might be all right now. He takes one more step, and the nursery door swings smoothly shut behind him.
He begins to regret his decision almost instantly; the corridors are still empty and cold, and he only knows that the screaming came from somewhere above him. He retraces the route the Drudge took to the stairs, but from the bottom they're huge square mountains rising into eternity. He'll never get all the way up there, he thinks, and finds an alternative close by – an internal transmat, for people too lazy or too old to use the stairs.
He stands on tip-toe to get at its computer. The screen shows a list of the last twenty transmats, and Snail's trying to change that when he notices something odd. The first seventeen transmats went out of the building, probably because of the Thing, but the last three came in: all three of them went to the seventh floor. That means there should be grown-ups in the Looming House, but he's never been able to sense them, so what happened to them?
Maybe it was the same as what happened to the other Loomling. He tries to set the computer to take him to the seventh floor, but the console has so many buttons on it. He's going too fast to be careful, and suddenly a trumpet fanfare blares out above his head; the Glorification of Rassilon. Snail scowls at the screen, reaching up to try again as its turgid strains assault his ears. He makes himself go slower this time, though he's desperate to get to the Loomling as fast as possible; he finds the setting, but before he can activate it he also sees a display of the status of the Looms in the building.
There are a lot of them: he guesses nearly a thousand, spread out across ten floors. The vast majority of them are marked 'IN STASIS'. As he scrolls down, he notices two blips, side-by-side in the list, marked 'CRISIS BIRTH'. Interest piqued, he keeps scrolling. Stasis, stasis, stasis... the list goes on and on. The very last one of all says, 'CRISIS BIRTH'.
It is on the seventh floor.
Slowly, needing to know, Snail scrolls back up the list until he can see himself and Flabbaduckarusa on it again. Sure enough, they were born on the sixth floor. He remembers the disgusting, alien rage of the Thing, and the way the Loomling was screaming, and the way none of the grown-ups who went up to the seventh floor has left, and he begins to sniffle. It's not fair; those people were only trying to look after the Looms, and now the Thing must have got them, and the stupid Looms have gone and dumped him and Flabbaduckarusa right into the middle of the mess and what are they supposed to do about it if a whole lot of grown-ups couldn't stop it, and he doesn't know what's going on or even really where he is, and it's all so big and empty, and his feet hurt and his tummy's starting to feel funny from all those sweets, and he wants to go home – wherever that is – and the Thing's probably going to get him, too, and then Flabbaduckarusa will be all alone and it's not fair.
He hops onto the pad, squeezes his eyes tight shut and thumps the button far harder than necessary.
Snail arrives feeling faintly dislocated, as if he hadn't been supposed to move sixty-odd feet in under a second. When his head stops spinning, he uncurls and opens his eyes. A Drudge stares back through one brightly-painted eye. Its other eye, and half of its head, rest on the pile of splinters that once formed its body. Beyond it, he can see several more destroyed Drudges.
Shaking, he leans forwards to touch it, It is cold and unresponsive – dead. Snail pulls his hand away, but can't shake his gaze; he simply sits, staring forlornly at its shattered body, until there is a bang and the Thing howls.
He bolts towards the nearest door, skirting the Drudge corpses. The door resists his touch at first, but grudgingly swings open after an agonising half-second, slamming shut the instant he's safely inside.
The Loom room is still and peaceful, filled with the comforting hum of its Loom. The other Loomling isn't in here, but if Snail strains through the Thing's disgusting wails he can sense someone a few rooms over. Good. That means the Loomling is still alive, although Snail will have to go back out there to get to him.
He tip-toes around the corridor, darting between Drudge corpses and listening closely for the other Loomling's thoughts amongst the Thing's cacophony. He does his best to ignore the way the Thing makes his stomach churn, making himself go slowly and check every door. They all resist opening in the same way as the first one did.
Perhaps the Looming House is trying to help him: the right door opens easily at his touch, buffeting him with hot, stinking air, then closes as soon as he's inside. Unsure how to thank a building, Snail pats the wall awkwardly before following his nose towards the Loom. The vile air becomes hotter as he goes; he starts to sweat before he's halfway there, and the chemical stench sears his nostrils until he doesn't think he'll ever smell anything else again.
He pokes his head through the Loom's side-door. "Hello?"
There's no response. The tech room looks empty at first, but then Snail's watering eyes fall on a maintenance hatch in one of the consoles, and the the pair of chubby pink legs hanging limply out of it.
He calls again, louder this time, but the legs don't even twitch. It looks as though the Loomling's stuck; the only reason the hatch isn't fully closed is that it's obstructed by his middle, and as Snail gets closer he thinks he can see glowing cables snarled up around the Loomling's top half, inside the Loom. The Loomling isn't moving at all. Snail wonders if he's even breathing.
Reaching the hatch, he stands on tip-toe, trying to see through the gap to the Loomling beyond. The air inside the Loom shimmers with heat; the smell makes him cough and retch. All he can see of the Loomling before he has to withdraw are patches of dry, saggy skin and lank dark hair, lit dimly by the golden glow of the cabling.
Tentatively, he reaches up and touches a foreleg. It's far too hot and sticky with half-dried sweat, and it jerks. Snail jumps away in shock, then realises that this means the Loomling is alive and grins a bit in relief.
"You are all right." He gets no response. The Loomling's foot swings to rest in the same position as it held before. "Well, that's rude!"
Still the Loomling doesn't reply. Snail jabs the leg again, and once again it kicks in reflex. "Look, I know you're awake because you kick me every time I do that." He jabs again for good measure. "I came all the way up here just for you, you know."
Silence. Beginning to get cross, Snail pokes the Loomling hard again, and again, and again, all over his legs and bottom. It's easy to avoid the kicks, because they're always timed exactly the same, so he's surprised when they stop coming and a hoarse voice from inside the Loom asks politely, "Why are you doing that?"
The Loomling's tone only makes Snail angrier. "Because you wouldn't talk to me!"
"Oh," the Loomling says. Then, in the same disinterested voice, "Have you been here long, then?"
"I said hello," Snail snaps.
"I didn't notice."
Snail sticks his tongue out at the Loomling's behind and flumps down on the floor next to the hatch, wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. Some new friend this is. It'd serve him right if Snail just left him here.
"I came because you were screaming," he says, a little sulkily. "I thought you needed help. I'm Snail."
"I wasn't screaming." For the first time, the Loomling displays emotion, but it's not fear. It's derision. "I'm fine."
Snail stares up at him, incredulous. He knows it was this Loomling screaming – he recognises the thought patterns – and besides, the Loomling can't be fine. His skin's dry and saggy, like an old person's; there's an enormous, livid bruise across his middle from the hatch door; and he's got his head stuck right in that stinky, boiling Loom console.
"You're not even a bit hot?"
"Of course not. My Loom's looking after me."
"It looks more like it's killing you." The Loomling snorts in disbelief, so Snail tries a different tack. "How did you get stuck there, anyway?"
The Loomling hesitates, then admits slowly, "I don't remember."
Snail can't restrain the laugh that bubbles nervously out of his mouth. "You must; you can't be more than an hour old!"
"I don't," the Loomling insists, the first tinges of fear edging his thoughts. "I remember being scared, and something big, and then – I... I tried to get back into the Loom, but the doors wouldn't open, then I found the consoles and climbed in here instead..."
"You were trying to get back in?" Snail repeats, gruesomely fascinated.
"Yes. Well, I thought it'd be safer than being out there..." The Loomling begins to wriggle in the hatch frame, his fear entering his voice now. "Then I suppose I got stuck. I hadn't noticed that before."
"And then you screamed?" Snail guesses.
"No! Why do you keep saying that?"
"I heard you! And you're hurt. It's got to have been you, there isn't anyone else – look, there's a nursery downstairs that's safe. I'll get you out, and then -"
"I don't want to be got out." The Loomling's anger is a welcome change from his earlier politeness, even if it's just as unhelpful. "There's nothing wrong with me. I'm safe here."
Snail lets out another involuntary bark of laughter. What an idiot! Well, if he won't see how hurt he is, then Snail will just have to drag him, because he can't leave the Loomling here with all that bruised, saggy skin and this smell. He scrambles up on top of the console and button-presses with abandon until there's a whirr and the hatch down below slides open, releasing clouds of noxious smoke, then jumps back down again. When he's finished coughing and wiping his streaming eyes, he grabs the Loomling's legs and heaves.
He thinks he might be getting somewhere until the Loomling kicks him in the face. Pain bursts across his cheek and Snail staggers backwards, his hand going to the bruise.
"Leave me alone!" The Loomling shouts, his voice cracking under the strain. Snail, stunned, turns and walks away as real tears supplant the wetness in his eyes.
He's paying more attention to his smarting cheek and bruised ego than to where he's going, and doesn't realise that he's gone in the wrong direction until he runs into a dead end; the corridor is blocked by a free-standing set of white double doors, like nothing Snail has ever – no, wait. A memory, already hazy and fading, stirs. He has seen something like these before. They look like the inside of his Loom, although there's nothing behind them; just six inches of doorframe and the closed doors, closed and flanked by machinery. Even to Snail's inexpert eye, the machines don't look right. All that cabling is supposed to be on the inside, and some of it's even broken open, leaking dense clouds of golden stuff.
With a familiar swishing sound, the Drudge – his Drudge – glides out of one of the nearby Looming rooms. Snail is so relieved to see it that he dashes straight up to it as it pauses to lock the door and tries to put his arms around its skirt. They don't fit, but the comforting spicy smell of its warm wood still does its work. How was he ever scared of this?
The Drudge almost manages to express surprise, and leans down to pick him up. Snail backs away. "You've got to come," he says as it moves to grab him again. "Someone's been born on this floor, and now he's stuck, and..."
With an almighty crash, a nearby door splinters into nothing. Beyond it, Snail catches a glimpse of the carnage in what used to be a Looming room as someThing with black spines and oily green skin charges out and jumps. Its mouth opens to reveal rows of huge teeth which clamp around the Drudge's body and close, grinding through its body with ruthless inevitability. Cracks appear in the Drudge's body, spreading downwards, branching into sharp points; the Thing keeps chewing, and all Snail can think is how big it is, and how spiky.
With one last sickening crunch, the Drudge's head comes off and disappears into the Thing's mouth. Snail's legs unfreeze; he runs for it, with no thought in his head but to get away. He barely recognises the transmat pad as he barrels past it, and it's only the realisation that if he keeps going then he's heading back towards the Thing that makes him turn around. He falls more than jumps onto the pad, flailing wildly and the button and hitting it by pure chance. When he lands, he can go no further; he huddles into a corner of the new pad, and bursts into tears.
Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF
Rating: PG-13
Trigger warnings: Everything but Chapter Three is clean. Chapter Three: Miscarriage/infant death. Also, severe burning and dehydration.
Genre: Babyfic! No, wait. Action/Horror.
Characters/Pairings: Snail, Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong. Or, in adult-speak: the Doctor, Braxiatel, and the Master.
Wordcount: Chapter: 3,698. Fic: 21,925
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who; I'm just playing in the BBC's sandbox for fun and practice.
Summary: There's being born, and then there's being born into a world with no adults, no clothes, no food and a terrifying alien Thing upstairs. When their Looms birth them straight into the middle of an emergency, can Our Heroes muddle through?
Beta'ed by the amazing
in_lighter_ink and finished thanks to the brilliant people over at writethisfanfic.Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF
The Loomlings' tiny bare feet slap on the cold floor as they run. By the time they lose the Thing, Snail has gone from hypothermic to toasty warm. His lungs burn as he gasps for air, and his legs ache and strain; not only from the running but also because he hasn't quite got co-ordination sorted out yet. He's trying really, really hard not to trip over his own feet.
He pulls Flabbaduckarusa flat against the wall and sidles for a look back. The shadow belongs to a huge, faceless mannequin of dark wood. It's standing outside the room they were born in, scanning telepathically for them. An ancient memory from one of his psychodonors tries to surface, but as it does so the howl comes from upstairs again, and just as that happens the mannequin notices him, turns, and begins to bear down on them. Snail grabs Flabbaduckarusa's hand again, and pulls him onwards. They run flat-out for nearly a minute, following the curve of the corridor. Doors pass in a blur as toasty warm becomes unbearably hot and sweaty; his breath comes in ever shorter, faster gasps and his feet sting from hitting the cold, hard floor. There are two things going thumpa-thumpa loudly in his chest that he thinks must be his hearts, and he's getting so dizzy –
He catches one foot on the other. The next thing he knows he's on the floor, every particle of him in agony. Flabbaduckarusa falls on top of him, sobbing a little.
The faceless mannequin is close behind them – they didn't even lose it! – and bears down on them, its hands reaching down to pick them up. Not a single muscle in his body will move right now. He squeezes his eyes shut as the mannequin picks him and Flabbaduckarusa up, and hopes against hope that it won't hurt either of them.
The mannequin's arms are surprisingly warm and comfortable as it glides along, its smooth, rhythmic movement and the spicy scent of its wood lulling him. He feels safe. Secure. Sleepy...
The Thing upstairs wails again. There's a new undercurrent to its alien fury; a sensation of such fear and misery that he jolts awake again. In the mannequin's other arm, Flabbaduckarusa's already dozing happily. Snail kicks his brother. "Wake up!"
"Ow!"
"Sorry."
"You kicked me."
"I said sorry." Before Flabbaduckarusa can complain any more, Snail adds hastily, "It's tricking us. Making us feel all safe."
Flabbaduckarusa gives him a long look. "Well, yes. That's its job, I think."
He knew it. It's some kind of evil Loomling-snatching robot monster: it's going to take them away and force them to be slaves, or experiment subjects, or make them eat nothing but vegetables for the rest of their lives and clean their rooms every day. They have to escape right now.
When he voices these views, his brother stares at him and says, "It's a Drudge."
That niggling little memory that has been trying to surface since he first saw the mannequin slides into place at last. Snail looks up at the Drudge, which looks down at him in its faceless way.
"Oh," he says, then, feeling that this isn't quite enough, "well, it's a scary Drudge, and how was I to know? And anyway, it doesn't count as a real person, so where are all the grown-ups?"
"It's probably taking us to them," Flabbaduckarusa says, and nestles deeper into the crook of the Drudge's arm.
The Drudge carries them down steep stairs that twist and turn endlessly downwards. The Thing's racket fades as they move away from it. Just as Snail thinks they'll keep going down forever, they stop and a door swings open into Paradise.
Paradise is a large bowl-shaped room, with warm green-blue walls. Its centrepiece is a long, low buffet table, piled high with fruit, nuts and pastries; all around it, scattered rugs and cushions mingle with assorted toys, toolkits and chemistry sets. Still no people, though. If anything, the nursery looks to have been hastily evacuated.
The Drudge carries them down a set of steps and puts them down at the foot before gliding over to one of the many cupboards set into the wall. Snail is on his way to investigate the buffet table when it returns bearing two bundles of clothing, and hands them over.
Flabbaduckarusa sits down, opens his bundle and begins to sort his clothes carefully. "Yes, it's definitely evil."
"Shut up," Snail says, and rips his bundle open. He's colder than ever now that he's no longer exerting himself, and he doesn't think he can bear it another minute. They've only got one set of things here; not even nightclothes, just something to wear until someone arrives to take them home. If someone arrives to take them home.
The clothes fit perfectly. He wonders about that, until he finds the tag sticking out of the bundle's wrapping and observes that it has the same identifier on it as his Loom. They must have been tailored to his genetic code. This is worse than when they were just wandering about on the upper floors, cold and scared. The grown-ups have gone to great lengths to make this nursery perfect. They clearly weren't meant to be abandoned, and yet they have been. Whatever that Thing is upstairs, it's scared away a whole building full of Time Lords...
The Drudge has retired to a station at the foot of the stairs, apparently content to wait for new instructions. Snail goes over to it and, unsure how to get its attention, knocks on its skirt. It angles its head down towards him.
"Please," he says, "do you know where all the grown-ups are?"
The sensation he gets from it is overwhelmingly negative.
Snail sighs. "Never mind, then. Thank you."
"There's a console over there," Flabbaduckarusa says, and takes a plate from the buffet table. "We might be able to – hey, they've labelled all the food so we know what it is! That's considerate."
Snail hurries over to grab a plate. The food is labelled; not only that, but there are laminated handouts showing cross-sections of the various fruit and vegetables, and someone's left an open copy of The Chemical Composition of Your Body: A Loomling's Guide to Nutrition next to a half-emptied plate. Snail glances through its pages, then shuts it and fills his plate with as many different sweets and cakes as he can find.
They sit on the floor and guzzle their food down. By the time they finish eating, crumbs are strewn in a wide radius around them, there's icing on Snail's nose, and Flabbaduckarusa has sticky magenta juice all around his mouth and even, mysteriously, in his hair.
Flabbaduckarusa yawns widely; Snail follows suit. His legs still feel funny from all that running, and now that he's warm and fed and relatively safe, he can barely keep his eyes open.
All thought of getting news from the console forgotten, the two brothers curl up into a sticky, crumby mess and fall fast asleep.
Snail wakes with a panic-stricken jolt. Flabbaduckarusa's snuggling against him, gripping a tuft of Snail's hair so tightly that it hurts; Snail has to yank his hair out of his brother's sticky, hot palm before he can sit up, searching instinctively for the Drudge's telepathic signature. He can't sense it; he looks frantically about the nursery, but the Drudge isn't anywhere. It's completely gone. He casts his mind wider, but it's no good; the Drudge has disappeared into the mass anonymity of Gallifrey's collective subconscious.
Something else responds instead, and it's not the Thing. It's more friendly, and yet more scary; more natural, and yet it terrifies him on a deep, animal level that he's vaguely aware real Time Lords pretend not to have. It's in so much pain! It's screaming and screaming, and it's that screaming, Snail realises, that woke him up. Someone's got to go and get that other Loomling, now. Snail scrambles away from Flabbaduckarusa, apologising silently when his brother whimpers and curls into a tight little ball, and hurries over to the first piece of blank paper he sees, on one of the nursery tables. The note that he writes is barely legible, but he's too frightened to care; he drops it on Flabbaduckarusa's head and runs up the nursery steps.
Abruptly, the screaming stops. Snail freezes in the doorframe. What's happened? Someone screaming like that wouldn't just stop, would they? Unless... unless that's where the Drudge went. But what if it didn't? What if the Thing got the Loomling? He can't just not go because the Loomling might be all right now. He takes one more step, and the nursery door swings smoothly shut behind him.
He begins to regret his decision almost instantly; the corridors are still empty and cold, and he only knows that the screaming came from somewhere above him. He retraces the route the Drudge took to the stairs, but from the bottom they're huge square mountains rising into eternity. He'll never get all the way up there, he thinks, and finds an alternative close by – an internal transmat, for people too lazy or too old to use the stairs.
He stands on tip-toe to get at its computer. The screen shows a list of the last twenty transmats, and Snail's trying to change that when he notices something odd. The first seventeen transmats went out of the building, probably because of the Thing, but the last three came in: all three of them went to the seventh floor. That means there should be grown-ups in the Looming House, but he's never been able to sense them, so what happened to them?
Maybe it was the same as what happened to the other Loomling. He tries to set the computer to take him to the seventh floor, but the console has so many buttons on it. He's going too fast to be careful, and suddenly a trumpet fanfare blares out above his head; the Glorification of Rassilon. Snail scowls at the screen, reaching up to try again as its turgid strains assault his ears. He makes himself go slower this time, though he's desperate to get to the Loomling as fast as possible; he finds the setting, but before he can activate it he also sees a display of the status of the Looms in the building.
There are a lot of them: he guesses nearly a thousand, spread out across ten floors. The vast majority of them are marked 'IN STASIS'. As he scrolls down, he notices two blips, side-by-side in the list, marked 'CRISIS BIRTH'. Interest piqued, he keeps scrolling. Stasis, stasis, stasis... the list goes on and on. The very last one of all says, 'CRISIS BIRTH'.
It is on the seventh floor.
Slowly, needing to know, Snail scrolls back up the list until he can see himself and Flabbaduckarusa on it again. Sure enough, they were born on the sixth floor. He remembers the disgusting, alien rage of the Thing, and the way the Loomling was screaming, and the way none of the grown-ups who went up to the seventh floor has left, and he begins to sniffle. It's not fair; those people were only trying to look after the Looms, and now the Thing must have got them, and the stupid Looms have gone and dumped him and Flabbaduckarusa right into the middle of the mess and what are they supposed to do about it if a whole lot of grown-ups couldn't stop it, and he doesn't know what's going on or even really where he is, and it's all so big and empty, and his feet hurt and his tummy's starting to feel funny from all those sweets, and he wants to go home – wherever that is – and the Thing's probably going to get him, too, and then Flabbaduckarusa will be all alone and it's not fair.
He hops onto the pad, squeezes his eyes tight shut and thumps the button far harder than necessary.
Snail arrives feeling faintly dislocated, as if he hadn't been supposed to move sixty-odd feet in under a second. When his head stops spinning, he uncurls and opens his eyes. A Drudge stares back through one brightly-painted eye. Its other eye, and half of its head, rest on the pile of splinters that once formed its body. Beyond it, he can see several more destroyed Drudges.
Shaking, he leans forwards to touch it, It is cold and unresponsive – dead. Snail pulls his hand away, but can't shake his gaze; he simply sits, staring forlornly at its shattered body, until there is a bang and the Thing howls.
He bolts towards the nearest door, skirting the Drudge corpses. The door resists his touch at first, but grudgingly swings open after an agonising half-second, slamming shut the instant he's safely inside.
The Loom room is still and peaceful, filled with the comforting hum of its Loom. The other Loomling isn't in here, but if Snail strains through the Thing's disgusting wails he can sense someone a few rooms over. Good. That means the Loomling is still alive, although Snail will have to go back out there to get to him.
He tip-toes around the corridor, darting between Drudge corpses and listening closely for the other Loomling's thoughts amongst the Thing's cacophony. He does his best to ignore the way the Thing makes his stomach churn, making himself go slowly and check every door. They all resist opening in the same way as the first one did.
Perhaps the Looming House is trying to help him: the right door opens easily at his touch, buffeting him with hot, stinking air, then closes as soon as he's inside. Unsure how to thank a building, Snail pats the wall awkwardly before following his nose towards the Loom. The vile air becomes hotter as he goes; he starts to sweat before he's halfway there, and the chemical stench sears his nostrils until he doesn't think he'll ever smell anything else again.
He pokes his head through the Loom's side-door. "Hello?"
There's no response. The tech room looks empty at first, but then Snail's watering eyes fall on a maintenance hatch in one of the consoles, and the the pair of chubby pink legs hanging limply out of it.
He calls again, louder this time, but the legs don't even twitch. It looks as though the Loomling's stuck; the only reason the hatch isn't fully closed is that it's obstructed by his middle, and as Snail gets closer he thinks he can see glowing cables snarled up around the Loomling's top half, inside the Loom. The Loomling isn't moving at all. Snail wonders if he's even breathing.
Reaching the hatch, he stands on tip-toe, trying to see through the gap to the Loomling beyond. The air inside the Loom shimmers with heat; the smell makes him cough and retch. All he can see of the Loomling before he has to withdraw are patches of dry, saggy skin and lank dark hair, lit dimly by the golden glow of the cabling.
Tentatively, he reaches up and touches a foreleg. It's far too hot and sticky with half-dried sweat, and it jerks. Snail jumps away in shock, then realises that this means the Loomling is alive and grins a bit in relief.
"You are all right." He gets no response. The Loomling's foot swings to rest in the same position as it held before. "Well, that's rude!"
Still the Loomling doesn't reply. Snail jabs the leg again, and once again it kicks in reflex. "Look, I know you're awake because you kick me every time I do that." He jabs again for good measure. "I came all the way up here just for you, you know."
Silence. Beginning to get cross, Snail pokes the Loomling hard again, and again, and again, all over his legs and bottom. It's easy to avoid the kicks, because they're always timed exactly the same, so he's surprised when they stop coming and a hoarse voice from inside the Loom asks politely, "Why are you doing that?"
The Loomling's tone only makes Snail angrier. "Because you wouldn't talk to me!"
"Oh," the Loomling says. Then, in the same disinterested voice, "Have you been here long, then?"
"I said hello," Snail snaps.
"I didn't notice."
Snail sticks his tongue out at the Loomling's behind and flumps down on the floor next to the hatch, wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. Some new friend this is. It'd serve him right if Snail just left him here.
"I came because you were screaming," he says, a little sulkily. "I thought you needed help. I'm Snail."
"I wasn't screaming." For the first time, the Loomling displays emotion, but it's not fear. It's derision. "I'm fine."
Snail stares up at him, incredulous. He knows it was this Loomling screaming – he recognises the thought patterns – and besides, the Loomling can't be fine. His skin's dry and saggy, like an old person's; there's an enormous, livid bruise across his middle from the hatch door; and he's got his head stuck right in that stinky, boiling Loom console.
"You're not even a bit hot?"
"Of course not. My Loom's looking after me."
"It looks more like it's killing you." The Loomling snorts in disbelief, so Snail tries a different tack. "How did you get stuck there, anyway?"
The Loomling hesitates, then admits slowly, "I don't remember."
Snail can't restrain the laugh that bubbles nervously out of his mouth. "You must; you can't be more than an hour old!"
"I don't," the Loomling insists, the first tinges of fear edging his thoughts. "I remember being scared, and something big, and then – I... I tried to get back into the Loom, but the doors wouldn't open, then I found the consoles and climbed in here instead..."
"You were trying to get back in?" Snail repeats, gruesomely fascinated.
"Yes. Well, I thought it'd be safer than being out there..." The Loomling begins to wriggle in the hatch frame, his fear entering his voice now. "Then I suppose I got stuck. I hadn't noticed that before."
"And then you screamed?" Snail guesses.
"No! Why do you keep saying that?"
"I heard you! And you're hurt. It's got to have been you, there isn't anyone else – look, there's a nursery downstairs that's safe. I'll get you out, and then -"
"I don't want to be got out." The Loomling's anger is a welcome change from his earlier politeness, even if it's just as unhelpful. "There's nothing wrong with me. I'm safe here."
Snail lets out another involuntary bark of laughter. What an idiot! Well, if he won't see how hurt he is, then Snail will just have to drag him, because he can't leave the Loomling here with all that bruised, saggy skin and this smell. He scrambles up on top of the console and button-presses with abandon until there's a whirr and the hatch down below slides open, releasing clouds of noxious smoke, then jumps back down again. When he's finished coughing and wiping his streaming eyes, he grabs the Loomling's legs and heaves.
He thinks he might be getting somewhere until the Loomling kicks him in the face. Pain bursts across his cheek and Snail staggers backwards, his hand going to the bruise.
"Leave me alone!" The Loomling shouts, his voice cracking under the strain. Snail, stunned, turns and walks away as real tears supplant the wetness in his eyes.
He's paying more attention to his smarting cheek and bruised ego than to where he's going, and doesn't realise that he's gone in the wrong direction until he runs into a dead end; the corridor is blocked by a free-standing set of white double doors, like nothing Snail has ever – no, wait. A memory, already hazy and fading, stirs. He has seen something like these before. They look like the inside of his Loom, although there's nothing behind them; just six inches of doorframe and the closed doors, closed and flanked by machinery. Even to Snail's inexpert eye, the machines don't look right. All that cabling is supposed to be on the inside, and some of it's even broken open, leaking dense clouds of golden stuff.
With a familiar swishing sound, the Drudge – his Drudge – glides out of one of the nearby Looming rooms. Snail is so relieved to see it that he dashes straight up to it as it pauses to lock the door and tries to put his arms around its skirt. They don't fit, but the comforting spicy smell of its warm wood still does its work. How was he ever scared of this?
The Drudge almost manages to express surprise, and leans down to pick him up. Snail backs away. "You've got to come," he says as it moves to grab him again. "Someone's been born on this floor, and now he's stuck, and..."
With an almighty crash, a nearby door splinters into nothing. Beyond it, Snail catches a glimpse of the carnage in what used to be a Looming room as someThing with black spines and oily green skin charges out and jumps. Its mouth opens to reveal rows of huge teeth which clamp around the Drudge's body and close, grinding through its body with ruthless inevitability. Cracks appear in the Drudge's body, spreading downwards, branching into sharp points; the Thing keeps chewing, and all Snail can think is how big it is, and how spiky.
With one last sickening crunch, the Drudge's head comes off and disappears into the Thing's mouth. Snail's legs unfreeze; he runs for it, with no thought in his head but to get away. He barely recognises the transmat pad as he barrels past it, and it's only the realisation that if he keeps going then he's heading back towards the Thing that makes him turn around. He falls more than jumps onto the pad, flailing wildly and the button and hitting it by pure chance. When he lands, he can go no further; he huddles into a corner of the new pad, and bursts into tears.
Parts: One | Two | Three | Four | Epilogue | PDF
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Date: 2011-05-11 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-11 06:24 pm (UTC)