"The furnace is ready. Are you sure you want to do this?" Contara asked?
"Yes. After all I'm the one that killed them." Danial said.
Of course that wasn't true. The two who had been infected were long past the point of saving, with this virus, whatever it was having broken their bodies beyond almost all form of recognition. Still Danial had been the one to finally pull the trigger. It was made worse by the fact that he had known one of them, a female member of the crew named Dassina. In fact they had even been in a relationship for many years, with the split being amicable. Danial felt that since he had been the one to cast the final judgement as it were, that he should be forced to dispose of the corpses, not the he could even tell which one was Dassina anyway their bodies had been so badly twisted.
However as he neared the furnace suddenly one of the bodies began to twitch. In spite of his earlier feelings of regret, he didn't hesitate to lift out his weapon again and pointed it at the twitching corpse, which suddenly stopped. Was it just the way he was moving it, or was their life yet in this twisted cadaver? Deciding not to take a chance he fired at it again several times, but as he leaned in closer, suddenly a tentacle like object emerged from one of the blast holes he had made and struck him in the eye. Danial reeled back from the pain and covered his eye, with the creature striking him again. He was now completely blind and fired around frantically as he heard the sound of both creatures getting up, but within a second the gun was knocked out of his hand and he was tackled to the ground by one of the creatures, whose strength was beyond anything he had ever encountered before.
Danial heard Contara enter the room, only for him to similarly be tackled to the ground. This was then followed by Contara's screams, which were in turn replaced by a hideous, gurgling, spluttering sound. Clearly the infected had passed the virus onto him as well. The two creatures however had a different fate in store for their would be killer. It wasn't out of vengeance however. As they had damaged his eyes, they felt he was no use to them. They preferred at least at this stage strong, healthy bodies to infect.
Danial suddenly felt the heat of the furnace on his face after the monsters dragged him across the room and desperately tried to fight back, but it was no use. He screamed out as loud as he could even to Contara, whose body was now twisting and breaking apart just like the infected. At the very least, Danial suffering would be over relatively quickly compared to Contara and the other infected.
"It's remarkable that we can't communicate with this creature?" The Doctor said.
"Well our translation units are not always reliable." The captain replied.
"Oh I know that, I was talking about mine. My ship the TARDIS you see has among the most advanced translation devices of any vessel. It does have telepathic circuits after all, and it can translate some of that telepathic power into other life forms. Not too much of course as not all minds are equipped to deal with telepathy, but still. Most minds even those as different as yours and mine run along a similar frequency. To a ship like the TARDIS figuring out the level of variation between different species, or frequencies is child's play. Except evidently in this case." The Doctor replied
"What makes you think this creature is even wanting to communicate with us? It looks like a savage animal to me." One of the crew asked as the caged mutant hissed and snarled back at them.
"I'll admit it's not the most civilized creature I've come across, but there is clearly some kind of intelligence behind this. The fact that it was able to lure you all into a trap, and was somehow able to breach your forcefield alone suggest that this thing could very well be more advanced than you or me. No if we have any chance against this creature and like I said earlier I'm not sure we do. I'm going to need to find out more about it." The Doctor said as he left the room.
"Excuse me where do you think you're going" The captain asked.
"Back to my ship. There are telepathic boosters in the TARDIS which I can use to scan the creatures mind directly. I don't like using them as they can be very dangerous, but well this creature. I think for its own good and ours we need to find out why it is here. Whatever its motives and plans it clearly isn't a compatible life form with our own physically. It's a shame really, sometimes life forms are too different to co-exist. I've seen it before many times. Species visit other races in peace, only to inadvertently bring some unknown disease or infection. It's important to understand that there isn't always malice involved and try and find a way to overcome those differences, and for all I know that's what could be happening here, though probably not given how it wants to go to earth, but still we have to know for sure." The Doctor said as he headed back to the TARDIS with the captain following him.
Meanwhile back on the flight deck the others were suddenly alerted by a message from Contara.
"Lesia, please help me. The infected, they're not dead. They've killed Danial, please help me." His voice croaked through the speaker.
"We've got to go down there right away." Lesia said as she ordered several men to come with her.
"Please you have to let us come with you." Zoella replied as she tried to make out her leg wasn't still in pain from the cattle prod.
"No you stay here" Lesia ordered as she darted down the corridor without any further discussion. Zoella even tried to follow, but not only did her leg not let her get much further, one of the other crew members who stayed behind held her and Dana back at gun point.
Only a few minutes later however Lesia's voice now croaked and sickly sounding came through the speaker.
"Get out of there now. It was a trap, Contara is infected. All of my men are too and they are coming back your way."
The other crew members ran, leaving Dana and Zoella behind. Dana carried Zoella who couldn't stand being a burden and kept insisting to Dana that she could run, of course Dana knew that wasn't true.
When they reached the corridor outside however, Dana, Zoella and the others found three more of the infected cutting off the way ahead, but as they tried to run back the way they found several more infected came up behind, the way Leisa had fled.
"Like rats in a trap!" Dana said to herself.
The surviving crew fired at the infected and were able to briefly hold some of the monsters back, but those whose mutations were accelerating were barely fazed and the most twisted and mutated of the infected managed to pull one of the crew out with a long, extra limb that emerged, or rather seemed to break its way through its chest.
Dana, Zoella and the others were forced to watch the ensnared crew member and the other infected themselves continue to mutate up close. Even with the lives the two time travellers had led, it was one of the most horrific things either woman had ever seen. The victims skin seemed to tear off the body like paper as the broken, misshapen bones began to break through random parts of their bodies. Worse the infected also began to tear off their own flesh as well. Perhaps not intentionally as in some cases at least the flesh became so green, weak and putrid it literally crumbled in their hands. Some even began to bite through their arms, with one literally chewing his hand off, using his new jagged, broken teeth. Others meanwhile appeared to cough up blood and even in a few cases small organs, some of which then continued to twist and reform and slide along the floor afterwards.
Dana was amazed that any of these creatures could even move given the pain they were in. Sadly however it seemed that old saying of misery loves company was true right enough, as the degenerate creatures were determined even when their bones were breaking to reach out and inflict the same horrifying condition on their former ship mates.
As they were all pushed back against a wall, Dana suddenly snatched one of the crews guns and used it to blast a hole in the wall. She then grabbed onto an electrical cable, the same type the Doctor had used earlier to subdue the infected. The Dalek technology that had been implanted into Dana's body all those years ago could still be activated it just needed a jolt of power. She didn't like to use it however, even in the most dire situations as it reminded her of how the monsters had used her as a puppet and made her kill goodness knows how many innocent people using this same weapon.
Still she had no choice, as clearly the humans weaponry was not capable of holding off the infected. The Dalek weaponry in her body, which came from a considerably later period was their only hope. Unfortunately whilst Dana would survive the electrical charge, she could still feel it go through her entire body. In fact the first time she had ever tried this to help the Doctor when they were cornered on the planet Akos, she was knocked unconscious by the pain. This time however she overcame it and blasted two powerful rays from her hands which knocked the infected backwards and temporarily out.
Dana then collapsed into Zoella's arms. For a few seconds she had flashes of the man she killed on the stairs of his house, and possibly others she had fried using her powers under their control before she regained her senses. Due to the technology in her body breaking down it was unreliable and not something she could do often or the strain would kill her.
Still the crew members didn't waste their chance and fled, though this time they helped both Zoella and Dana. Sadly however, one of the men helping them was attacked by one of the infected just as they passed over the mutations. It reached out and grabbed his leg, cutting through his clothes with its broken, jagged finger nails. Though the others tried to pull him free as soon as he started to cough blood, they all were forced to abandon him. Even Dana and Zoella.
Meanwhile the Doctor and the Captain had already made their way back to the TARDIS, with the Time Lord having managed to retrieve his advanced form of translater as well as few other bits and bobs that he felt might come in useful in restraining the infected if he became unreliable.
As soon as they left the TARDIS however, they received a distress call from the lab. Several of the infected had broken in and freed the original creature that the Doctor had restrained. The captain instantly headed back the way with the Doctor following him, but just a few corridors down they saw the last of the crew that had been left in the lab ahead being chased by several of the infected. The captain fired at the creatures behind but it did little to no good and they soon jumped at the last of the crew, pinning him to the ground and infecting him in a number of gruesome ways, including scratching and biting him, and spitting their slime from their mouths into his as he screamed.
The Doctor and the captain wisely fled back the way to the TARDIS, but as they turned a corridor they soon saw ahead, Dana, Zoella and the others ahead of them make their way into the TARDIS, which they shut just before the infected could enter. The Doctor got to work setting up his device to incapacitate the creatures, whilst telling the captain to keep an eye out for any more coming up behind them.
Meanwhile in the TARDIS Zoella started to get some feeling back in her leg, whilst Dana had also begun to recover too. Zoella called out for the Doctor and soon saw that he wasn't there. Dana meanwhile after checking the scanner caught a glimpse of the Time Lord working his machine just behind the infected who had all gathered around the TARDIS doors, clawing and spitting desperately at them. She wanted to help him but there was nothing she could do, as if she opened the doors the infected would get in the TARDIS. She just had to hope that the Doctor knew what he was doing.
"Ohh dear, I'll have to clean those doors. I'm not sure even a jaunt through the time vortex will be enough to get that gunk off the doors." The Doctor said, much to the Captain's dismay.
"This might just be a joke to you, but remember that's my crew and." The captain suddenly stopped as he noticed three of the infected from the lab coming up behind them.
Their bodies had begun to twist and break to the point where they were virtually unrecognizable. Whilst one of them was at least still in a humanoid shape, every bone in his body had been completely broken with his flesh also now being green and yellow. Bits of his broken bones jutted out from all over his mass. Indeed the only reason he was still in a vaguely humanoid shape was likely a few memories left over from his old life. The other meanwhile was nothing more than a mash of mangled flesh that seemed down one side to be human flesh and on the other to be a similar, yellow, greenish slime that left a trail behind like a slug. The human side meanwhile included numerous organs and broken bones sticking out. As it got closer however the centre of the mangled beast that split one side between the human remains and the other between the green slime, opened up into a mouth filled with huge, shiny white teeth, which let out a roar. Several spikes started to fly out its mouth, one of which nearly hit the captain who fired at both beasts.
The third creature meanwhile had three heads, including two in its stomach , one on its back (and none above its neck.) It also had four arms instead of legs, whilst its body looked as though it had been compressed. Each of its three heads were different. The one at the back had no features except a mouth filled with yellow, sharp teeth, whilst another seemed to resemble a human woman. In fact she even resembled a member of the crew named Smaria. Her face was obviously distorted, with both of her eyes swollen and bulging out of her face until the point where he thought they were about to burst. Her tongue had also swollen to the point where it was too big for her mouth and had even cut itself on her new jagged teeth. The other face meanwhile was so alien that the Captain didn't recognise. The Doctor however for a second as he looked up appeared to.
"A Detasen? Here in the earth empire? Incredible." Fortunately however before the twisted mutations were able to advance on them, the Doctor was able to rig his device up by drawing power from one of the cables into his machine.
"Cover your ears." The Doctor said to the captain as he activated his machine with the sonic screwdriver. It produced an ultrasonic wave which not only temporarily deafened the creatures but disrupted their unstable structure. Whilst the Doctor wasn't sure about the exact nature of the virus, the test results had made it clear that it was trying to fuse the DNA of several different creatures together and that any disruption to that could potentially cause it to fall apart. Sonics meanwhile if tuned to travel on a certain frequency could widen the gaps between the incompatible DNA strands before they had a chance to sync together.
The Doctor hoped he could use this to simply weaken the infected after which he could then hope to capture one and find a way to communicate with it, but the infected did not give up, even when their bodies were literally beginning to fall apart. The Doctor was forced to keep the weapon on, when his own ears were beginning to bleed.
"Please don't make me do this." The Doctor said as the creatures continued to shuffle, slither and stumble forward. Eventually however it became too much for them and they all collapsed onto the ground, with their bodies all falling apart into piles of green, noxious sludge.
"What a waste" the Doctor said bitterly as he disconnected his machine and checked on the captain who was okay, despite the ringing in his ears that the Doctor said would pass.
As the Time Lord prepared to enter his TARDIS, suddenly one of the piles of sludge started to move and tried to crawl towards him and the captain. As soon as Dana came out of the TARDIS to greet him the slime turned its attention to her, but it was so slow she was in no danger.
The Doctor hurried Dana and the captain back into the TARDIS, after which he then activated the device he had intended to use on one of the infected, which trapped it inside a small force field. The Doctor then brought it back into the TARDIS by levitating the forcefield using his sonic screwdriver and finally started hooking up his third device which would boost the TARDIS translation circuits. As this puddle of slime wasn't capable of speech, the device instead reflected what was in its mind, or rather a kind of race memory, hidden in its twisted distorted cells, with the Doctors tinkering allowing him to project it onto the TARDIS' scanner.
The captain and the others had barely taken notice of the inside of the TARDIS being so much bigger on the inside, they were so focused on escaping the infected.
The images that popped up on the scanner meanwhile were of exotic alien landscapes and species, some humanoid, some unlike anything even the Doctor had ever seen before, all succumbing to the same plague that was ravaging this crew. Dana, Zoella and the crew were utterly perplexed, though Dana could see that the sight of all of these worlds succumbing to this hostile alien menace clearly affected her more.
Strangely however it was not in the way Dana may have expected. Ironically it almost made Zoella feel better. She now knew that what happened to her race, wasn't some one off tragedy. She had secretly almost felt anger and resentment towards the Doctor and Dana, due to the fact that they both still had worlds where they belonged, even if they were renegades. Dana's had even survived against the Daleks which just increased her resentment. Now however Zoella saw that the same thing had happened an incalculable number of times, and whilst that did disturb her, it also made her feel less alone. For the first time she didn't feel that she had let her people down by not being strong enough (unlike Dana and the Doctor who had repelled the Daleks.) She saw how fragile all life in the galaxy really was, and it gave her more of a reason to go on.
The Doctor meanwhile was absorbed in the TARDIS readings, which along with the images of all of these different cultures allowed him to piece together an idea of what they were up against.
"It's incredible, absolutely incredible." The Doctor said as he shut down the scanner.
"This creature it's a form of living plague. It can think, not in the way we would, but it can think, feel and contains a greater knowledge of the universe than anything else I've ever encountered." The Doctor said.
"Where did it come from?" Zoella asked.
"I'm not sure, but from what I could gather on the readings and the scanner, it comes from a point beyond what we would call the observable universe. It's not from another universe however. The universe is bigger than you or I can comprehend. This plague meanwhile it seems to have started out as just a normal infection. The alien version of the common cold. However somewhere out there in the near infinite recesses of space, the original species travelled to other worlds, just like you and I did. Nothing wrong with that, but somewhere they weren't careful and the virus spread with other alien microbes and viruses. Obviously at first it was a minor infection, but as both races continued to expand throughout their section of the universe, the virus continued to collide with other diseases, infections, substances and life forms until it developed a kind of sentience again not like you or I, but it's still alive. From there it continued to travel through space, infecting other life forms, absorbing other diseases and unique life forms into its DNA. It eventually split off into several different life forms that would travel throughout the universe, infecting other species. This is one of their kind that has stumbled into our corner of the woods. Humans will be an easy meal for it. Unlike a lot of other species that take to the stars you haven't altered your bodies. At least not at this point. Don't get me wrong I admire humanity for that, but still it means your DNA is more basic and easier for this creature to unravel and twist and break apart."
"I'm amazed you've never heard of or encountered it before Doctor." Dana asked.
"It is a big universe Dana. Plus like I said these creatures, they don't build up an empire. They don't advertise their presence to the rest of the universe like our friends the Daleks. They don't even have to take over a planet. Sometimes they just arrive and remain there not killing too many of their prey and remain as an incurable disease the population learns to accept as long as it doesn't happen to them personally. Some however as we saw from the images hunger is insatiable. They devour entire worlds, but it's usually isolated worlds, that people just assume fell to natural causes. No signs of invasion, no infamous interplanetary wars. Just one of the hundreds of thousands of viruses and plagues out there that a species couldn't control. They've been hiding in plain sight as it were this entire time. I probably have encountered them before I just didn't know it. This is a very serious strain though. It wants to feast on all the exotic life forms of the earth that its culled from its victims minds, we have to act."
Suddenly the Doctor was interrupted by a distress signal from the captains radio.
"Captain? Captain come in this is Lesia. That creature it's made its way into the engine. I don't know how but it's propelling the ship forward."
"It's a trick. Lesia's been infected." Dana said.
"We don't know that for sure." Another of the crew said.
"She sounded it, and I don't see how she could have escaped when none of the other men did." Dana insisted.
"You don't know Lesia." The captain replied.
"Either way, we can't take any risk of this ship making its way back to earth." The Doctor said as he opened the TARDIS doors.
Outside however to the Doctors horror he saw several of the pieces of the other mutants he had caused to collapse form together into one, hideous creature that stood over 20 feet tall and soon began to spread out around him, blocking the way.