The Artist and the Doctor

Chapter 20

About ten minutes had passed when the Doctor and Amy came barging into the room.

"Kate? Before they shut down, they scanned everything, from your medical history to your military response patterns. They made a complete assessment of Planet Earth and its inhabitants. That's what the surge of activity was." The Doctor called as he came rushing down the stairs.

I ran up to him and threw my arms around his waist in a quick hug. "You okay?" I asked in concern.

"Never been better." He said with a smile. At that moment the power went out. "Problem with the power?" He asked scanning the room with his sonic.

"Not possible. We've got back ups." Kate responded.

The Doctor licked his lips and let out a soft "hmm." He grabbed my hand and pulled me around the room with him. The buzzing of the sonic filled the air and the faint green light that it gave off acted as our flashlight.

"Doctor? Look." Amy called pointing to a cube. A blue seven glowed brightly on all of its sides.

"What?"

"Why do they all say seven?" I asked glancing around the room. All of the cubes read seven.

"Seven." The Doctor thought aloud. "Seven, what's important about seven? Seven wonders of the world, seven streams in the River Ota, seven sides of a cube."

"A cube has six sides." Amy corrected.

"Not if you count the inside." The Doctor said softly scanning the cube with his sonic. The seven on the cube changed to a six and the lights immediately came back on.

"It has to be a countdown." He started walking to the room with the computers, the rest of us following close behind.

"Not in minutes." Kate added.

"Why would it be in minutes? Kate, we have to get humanity away from those cubes. God knows what they'll do if they hit zero. Get the information out any way you can. News channels, websites, radio, text messages. People have to know that the cubes are dangerous." The Doctor ordered.

"Okay, why is it starting now? I mean the cubes arrived months ago. Why wait this long?" Amy asked.

"Because they're clever. Allow people enough time to collect them, take them into their homes, their lives. Humans, the great early adopters and then, wham!" The Doctor smacked his hands together causing me to jump slightly. "Profile every inch of Earth's existence."

"Discover how best to attack us." Kate offered.

"Get that information out any way you can. Go!"

"Right." Kate muttered to herself.

Kate, Amy and I followed the Doctor over to the computers. "Every cube was activated. There must be signals; energy fluctuations on a colossal scale, there must be some trace. There can't be." The Doctor turned around to face us. "We need to think of all the variables, all the possibilities, okay? Go, go, go!"

Kate immediately set off to work leaving Amy and I alone with the Doctor. The Doctor quickly turned back to the computer screen and began typing at lightning speed.

Anxiety nibbled away at me as I watched the cubes count down to four. Oh, God. What are they going to do?

~

"Doctor, please. You don't have to do this." Amy pleaded.

The four of us were looking into a sealed off cubicle with a single cube and a chair. The Doctor wanted to sit in there with it to find out what will happen when it counts down to zero.