Starman [ Life on Mars / Doctor Who Crossover ]

Chapter 9 The Seeker

I've looked under chairs 
I've looked under tables 
I've tried to find the key 
to fifty million fables

---

Gene's knuckles pressed, cold and aching, against the stone wall beside him.

His line of sight stayed on the floor, on a splotch of dirty brown amongst the otherwise grey concrete. Easier on the eyes, that, than the mess before him, the mess behind him. Dead things, live things, trapped in crypts made of concrete, roughed up and mixed about like an old road gone muddy out your own front door. He'd known the stops, the signs, every curve in the tarmac -- until it'd caved out underfoot.

Bit like his team. Like his poncy DI.

"DCI Hunt!"

Gene raised his head. The Doctor raced toward him down the hall, bastard face lit up with a smile -- small one, not for his own sake, and fake as all the rest of him. "You've got my sonic, I'm afraid -- need it to find that lighter... but! No need to worry, should be able to get us out in time, should be..."

He trailed off the same way his footsteps did. His smile shrank down to what it really was -- nothing.

"Where's Sam?" he asked.

Gene's knuckles scraped the wall as he pulled them away. He walked past the Doctor, gait harder, faster with each step. Rookie move, to stop like that. To think like that, with lives at stake.

"Need to get to my team," Gene said. "Got one chance out of your mess -- won't waste it."

The Doctor didn't follow him.

"Where," he repeated, "is Sam?"

"Dead, I expect." There it was, out in the open. Steady. Real.

Gene strode on forward, like a good lad, like a cog that turned, creaking, because the whole machine might break down without it. He didn't stop as he got out the hall and into the big room, as he met Ray's wide eyes across the distance.

"Guv!" Ray called, Chris still held in his arms. Cartwright was laid out on the floor -- sodding hell, the Doctor would leave a bird like that. Ray looked to the vault door beside him. "Guv, we've got to--"

"Thirty seconds," said the bloody intercom. "29. 28..."

"We need to go back!" The Doctor's voice rang out, loud enough for Gene to turn his head. The Doctor stood with his hands clenched, shoulders shaking. His face looked a wall of terror, disbelief wrapped up in panic and dread. "All of this -- it's been a trap!"

"You don't say!" Gene broke into a run, knelt down next to Annie, tried to haul her up by the shoulder.

She coughed at his touch and lurched upward -- same as Gene had, when he'd come to.

"Where--" she asked.

"Don't mind that, love." Gene heaved her up on unsteady feet, then turned to face the door.

He realized, now, at the fifteen-second mark. How daft this all was -- how stupid. He really expected it to open. He really expected his DI had, this time as opposed to many, known what the bloody hell he was doing.