The Oncoming Storm ²

Power Of Three pt.2

*UNIT HQ*

"Secret base beneath the Tower. Hope we're not here because we know too much" Amy says.

"Yes, I've got officers trained in beheading. Also ravens of death" Kate says.

"I like her," Amy says, we enter an area with lots of individual armoured cubicles, each containing a cube.

"There are fifty being monitored, and more coming in all the time. I don't know how useful it is. Every cube is behaving individually. There's no meaningful pattern. Some respond to proximity. Some create mood swings" Kate explains, Amy touches one cubicle and the cube produces a flame. In another, a woman weeps.

"Er, what's this one?" Amy asks.

"Try the door" Amy opens the door and the Chicken Dance Song starts playing, the Doctor puts his fingers in his ears, I make a face "on a loop!" Amy shuts the door again quickly "this is the latest."

"Oh dear. Systems breach at the Pentagon, China, every African nation, the Middle East" I say.

"I've got governments screaming for explanations and no idea what to tell them. I'm lost, Seer, Doctor. We all are" Kate says.

"Don't despair, Kate. Your dad never did. Kate Stewart, heading up UNIT, changing the way they work. How could you not be? Why did you drop Lethbridge?" the Doctor asks.

"I didn't want any favours. Though he guided me, even to the end. Science leads, he always told me. Said he'd learned that from an old friend."

"We don't let him down. We don't let this planet down" I say.

"They've stopped. The cubes, across the world, they just shut down."

"Active for forty-seven minutes, and then they just die?" Kate asks.

"Not dead. Dormant, maybe" the Doctor says.

"Then why shut down?" Amy asks.

"We don't know. We don't know. We need to think. We need some air. Who has an underground base? Terrible ventilation" the Doctor says.

*By the Thames*

"The moment they arrived, we should have made sure they were collected and burned. That is what we should have done" I say.

"How? Nobody would have listened" Amy says.

"You're thinking of stopping, aren't you? You and Rory" the Doctor says.

"No. I mean, we haven't made a decision" Amy says.

"But you're considering it" I say.

"Maybe. I don't know. We don't know. Well, our lives have changed so much. But there was a time, there were years when I couldn't live without you two. When just the whole everyday thing would drive me crazy. But since you both dropped us back here, since you both gave us this house, you know, we've built a life. I don't know if I can have both."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because they pull at each other. Because they pull at me, and because the travelling is starting to feel like running away."

"That's not what it is" the Doctor says.

"Oh, come on. Look at you, four days in a lounge and you go crazy" Amy says.

"We're not running away. But this is one corner of one country in one continent on one planet that's a corner of a galaxy that's a corner of a universe that is forever growing and shrinking and creating and destroying and never remaining the same for a single millisecond. And there is so much, so much to see, Amy. Because it goes so fast. We're not running away from things, we are running to them before they flare and fade forever. And it's all right. Our lives won't run the same. They can't. One day, soon maybe, you'll stop. We've known for a while" I say.the