The Doctor's Hunt (Jiskastya X Promise)

[Jiskastya]

"Doctor?"

A dark skinned man glanced around, pulling himself out of his distant thoughts and returning to the present moment, to the current mission.

"Yes, commissioner?"

"We are ready to begin the briefing... But?"

"Yes?"

"Are you certain that this monster is coming to Earth?"

The Doctor nodded, face grave. "Yes, I am sure. In fact, it is already here."

The Chief of Police gulped, "How can you be sure?"

The Doctor let out a sigh, and looked into the commissioner's eyes. "Do you want me to explain it now, or would you be willing to wait for the briefing?"

The commissioner averted his eyes, then nodded.

The Doctor stood, steps suddenly light. "Then, allons-y!"

The commissioner led the Doctor through a door into a brightly lit room. There weren't many people here, but each of them was the highest ranking officer within their district. It was rare for the doctor to call in such manpower, but everyone knew that, if he was doing so, what they were facing now must be incredibly important and extremely dangerous.

"Thank you all for coming." The doctor said. He paused then, casting a glance around the room. "Wow, that sounded unusual. I'm not really used to giving briefings..."

He then rubbed his hands together. "So, lets get down to it, shall we? The alien that we are facing is a planet devourer. It comes to a planet, descends as a mist, steals the memories of the population, then feeds off any sources of energy that the society has made. After it has finished that destruction, it proceeds to burrow under the crust and consume the energy of the planet's core. After it has finished gathering all the energy that planet has to offer it will then consume the mass of the planet itself, including everything that is on it."

The shocked faces of the police stared back at the Doctor for a moment, lost. Finally one man managed to ask "But what can we do to stop it."

"In theory," the Doctor said with a shrug, "containment would be possible. The problem is that this creature isn't a solid thing, it is a collection of particles controlled by a consciousness. A very, very large collection of particles, equal now to approximately the mass of two planets."

"But what can we do?" the room was starting to panic now, the fate of their planet thrust upon their shoulders, and they didn't know how to save it.

"Gentlemen, please," the doctor called, "Calm down. There is a reason that I came to you." The room slowly began to return to a state of uneasy rest.

"I have had conflicts with this thing before. I've tried to reason with it, but the thing is ruthless. Finally, I was forced to the conclusion that I had no choice but to kill the creature. Still, it seemed unstoppable, but the last time it made a mistake. It tried to steal my memories, but something went wrong, and I got its instead."

The Doctor let out a sigh. "I thought I had it, then. Thought I would be able to lock it up and wait for it to die, but it escaped. It took on a solid form, and latched on to a passing prisoner transport ship. I was picked up by this ship, had my Tardis taken from me, and was locked up along with the monster. They would not appreciate the danger the thing posed, and refused to destroy it."

He looked around the room, eyes incredibly weary. "It escaped, and crash landed the prison ship onto Earth. I trust you remember the "airplane" crash into the historical theater, scheduled for demolition? That was the ship. The crash allowed me to escape, although I still do not know where my Tardis is. However, the crash also allowed the devourer to escape.

"It doesn't remember anything about what it is, so now is the time to get it. If this thing can begin to accumulate its memories, however, we will be too late. That is why I need your help. We have to track this thing down before it can reform."

"How do we know what to look for?"

"Ah," the doctor said, "I have a..." he paused to rummage through a stack of papers that was sitting on the table next to him. "drawing," he grunted, carefully extracting a single sheet of paper from the mess. "Of the form it took. Since it doesn't have any memories it is doubtful that the thing will be able to shift forms. By the time it can, we will probably be too late to stop it, anyways."

The Doctor held up a detailed graphite drawing, and a beautiful faced man, with long brown hair and deep dark eyes stared out at the room.

"We need to track down this "man" as soon as we possibly can. There is no need to inform anyone of what he is. As long as he doesn't remember what he is, he will pose no more danger than any other human criminal."

There was a general flurry of movement as the heads of police stood up, and the chief of police who had led the Doctor into the room walked up to the front, and stood next to the Doctor.

"Will we be able to get him in time?" He asked.

"We must," the Doctor replied simply and sadly. "We must."

~

The ship careened wildly in the hands of a man who couldn't remember who he was, what he was doing there, or how exactly it was that he was flying this thing. It flashed through the outer atmosphere of a small blue planet, and the man desperately tried to steer it up, but the ship plunged instead, spiraling down towards the ground so far below.

He reacted automatically, hauling on the controls, and the ship slowly leveled off, beginning to once more fly parallel to the ground. He let out a breath, then tried to steer back towards outer space. At least there he didn't run the risk of crashing into anything.

But a sudden lurch in the craft sent it once more racing towards the ground, and a repeat of the motion he had preformed earlier only caused one of the engines to give out. He screamed, hauling on the controls as the ground raced closer and closer. The ship began to level, but it was too late to correct its downwards path.

With a sudden crash, the ship pulverized its way through the roof of an old building, landing heavily and smoking on the ground.

The man at the controls was thrown out violently at the crunching impact, and as he landed among the debris his vision began to go black. Just before he fainted a strange whirring noise rang in his ears, and he saw a brief flash of blue among the debris.

[Promise]

Her hair was tied back in a loose pony tail, strands seeking freedom tried to hang before her eyes before her pale fingers brushed the light brown strands aside. Perfectly waxed eyebrows met in a frown, long lashed lids blinked over the light hazel eyes beneath them. Her eyes narrowed at the sight before her, the old theatre, the explosives were set and the lines had been drawn. Protesters had been and gone, their fight long lost, the demolition experts were now in place and doing their job.

Her hands came up, no strands of hair needed to be moved, her hands now held a camera, at her hip was a bag of lenses. She had just changed the lens, she had taken the detail shot of the building, zoomed in to capture the old magic that would now vanish. Now she had a wide angle lens, she wanted to capture the explosion as it happened. Two cameras were hung around her neck, one with film and the other digital, she was currently using the digital camera.

Her camera was taking ten shots with every click, as the men moved away from the building, each giving their okay to set the destruction in motion, her camera was clicking wildly. She was concentrating looking through the view finder, not trusting the digital screen, her left eye was closed and her right was up close to get the perfect shot. Her concentration slowed her reaction to the screaming, she was still taking pictures. As the building exploded outwards she was mid click, her eyes shut tightly as pieces of brick and cement were catapulted outwards.

"What the hell was that?!" She cried, her voice was muffled behind the face mask she wore, wary as she was at the idea of breathing in any dust from a normal demolition.
Something her shock frozen mind could already tell this wasn't.
Shouting, screaming and crying was all she could hear around her, she blinked, he eyes stayed lowered, she didn't want to get any possibly still settling dust in her eyes. As the air cleared, she blinked her watering eyes and looked at the building, she gaped as she saw the state the building was now in.

The object was half buried, seeing the angle the tail end was sticking out, it could only be the fact it was embedded into the ground that stopped it going any further. She had to squeeze her eyes shut as more stinging took hold. In the distance there were sirens, they didn't sound too close before she felt a plastic bottle pushed into her hands. Opening her eyes for a second revealed the bottle to be filled with water, but the person who had handed it to her was a blur and was already walking away. She took no time to wash out her eyes, the dust had settle to the point she could look around with cleared eyes and not suffer more dust getting stuck in them.
The police and ambulances didn't take long to arrive, paramedics rushed out to find the seriously injured, as one came up to her she waved them off, others would need their help.

"We have a live one!" She heard the words over the din of the other people shouting, instinctively she raised her camera and began clicking. She paused and looked at the front of her camera. Were as her face being behind the large device had saved her eyes, the lens had a scratch diagonal across the centre, that part of the picture would be fuzzy like nothing else.

She took another quick few sets of pictures of the building to add to the collection already on the memory card, the scratch might make for interesting photos later.
She quickly removed the damaged lens and pulled out another, she then realised something was odd, the dust and settled far too quickly. There was the smell of burning but nothing was on fire....not now at any rate. Someone was shouting something about a plane and as she clicked the new lens onto her camera, she looked at the building. There was smoke coming off of it, if that had been a plane then it was melted beyond all recognition. What the hell had happened?

Her mind didn't have enough time to register this properly as she was being led away by a police officer. She captured several shots of the tail of the 'airplane' the looked at the paramedics, firemen were moving debris and someone was being pulled out. She concentrated on getting pictures of the survivor as he was placed into an ambulance on a stretcher. Only one clear thought went through her head.
Lucky guy.

Once she was around the corner from the crashes he stopped taking pictures, the police officer had run off to look after something else. She had been caught once before by police after being led away, shock and more than a little still-to-be-accepted fear caused her to not go against the rules this time. Even if it meant more pictures, all she wanted to do was get to her car. It was only while she was looking for the keys to her car she realised she was still holding the bottle of water.
She hadn't managed to get any shots of her water armed rescuer, nor could she call up any detail in her mind of the tear fuzzed image she remembered.

The photographer walked the next block or two, people were getting out of their homes to see what had happened, she had got the action photos, hers would be worth more. Her feet moved quickly, she was almost running by the time she got to her car, the Mini Cooper was in a bad enough state, but she still looked worse. She opened the door, put her things onto the passenger seat and got in, only then did she finally stop. Her heart was pounding, it roared in her ears and her vision started to swim. She probably wasn't in much state to drive, she didn't really feel it, but she needed to get home and it wasn't that far.

The key clicked into place with a satisfying finality and the engine sneezed into life, she paused. Looking at her digital camera she picked it up and removed the memory card. There was a locket at her throat, or at least it looked like it, one end was a USB fitting and the other opened to allow a SD card to fit in. Not all computers accepted SD cards, even fewer accepted them without issue. It was also with her at all times (being around her neck) and the loss of her camera didn't mean the loss of her pictures. She placed the card into the locket and snapped it shut.
The locket was a uninteresting metal rectangular shape, at some point it's owner had been bored and had etched in small squares, each the same distance from each other. On the top under the loop for her throat was a triangle and a vertical line at the top point. A child's daydream and a long faded memory.

[Jiskastya]

At first, the world seemed perfectly quiet, nothing but the steady surf of his heartbeats. But, as he lay there, he slowly began to notice a steady rhythmic beating that matched in rhythm to his heart.

ThumpBEEP. ThumpBEEP. ThumpBEEP.

In some ways, the noise was calming, a constant reminder to the world at large that his heart still beat. But it was also irritating, a noise that didn't want to be dismissed, obnoxiously high and loud, and there was nothing that he could do to stop it.

Slowly, the general hum of the world he was in registered in his ears. The source of light over his head glowed brightly, only flickering occasionally, a high pitched constant whine that was barely even recognizable but still set his nerves on edge. And then there was the deeper thrum of the space around him, so soft that it wasn't really a sound, but rather a deep vibration that settled into the center of his chest.

Where was he? Was he back on that strange ship, the first thing that he could really remember? But, no, he had crashed that ship, not on purpose, but still it had been consumed by flame and the impact of an immovable ground. So he couldn't be on the ship.

It didn't feel like the ship either. Whatever it was that he was laying on was soft, molded to fit a relined position, not the comfort of a home bed, but still something that would prevent its occupant from getting a sore back. The sheets, too, were soft, the kind of material given to a stranger that you didn't know or have any reason to care for, but was still a guest in your home. Not the most comfortable sheets in the house, those you saved for yourself, but nor was it a scratchy wool blanket or a rough sack.

No, this wasn't the ship. There things had been made as simply as possible, no concern given for those who were forced to occupy the space. It was just enough that someone would be able to fall asleep, but no more than that minimum.

He allowed his eyes to flicker open, slowly, carefully. This place didn't seem like the place that people would send those they intended to execute, but he knew nothing of this world. He knew nothing of anything.

The room was almost a blinding white, and everything looked like it was made to be sterile beyond life. A small window was off to the left, an uncomfortable looking armchair in front of it. To the right was a curtain, blocking most of the narrow room, and hiding whatever was on the other side from his sight.

For a while, he simply lay there, taking in his surroundings. There was a small brown stain on one of the ceiling tiles, and he found himself unconsciously memorizing the pattern. His eyes flitted around the room, taking in the machine that was to his left, and its incessant beeping, the light that was almost ready to start its flickering decent into darkness, the door in one wall that led to who knows where. The strange bed that he was laying on, with its many interesting looking buttons. He pushed one, almost experimentally, and a sudden beep rang across the room.

He recoiled his hand quickly, hoping that he hadn't done anything irrevocable, but seconds later a wide, smiling woman bustled her way into the room from behind the impenetrable curtain that had, until moments ago, defined the edge of his universe.

"I'm glad to see that you are finally awake," the woman said with a brisk but not unkind sort of efficiency. "Do you remember what happened?"

"The plane crashed," he said, their tongue finding its way naturally to his lips.

She nodded her head, quite seriously. "Luckily, you seem mostly unharmed. You hit your head fairly badly, but it has healed remarkably quickly. Can you tell me your name? Where you live?"

He closed his eyes, desperately trying to remember something, anything, to please this woman, but there was nothing. He shook his head, eyes wide.

The woman let out a long sigh. "I was afraid of that. I'll be back in a moment, I'm going to get the doctor."

At the word, something slammed violently into the back of his head. He felt his whole body spasm, and the woman raced forward suddenly, firm hands pressing down on his shoulders. Worry wrinkled her brow, and as soon as he was holding still again, she raced from the room.

In the hallway, the nurse didn't pause to answer the hasty questions flung at her by a police officer who had been waiting here, on and off, to learn what he could about the strange crash, the strange man, and the passport they had found in his pocket. His interrogation could wait until later.

At the front desk, an intern looked up from his work, and decided that he needed to do something. He rolled away from the counter, stood up when his knees were clear, and walked into the back, his stride purposeful, his face blank, but his hands clutching tight around the cellphone in his pocket.

He hadn't meant to overhear the policeman asking the nurse about the passport that they had found in the man's pocket, the only clue that they had to his identity. Hadn't really meant to look over, and see who it belonged to. And he most certainly hadn't wanted to recognize the face on the passport. But he had to give his friend a heads-up, before the police came a knockin'.

Pausing in front of the copier, trying desperately to look as though he belonged there, as though he wasn't doing something against the law, he flipped the phone open and speed dialed the number of one Caelan Blackwood, a close friend from his college days. Hopefully he would be able to get her, because he sure as hell wasn't leaving a message.