- 𝐔𝐍𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄 !

024

—chapter twenty-three | The Hungry Earth

—THE DOCTOR SAT THERE, HELPLESS AS EVE WENT UNDER. He called her name over and over hoping she would appear once again. "No. No! No. No. No." He threw his hands down before standing up. "No!" He continued to mutter the word as he soniced the hole in the ground. He continued to look at the soil as Nasreen and Tony came running back.

"Where are they?" Nasreen asked. The Doctor was silent for a moment.

"She- They're gone. The ground took them." He told them.

"Is that what happened to Mo?" Tony asked as Nasreen looked at the readings. "Are they dead?" The Doctor didn't respond to that question.

"It's not quicksand. She- They didn't just sink - something pulled them in, it wanted them."

"The ground wanted them?" Nasreen looked at him confused.

"You said the ground was dormant, just a patch of earth, when you first was it this morning. And the drill had been stopped." The Doctor explained as he paced back and forth, slowing down as he came to the end of his sentence.

"That's right." Tony nodded.

"But when you re-started the drill, the ground fought back."

Nasreen looked at the Doctor like he was a madman. "So what, the ground wants to stop us drilling?! Doctor, that is ridiculous." She walked over to Tony as the Doctor scanned the hole once again. It began to bubble.

"I'm not saying that, and it's not ridiculous, I just don't think it's right." He closed his eyes and held the sonic to his head as he realised. "Oh! Of course! It's bio-programming!"

"What?"

"Bio-programming!" The Doctor stood and clapped his hands together once. "Oh, clever. You use bio-signals to resonate the intel molecular structure of natural objects! It's mainly used in engineering and construction, mostly jungle planets, but that's way in the future, and not here. What's it doing here?"

"Sorry, did you just say jungle planets?" Nasreen questioned.

"You're not making any sense, man!" Tony told him.

"Excuse me, I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up." The Doctor said. "The earth, the ground beneath our feet, was bio-programmed to attack."

"Yeah, even if that we're possible, which, by the way, it's not, why?" Nasreen asked.

"Stop you drilling! We find what's doing the bio-programming, find Eve, get her back." The Doctor told them. "Amy too. Ssh, shh, ssh! Have I gone mad?! I've gone mad!" Nasreen tried to speak but the Doctor silenced her. "Ssh, ssh! Silence! Absolute silence!" The Doctor stepped over the hole and walked towards the two. "You stopped the drill, right?"

"Yes!"

"And you've only got the one drill?"

"Yes!"

"You're sure about that?"

"Yes!" Tony said this time. The Doctor stepped over the hole once again before putting his ear to the ground. Drilling was echoing but it wasn't above surface.

"So, if you shut the drill down... why can I still hear drilling?" Nasreen and Tony listened closer. "It's under the ground."

"That's not possible."

The Doctor shut up from the ground and went towards the screens the readings were on, sonicing them. Nasreen yelled for him to stop. "Oh, no, what, what are you doing?"

"Hacking into your records. Reports, samples, sensors, good, just unite the data, make it all one big conversation, let's have a look. So. We are here and this is your drill hole. 21.009 kilometres. Well done!" The Doctor looked at the two.

"Thank you. It's taken us a long time." Nasreen thanked.

"Why here though? Why drill on this site?"

"We found patches of grass in this area, containing trace minerals unseen in this country for 20 million years."

"The blue grass? Oh, Nasreen, those weren't trace minerals weren't X marking the spot, saying dig here. They were a warning. Stay away. Cause while you've been drilling down... somebody else has been drilling up." On the screen where the drill hole was shown, small tunnels leading from the bottom to the top appeared. "Oh, beautiful. Network of tunnels all the way down."

"No, no, we've surveyed that area." Tony pointed at the screen.

"You only saw what you went looking for." The Doctor told them. Nasreen pointed at the screen.

"What are they?" There were three dots on the screen and they were moving up. Fast.

"Heat signals. Wait, Dual readings, hot and cold, doesn't make sense. And now they're moving. Fast. How many people live nearby?" The Doctor asked.

"Just my daughter and her family. The rest of her staff travel in."

"Grab this equipment and follow me." The Doctor began to walk away.

"Why? What're we doing?!

"That noise isn't a drill. It's transport. Three of them, 30km down, rate of speed looks about 150km an hour. Should be here in... Ooh, quite soon, 12 minutes. Whatever bio-programmed the Earth is on its way up, now." The Doctor explained at took the computer with the readings. Nasreen and Tony soon caught up to him with the other one.

"How can something be coming up when there's only the Earth's crust down there?" Tony asked.

"You saw the readings!"

"Who are you, anyway?!" Nasreen called from behind the two. "How can you know all this?" There was a red light that traveled and crashed into the sky, almost like lightning. "Whoa, did you see that?

"No, no, no!" The Doctor said before bringing out a slingshot he so happened to have in his pocket. He picked up a stone and fired up upwards. They were surrounded by, what seemed to be, a forcefield. He then aimed his sonic at it. "Energy signal originating from under the Earth. We're trapped."

The sky turned red as Rory came running over with the other people. "Doctor! Something weird's going on here, the graves are eating people."

"Not now, Rory! Energy barricade. invisible to the naked eye. We can't get out and no one from the outside world can get in."

"What?! Okay, what about the Tardis?"

"The what?!" Nasreen asked.

"No, those energy patterns would play havoc with the circuits. With a bit of time, maybe, but we've only got nine and a half minutes." Rory checked his watch.

"Nine and a half minutes to what?"

"We're trapped. And something's burrowing towards the surface." Nasreen explained to the three people who had appeared. 

"Where's Amy?"

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