The Forever Moments- Part II

The Forever Moments


Chapter II</i>


"I pass, like night, from land to land ;
I have strange power of speech ;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me :
To him my tale I teach."
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.
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Max took time to pick the lock of the old factory, instead of kicking the door down. He had gotten a lead a few days ago about the Highbreed excavating around this town, but what they were looking for he didn't know. Once the door was unlocked, Max opened it slowly, hoping that the metallic creaking wasn't to load. Checking his surroundings, Max crept inside and followed the energy signature that registered on his scanner.

As hard as the old Plumber tried, Max couldn't get the incident with that stranger out of his mind. And that name, John Smith. An alias, obviously; and one he'd come across before dozens of times. It must be his old age making him sentimental, but he couldn't help but feel a warmth inside him when he heard it. He remembered way back when he was a boy, when he first heard the name John Smith.

Max shook his head. 'Get your mind back to your job, old timer'. he told himself. He followed his scanner further into the factory, unaware that two shadowy figures were crawling through the ventilation shaft far above him.
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"Would you hurry up, Doctor? I don't wanna have to look at your backside for much longer." complained Cyphrin as she tried to avoid the cobwebs.

"Oh, you'll live. Besides, if I went any faster there's a good chance that these old vents would give out and drop us both onto God knows what? So isn't the alternative of gazing upon my backside so much more preferable?" Cyphrin paused for a while.

"Yes.." she said exsaperaited.

"Very well then. Now lets see..." the Doctor muttered as he held out his sonic screwdriver in front of him. It didn't beep or shine brighter or anything, but the Doctor smiled and said that they should take the next left they came to.

Coming to the end of the line, the Doctor checked to see if the coast was clear before sonicing the vent open. They followed whatever readings the Doctor was getting for a few minutes before he would stop and take a few steps backwards or forwards, depending on what the screwdriver was telling him.

"That way." he pointed down a hallway where the floor was covered with plastic.
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Max crouched behind a doorway when he picked up two life signs heading his way. Oddly enough, his scanner told him that neither of them were DNAliens. One was a human, while the other Max couldn't place. The genetic code wasn't in the Plumber databanks. Pocketing the scanner, Max reached for his Null Void projector. If these two were working with the Highbreed, he would take them down like any other enemy.

He listened for their approach, gripping the door knob and waiting. When he heard them come close enough, Max threw the door open, knocking one of them to the ground. He faced them, Null Void gun aimed at the man on the floor. To Maxs shock, it was the same man from the cafe.

"Ahh! What in the name of Omegas' Hand was tha-?" he stopped when he saw it was Max that hit him with the door.

"What are you doing here?!" they said at the same time. "What am I doing here?! What are you doing here?! Will you let me talk, please?!" Cyphrin got between the two men.

"Al right, al right. Enough of this, now. Doctor, why don't you go first?" But Max interrupted again.

"Doctor?" his brow furrowed. The Doctor got up and dusted off his suit.

"Yes, its the Doctor. And yes, you do know me from some place." he said with a grin and a twinkle in his eye. "Bellwood, 1956. A group of potato-headed aliens thought it would be a good idea to stir up trouble and I just happened to be there to put a stop to it. Not that you didn't help plenty yourself..." he rattled on. Max could scarcely believe what he was hearing. This man couldn't be the Doctor he had met. Not in a million years.

"You're lying." he said, pointing the Null Void gun right at the Doctors face. "I don't know how your know about that, but you got some facts wrong."

"No, I did not." The Doctor said boldly. "God, this is UNIT all over again. Tell you what, Maxy boy? I'll let you in on a little secret. That day, when it was just you and me trapped in the TARDIS, you were scared to death. And all you could think about was your family. 'My parents, my brother, my sister. I hope they're okay.' you told me. And I swore on my two hearts that I would save them. Still think I'm lying?"

Max lowered the gun, his eyes wide in realization. This man, this person who looked nothing like the Doctor he remembered, knew something that Max had never told anyone. The Doctor smiled warmly, his green-blue eyes shining with the eternal intelligence of a Time Lord.

"Hello, Max." he said simply. Max dropped his gun and tried to keep himself from crying in joy.

"Hello, Doctor." The Time Lord held out his arms.

"Ah, c'mere then." the men embraced one another, finding each other after so many years.

'Boy, do I feel like the odd one out.' Cyphrin thought humorously, leaning against the wall watching the two men hug. They finally broke off after a few minutes.

"Okay, glad we got all that out of our systems. Now, if you'll exscuse miss Cyphrin and I, we have an energy signal to follow." the Doctor got his sonic screwdriver back out.

"So, you're here for that, too?" said Max. "I was following an energy signal, myself. Maybe we're after the same thing?"

"Possibly." and so the group went along, following the blue light of the sonic screwdriver.
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"So,' said Cyphrin as they walked along. "When did you met the Doctor, actually?" Max looked at the punk rocker and sighed.

"I think I was 10 years old when we met. Mind you, back then he looked a lot different. Taller, and a lot more hair. Well, like he said, some aliens landed in my home town and I got caught up in the whole thing." he said. "The details are sort of rusty, sorry."

"No worries." Cyphrin waved her hand in dismissal. "Sounds like you two got to know each other quite well." she said, referring to how emotional their reunion looked.

"Well, I wouldn't say we bonded that much. I just sort of... latched onto him, as it were." Max felt a little embarrassed owning up to that. He was an adult after all, and still he felt a childish hero worship for the Doctor.

"Do you two mind?" said the Doctor, annoyed. "I'm trying to focus on this and you two are busy chattering like chimps." Max and Cyphrin shrugged and put aside their conversation for now.

After a while, the group came to a door that had, according to the Doctor; a triple dead lock placed on it, so the sonic screwdriver couldn't open it.

"Someone certainly doesn't what us to get to whatevers behind this door..." the Doctor said, taking out a pair of half moon shaped glasses and placing them on his face. He examined the door further, trying to find some flaw or weakness he could use.

"Let me try something, Doctor." said Max, taking out his Null Void gun and adjusted the setting. "If I can set this just right, I can blast that door right out of the frame."

"Good idea, Maxy boy. And here I was thinking that you let that brilliant mind of yours go to waist all these years." said the Doctor. Max smiled wryly at him before firing at the door.

Just as planned, the door was sucked off its hinges and into the null void. The group entered the room, and once again the Doctor froze in his tracks. That same look of terror that Cyphrin saw on his face when the cloister bell rang. The object they found looked like nothing either Max or Cyphrin had seen before. But the Doctor seemed very familiar with it.

It was large, capsule like object. It was made of a brownish-grey metal, and had some sort of registry number embossed on one side. There didn't seem to be any way into the thing, save for this strange platform like out cropping that came out to one side.

"No no no no no ..." the Doctor mumbled to himself, racing around the object. "This cannot be here. THIS CANNOT BE HERE!!!" he shouted in fury.

"What is it?" said Max. The Doctor looked at his two companions, as if to apologies for some horror yet to come.

"Its a Battle TARDIS."