The Fall of Arcadia (Book ONE)

Chapter 31

Amy:

"All right my Lovelies. Up. Look up." My sister shouted, as we all got to our feet. We were all a bit too stunned to listen though to be fair. But where did the lights in the floor come from?

River came over to me, putting her hand on my arm as I stood up. "Are you okay?"

"What happened?" I nodded.

"We jumped."

"Jumped where?"

"Up. Up. Look up." Sera and the Doctor reiterated, but no one listened still.

"Where are we?"

"Exactly where we were." River and Seraphina said together, but both looked away, embarrassed.

I gave a laugh at that, knowing that they were so mother and daughter. "No we're not."

The Doctor buzzed the sonic at me. "Move your feet." There was a small circular hatch on the floor.

"Doctor, what am I looking at? Explain." I tried, seeing my sister not responding. Neither was River, now that was strange. Could Visions be hereditary?

"Oh, come on, Amy, think. The ship crashed with the power still on, yeah? So what else is still on?" I looked up, finally, and realised. "The artificial gravity. One good jump, and up we fell. Shot out the grav globe to give us an updraft, and here we are."

"Doctor, Writer, the statues. They look more like Angels now." Octavian called, snapping the two women out of their trances.

"They're feeding on the radiation from the wreckage, draining all the power from the ship, restoring themselves. Within an hour, they'll be an army." The hatch opened as the lights started fusing. "They're taking out the lights. Look at them. Look at the Angels. Into the ship, now. Quickly, all of you."

"How?" I cried, looking down at the long chimney like passage that we would just fall down like a bottomless pit. But Sera and the Doctor just grabbed each others hands and jumped down. From my point of view they were standing on the side of a vertical tube. "Sera, Doctor!"

"It's just a corridor." My sister laugh, her arm wrapped around the Doctor's waist. "The gravity orientates to the floor. Now, in here, all of you. Don't take your eyes off the Angels. Move, move, move."

We all did as she said, finding it a little weird, but cool at the same time. "Okay, men. Go, go, go!" Octavian commanded as the Time Travelling couple worked together on a control panel. "The Angels. Presumably they can jump up too?"

The hatched closed and the Doctor turned to face us. "They're here, now. In the dark, we're finished." But then the bulkhead at the other end of the corridor. "Run!"

"This whole place is a death trap." The Bishop grumbled as we didn't make it.

Sera gave a guttural growl that made the Doctor flinch and check her eye colour. Still luminescent green. "No, it's a time bomb. Well, it's a death trap and a time bomb. And now it's a dead end. Nobody panic. Oh, just me then. What's through here?"

"Secondary flight deck." River answered without hesitation.

"Okay. so we've basically run up the inside of a chimney, yeah? So what if the gravity fails?"

"We've thought about that."

"And?"

"And we'll all plunge to our deaths. See? I've thought about it. The security protocols are still live. There's no way to override them. It's impossible."

River was working on another control panel as the Doctor and Sera worked on the door. "How impossible?"

They both flapped their hands a moment. "Two minutes."