just_the_doctor | [Otherways] Arrival at Palasia Four

The Doctor tosses off his leather jacket and rolls up his sleeve. Popping open one of the drawers, he pulls out a tool the size and shape of a ball-point pen. He places the tip against the inside of his elbow and clicks the plunger twice.

Then, he pulls out a slide and places a drop of the blood he collected on it, moving it under a microscope attached to a display screen. A few fiddles with the knob, and the resolution zooms in with dizzying speed to reveal an infestation of tiny spider-like creatures latching onto the surface of the blood cells and burrowing their way inside.

Her eyes stare at the screen. At the fact that its showing little spider like things burrowing into the blood cells. And she wasn't feeling so good either. For the moment she wasn't showing it...

But then as she watches him she lets herself slide down the wall. Her body feeling weak or rather weaker. Whichever it was...

He doesn't notice her at first. The Doctor's engrossed in introducing several foreign substances into the culture and watching the nanobots effortlessly neutralize them.

The only saving grace so far is that they've been unable to affect the TARDIS itself. The material was simply too strong and too advanced for the nanobots to penetrate. The ones that blew in with the air as the door opened had already been swept up by the ventilation system and blown back outside.

When he does finally look over to her, rubbing his eyes, he doesn't immediately register what he sees.

"You doing okay over there?"

"Doing just peachy, Doctor."

Not really but wasn't going to tell him that. They'd figure this out. She was sure of that. Giving him a warm smile she leans her head back and shuts her eyes, willing her body to relax putting herself in a meditative state.

He mistakes her actions as despair.

"We're going to beat this, Padme," he says reassuringly.

"Didn't say we wouldn't, Doctor."

She might, if he's paying attention, sound a little weaker than what she did before.

He's not paying quite enough attention. He just thinks she sounds tired. Which she would have every right to be. He gives her what he hopes is a confident smile and turns back to his work.

When he looks up again ten minutes later, the expression is not so confident. He's been completely unable to make any progress.

He sighs and leans his head back, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"It'll come to you."

She trusts that it will. Really she does. And she isn't tired... just weak. Opening her eyes a bit she wraps her arms around herself... her mind going elsewhere for the moment. Not that where it was going she could really go.

The Doctor looks over at her, startled by her voice. He'd all but forgotten she was there, so engrossed he was.

This time, when he looks at her, he definitely sees a difference. He doesn't want to alarm her, though, so he doesn't mention it. He just grabs another of the penlike tools and crouches down beside her.

"Roll up your sleeve. Maybe another sample will help pinpoint the issue."

Padme unwraps her arms from herself and pulls up one of her sleeves and holds her arm out to him. Whether or not she's really registering what she's doing is a completely different matter. Because her mind wasn't on what was happening. It was on Obi-Wan.

The Doctor clicks the device against her vein twice and gives her hand a gentle squeeze before returning to the microscope. He prepares a second slide with a drop of Padme's blood and brings the image up on the screen.

"Oh god."

"That doesn't sound good. Not in the least bit."

Anything that goes 'Oh god' was never good.

He turns the screen a little so that she can see. Intermixed with the blood corpuscles were smaller floating bodies -- the midiclorians. Additionally, there were the spidery nanobots in great quantity swimming along as well.

The Doctor flips a switch, and the screen shifts slightly, the left half showing the scene as before, and the right half showing the images from the Time Lord's sample. (He frowns slightly to notice that there aren't any midiclorians in his sample -- no Force-training for him.)

"The nanobots are larger in your blood. Faster, too. They've learned how to use the midiclorians to improve themselves."

"Oh that's just lovely. Really is."

She gets up from where she was sitting and walks over standing behind him. And just staring at the screens she knows he's not Force sensitive. But she thinks that's quite alright. Because he's fine just the way he is.

"Stupid nanos."

Well, it shows that she shouldn't use the Force any time soon.

As they watch, one of the "improved" nanobots floats past one of the "standard" ones. Almost immediately, the larger reverses direction and attacks the smaller, breaking it down in a matter of seconds.

"No," the Doctor says, a note of panic rising in his voice. "No-no-no-no." He jumps up from his seat and barrels out of the room at a full run.

Padme watches the screen transfixed at first. Well... it wouldn't be the first time that she'd been right at death's door. Now question of the matter was surviving it. Eventually she walked over back to where she'd been before and just closes her eyes allowing herself to fall into a meditative state again. She's not running anywhere. And if and when the Doctor returns and she's not moving its because of the meditative state not because of something more terrible.

The Doctor rushes up to the control room and frantically starts the dematerialization sequence. Not until the 'Temporal Orbit Achieved' message displays on his screen does he allow himself to breathe easier.

When he gets back to the infirmary, though, his heart rates jump back up. He checks Padme's pulse and breathing, finding it strong and regular, so he relaxes again.

"Good idea. Conserve your energy."

He turns his attention back to the screen, where the improved nanobots have now destroyed everything in the sample, including the standard nanobots that were present. With nothing else recognizable to attack, they appear dormant.

The sample of the Doctor's blood has also been completely wiped out by the nanobots, but instead of being dormant without anything to attack, these nanobots continue to crawl over each other in the culture.

There's an answer here, he knows it.

And she heard him come in. She didn't have to use the Force for that and she's restraining herself from using it. She hasn't even looked at the screen to check what was going on inside of her body. She really doesn't care... well, she does but she's leaving herself in the hands of the Doctor and the Force.

"Doing something like that."

Or rather she's keeping herself from appearing too terribly weak.

"The improved nanobots developed the ability to destroy the standard ones," he explains. "Which means if they'd gotten out onto the planet, the inoculations wouldn't have helped -- they would have destroyed everything."

The Doctor uses a set of tiny manipulators to pick up one of the improved nanobots from Padme's sample and transfer it into his own sample containing only the standard ones.

Immediately, the improved 'bot twitches into life and attacks the 'bot closest to him. The standard nanobots don't attack back because they still recognize the improved nanobot as the same material. And without any other midiclorians to utilize, the improved nanobot is unable to replicate itself. It simply breaks the standard nanobots down into nothing and then returns to dormancy.

"I think we may have a way out of this," he says carefully.

And see, she wasn't watching that. Although, she finds it interesting that the improved nanobots destroyed the standard ones. "Well, then its a good thing we're in here and not out there." Okay... not really but you know.

"What way is that, Doc?"

"That's where I went," he says. "I took us off the planet. If even one of those improved guys managed to get out through the ventilation and onto the planet, it would be devastating."

He taps the screen with the single dormant nanobot.

"If I can reprogram these to attack only themselves, they'll do the work for us."

"Well, lets hope you can reprogram these things, Doctor. Because I want them out of my system and I'm sure you want them out of yours as well."

He gets to work. It's slow going since he doesn't know the programming language or even have the proper tools to interface with them.

And what's worse, he is starting to feel the effects of the nanobots on himself as well. Weakness, nausea, fatigue...

Time is very clearly of the essence.

Which means if he's feeling all of that then think of what she's feeling. Not to mention she's gone deathly quiet too. Even in the little state that she's in. But she's not feeling good at all and she's shielding herself. Not that it helps any. It's just a natural thing to do.

Oh, yes. He's highly aware of Padme's condition. It might be slowing him down some the way he keeps looking over at her. At a guess, he'd say she's got about another 2 hours before there's not going to be enough of her internal organs left to save.

He might last 3.

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