She didn't need telling twice. Throwing his arm around her shoulder, half walking, half dragging, she moved to the large doorway, the evil smoke of the Realm beyond waiting for her. She reached down for her rucksack.
'No, leave that!' yelled the Doctor The noise of the screaming fire pouring out of the tower above them seemed to increase in volume. 'I'll bring it for you!'
'But where are you going?' Ace yelled back in frustration.
'You're going to take John home!' came the reply.
'How?' screamed back Ace, the moaning flame above their heads shrieking in pain. The Doctor ran over to her, and placed her hands on her shoulders. He looked the young girl in the eyes.
'Are you scared?' he asked.
'What?' Ace didn't know what the Doctor was playing at, but it wasn't funny.
'ARE YOU SCARED?!' he bellowed back, black smoke starting to pour into the building.
'YES! of course I'm scared!' she screamed back, upset that the Doctor should pick such a flaw in her at such a tense time.
'Good girl!' the Doctor said with a smile. He glanced at John. It was obvious he was too. ' Get outside and climb that chimney!'
'What?' she said again, feeling tears tickle the back of her eyes.
'Up the chimney, until you get level with the lighthouse's beam. Go! Now!'
Not understanding what the Time Lord was talking about, but seeing it as the only option, she plunged into the warm depths of the flowing dark fog. John in semi-consciousness dragging his feet behind her as she lugged his weighty form out of the factory. In the deep mist she could vaguely make out the head of
light rotating in the distance. A ray of hope? She wondered, slapping John around the face in order to try and awaken the man. He sluggishly opened his eyes, fear still emblazoned through them, hands shaking with pure fright.
'Where are we going?' he stuttered nervously in the smoke.
'Home,' she said, 'You've got one ladder to climb...'
~~~
The climb was a long tiresome one. The rusting bars crackled and flaked in their hands, the groaning cry of metal on metal running in a cold wave through the dense atmosphere. The screaming roar of the leaping fists of fire doing nothing to their disorientation and lethargy. The beam of the lighthouse was striking the metal skin of the tower at virtually mid-way.
They were little over a quarter of the way to it. John stumbled and slipped frm time to time, whimpering as the rust stuck to the bleeding holes torn in his hands by the sharp metal edges of each rung. 'At least he's still scared,' thought Ace. 'The Professor knows that's important for some reason.'
The Doctor was stood in the entrance to the factory, Ace's rucksack hefted onto his back. He was watching the figure of the man from the Dark Region get engulfed by the ever encroaching wave of the shadow with a mixture of relief at being right, and horror as the man screamed and begged to be saved from what seemed like the living agony of 'hell'.
Compassion momentarily raised its head in the Doctor's eyes, but was soon banished as the Time Lord raised his hat in one final sad gesture and walked into the billowing dark smoke. Left alone, the shadow figure gritted its teeth, a hint of a smile dancing in the darkness, and with a groan he tried to haul his body out of the thick treacle-like grip the blackness held over him. The eyes blazed under the stray strands of black hair, determination wrote itself through the man's heart.
Strength was his single thought, is overriding goal, his one power. He pulled one arm free and held his fist aloft, triumph signing its way through the high vaulted echo of the metal ceiling and roof. Slowly, painfully, he hauled his body entirely out, an exhausted laugh of joy breaking from his lips. So maybe the Time Lord had been right...he had made the final bad move by leaving him to die...it was the sight of the Time Lord's triumphant and goading face that had nearly defeated him. He wearily stood up, ran his fingers through his hair and sprinted into the darkness after his mortal self.
Ace looked up the ladder to where she'd seen the moving spot of light to where she'd seen the moving spot of light before. It was getting closer but so slowly. She wearily hauled herself to the next rung, gently testing her foot on the rung as it gave a hideous groan of pain under her weight. She looked down at John. 'At least he was keeping up at a reasonable pace now,' she thought. She stopped, and looked beyond him.
At the bottom, swaying, giddying many, many feet below was the Doctor. He had her rucksack leaning against the factory wall and was desperately going through it, throwing things in all directions. Ace watched aghast for a second, before guessing what it was the Time Lord was after.
She shouted at the top of her voice: 'Side pocket, Professor!' and carried on climbing, the sight of the beam from the lighthouse, burning intermittently on the side of the tower, spurring her ever onwards.
On the ground, the Doctor had found what he had been looking for - a can of Nitro-9. Wedging it into his pocket and haphazardly stuffing all of Ace's other belongings back, he grabbed the first rung of the ladder and started to climb. His ankle was gripped in a vice-like hand, one that was connected to someone dressed entirely in black, with a smile of pure evil.
'Going somewhere?' the man asked with a light laugh, and tried to pull the Doctor off. Granulated fragments of dislodged rust sprinkled downwards, the whole ladder moving away from the face of the tower several inches before clanging violently back.
'Wherever I go I try to dissuade the use of un-necessary violence. This however is very necessary.' Clinging for life with both hands, the Doctor brought his other leg swinging round, his foot catching the man under the chin with a sickening thud. Swinging his gaze upwards, he saw Ace get to the rung underneath the swirling beam of light. She moved slowly, and as the great spreading stain of light crossed over and covered her body, she vanished into thin air, noiselessly, effortlessly.
A huge mushroom of fire leapt skywards seemingly with a huge shriek of pain. The Doctor started the long climb, the weighty rucksack on his back not helping matters. 'Quicker, quicker,' he urged himself, cutting his palms and fingertips on the rugged metal in his haste. He flicked his eyes upwards again just as John hauled his exhausted body into the moving curtain of light. Again, he too vanished, the factory roaring its disapproval as though it had a lump savagely removed. The smoke started to rise, forming a vast black cushion beneath the Doctor who doggedly kept climbing, the ladder's groans of pain matching the Doctor's exactly.
The beam of light seemed so far away...
climb. 'CLIMB!' he told himself, picking up speed with each muscle-aching stretch of the ladder, a metal acre between him and Earth. He looked down through the black clouds to the shadow man. 'No movement out of him yet anyway,' muttered the Doctor, heading on upwards, rust-flakes falling onto his hat in some bizarre mock scenario of the winters he had spent on Earth. Up, up, limbs crying for relief.
'Should I ditch the ruck-sack?' he questioned himself while climbing. 'No. Ace had already lost one blowing up the Cybership once and the TARDIS supply of them wasn't exactly overstocked.' he thought.
He climbed on and on, hours dragging when really minutes flicked by. He glanced down and saw the man in black on all fours, shaking his head to clear the blow the Doctor had inflicted. The man looked up at the Doctor, their eyes fusing, one reeking hate, the other freedom. The Doctor carried on, feeling the extra weight on the ladder as the shadow man seemingly began to bound up the ladder after him. He looked up. The beam of light was just above him. 'At last,' the Doctor muttered, exhausted, yet not allowing himself to relax for an instant.
Reaching into his pocket he pulled out the can of Nitro-9. He looked down at the approaching figure of the man in black. He smiled to himself, pulled the top from the can, and hurled it through the murky fog towards the glass top of the lighthouse. Then one rung more upwards and he was in the path of the circling beam. It swung agonisingly slowly through the blackness, almost night air, its fresh sparkle getting nearer and nearer. The beam hit him mere seconds before the tumbling can of Nitro exploded, making the light cut out entirely, making an unbelievable power-surge throw itself violently from the severed stump of brick into the air, one hundred times brighter then the light had been. It expanded in a rolling wave, another vast ocean, rising and falling, seemingly sighing, swelling, touching.
The walls of the factory started to melt, weeping metal tears, rivets fusing with sheet work. The shadow man screamed once before he was engulfed for the second time that day. He had proclaimed himself an ocean, with the isolation of the lighthouse. Both of these were proving him false, as they drowned him slowly in venomous flame.
~~~