Weeping Angels - Plague

The Plague Cinereal.

It began in the lungs. Or in the heart. Or in the eyes, the liver, the brain, the hands. It grew in the limb you used the most, or festered in a cut you didn’t realise you had, or one day it was simply there, twisted through you like ivy, as if it had been there long before you were born and would be there long after you were dead.

Like dust. Like the stones under your feet.

Numbness. Lethargy. Stiffness. Thickening, flaking skin. Loss of feeling in extremities. Paranoia. Tumours on the spine. Paralysis. Death.

‘I’m missing something,’ the Doctor murmured, as he scrolled through page upon page of reports. They hadn’t let him out of his cell, but there had been too many eyes on Perinne to deny that another doctor could only help. He’d grudgingly allowed him access to the basilica’s diagnostic systems, projecting data on to the white walls of the Doctor’s cell in red and blue and sickly green.

‘This is all the notes we have,’ the Chief Medical Officer said over the intercom. He had dismissed his staff, telling himself that it was because they couldn’t neglect their own work in favour of listening to a madman – and not because he didn’t want them listening to a madman who might know more than him.

Bad for morale. He was in charge. He made the decisions. The chain of command had to stand.

‘The salus-masks provide a constant link to every single human on the planet,’ Perinne said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the pride from his voice. ‘Tracking the plague’s progress was simple, but as for how it started and who it targets …’

‘City Twelve fell in a night? An entire city?’

‘Yes.’

The Doctor scrubbed a hand through his wiry hair, the light of a million cases reflected in his eyes. ‘But diseases start somewhere. A vector, a patient zero, a contaminant – they don’t just appear everywhere across a city all at once. That’s not how diseases work.’

‘The disease doesn’t behave like a disease should.’ A flurry of keys being pressed, then all of Perinne’s carefully assembled theories began to flash across the Doctor’s cell. ‘Normally the weak and elderly fall first, but here older sufferers held out for hours while young and strong patients fell immediately. Those already suffering from illnesses resisted longer than the healthy, except when they didn’t. There’s no pattern. There’s no reason.’

‘Yes there is,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘You just don’t know what it is yet. And this storm isn’t right, either. The whole planet’s climate-controlled. How is –’

‘We thought of that,’ Perinne countered. ‘The atmospheric engines are working perfectly. Or they were before we lost communications. We’ve tested the dust.’

‘And?’

‘And it’s dust. No bacteria or viruses. It’s just plain marble dust –’

The Doctor stopped scrolling. ‘Marble?’

‘Yes.’

‘Marble dust. Here?’

‘Yes.’

(...)

‘Doctor,’ Perinne said. It was very nearly a plea. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Marble dust,’ the Doctor repeated. ‘You thought your people were dying, but the salus-masks stopped recording data because what was underneath was no longer human. The tumours. The stiffening skin. It’s not death. It’s a transformation.’

‘What do you –’

‘They’re not tumours,’ the Doctor said. ‘They’re wings.’

(...)

‘I didn’t ask you if you took notes,’ the Doctor snarled. ‘I asked you what you did. I should have known from the name – you wanted to figure out how it quantum-locked. You wanted to reverse-engineer how they freeze when observed and use it for this place –’

‘More time,’ Perinne said. ‘That’s all. A doctor must save what he can.’

‘No. A doctor saves all he can. He never stops looking. Never stops fighting. You never even started.’

His voice was rising, and the revellers had turned to watch. Perinne had designed the masks himself. How could there be such accusation in their eyes?

‘The image of an Angel becomes an Angel,’ the Doctor said simply. ‘It’s their way of getting their own back on a universe that freezes them in place. Meet their eyes, and they can get into your head, change you from the inside out. And you did nothing but look at it, through a mask connected to the brain of every other person on the planet.

‘There’s your plague, doctor. The image of an Angel becomes an Angel, and this image went viral. It took City Twelve from you in one night. And then City Eleven, and City Ten. Angels love a countdown. They like scaring people.’

***

Twelve Angels Weeping, Grey Matter