Weeping Angels - Plague final trigger

The Doctor was waiting for him in the commissary.

Around him, the revellers danced and swayed, a room built for thousands now pathetically vacant but for the last colonists of a dying world. The wine was gone, the plates scattered, and the music crackled through speakers that were only ever meant to direct doctors to those they were trying to save.

None of the revellers turned as the Chief Medical Officer entered, their masks gleaming in the soft blue lights. Some swayed alone to the music, others turning in slow circles, clinging to each other as if they had lost everything beyond what they could hold with their own two hands.

(...)

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.’

The music had stopped. Sweat was pouring into Perinne’s eyes, fuzzing his vitals and the heart rates of everyone he had tried to save. Everything had gone very still. The revellers seemed like a painting, a tableau, something from an old story. No one tried to run. Where would they go?

‘That’s what the storm is,’ the Doctor said, stalking down the hall. For a moment, Perinne thought the Doctor was going to strike him, but instead he just brushed past him on the way to that strange blue box. ‘Marble dust. The exhaled breath of a million Angels. Dust, and rage at what you did.’

He looked around at the majesty of the basilica, the opulence and the gilt.

‘You’re not safe. You were never safe. It was just saving you till last.’

Perinne blinked sweat from his eyes, and in that moment every reveller took off their masks.

There was Lieutenant Rozz, her features pale and dusty white, and a hundred interns whose names he’d never bothered to learn, grinning with mouths of sharp and shapeless teeth. And the Magentress, and his secretary, and a thousand others, all staring up at him with empty marble eyes.

The data feed in his salus-mask struggled and went silent. Even his own heart rate was just a flickering ghost.

‘Listen very carefully,’ the Doctor said, his eyes angry and wide. ‘We’re going to get you to the TARDIS. We’re going to figure out a way to reverse this, and save you, and –’

Not a single reveller had moved. All were silent. All were still. And yet … he could feel their gazes boring into him, pupil-less and malevolent. There was a terrible, strained need about them, a compacted, living menace in their every lifeless limb.

‘No,’ Perinne said.

‘I know you’re afraid,’ the Doctor whispered, ‘but we have to move. One foot in front of the other. You’ve been doing it your whole life. Just don’t blink, and we’ll –’

***

Twelve Angels Weeping, Grey Matter