(MAIN RANGE): High Rise - Part One
(MAIN RANGE): High Rise
Part One
Starring Alison Brie as The Doctor and Gillian Jacobs as Paige
with Paul Clayton as Colchester
Continuity:
You may be aware of Arbrax's Grounded Series of Cover Art.
Yeah, well, if you can have continuity for a series that only has cover images (yes, yes, I'll get to writing it sooner or later for her) This story takes place between Grounded 1 and 2.
Chapter One
There's a new High Rise apartment property in Cardiff called the Point. It's been built out of nothing, overnight.
No, really.
There's a new fancy glass apartment building that stretches up and up and is the fourth highest building in Cardiff.
It wasn't there yesterday.
Funnily, no body really noticed. Not until you pointed it out, made them stare at it for a bit, and then they would eventually, be guided to the conclusion, that yep, it was new, but only if you pointed at it, and screamed at them for a few minutes to really think about it.
Though maybe they only said that because you screamed at them for a few minutes telling them to believe it.
The Doctor would probably call it a perception filter or something. She'd know exactly what the explanation to the whole thing would be. A really helpful explanation, one that really helped to clarify it. She would know. Well, if she hadn't just rented out an apartment.
* * *
The Doctor sat in apartment 31b of the Point. It was a nice and functional modern housespace, the kind you see on TV that no one you've ever met owns, where everything is painted white and it's fancy and whatnot. The Doctor is sitting on the couch, drinking coffee, and watching TV.
"Doctor, what's going on?" Paige said.
Paige is standing next to the Doctor, with a bag of chips.
"I don't know." The Doctor said. "Quiet, this show is excellent."
"What is it?"
"I don't know, it's like Season 7 of some show with an arc, I'm completely lost."
Paige continues to stand there, exasperated. "Look, Doctor. I know you've gone into a sulk because the TARDIS went up and gone on us, and you said we should go on this whole world exploring expedition to find it, or something, so why are we standing here in an apartment watching whatever it is you're watching?"
"Mm. Had to buy the apartment." The Doctor said, like what she was doing made perfect sense in her head. "It was really nice."
"Yeah, okay, Doctor, fine. You had to buy the apartment. Okay. Whatever. It's not like we're strapped for cash or anything." Paige placed her head in her hands. "I'm not even sure how we got here-"
The Doctor had an answer for that. "The Stairs."
"Yeah, well, I don't remember walking up any." Paige said. "Look, Doctor. I'm going to go look around, and figure out exactly what's happening in this weird apartment place thing."
"Fine by me."
The doorbell rang.
"I'll get it!" Paige says, and she goes to unlock the door.
"Hello." says the man on the doorstep. "I'm your neighbor. They call me Mr. Colchester. This is my husband, Colin. I'm trying to figure out why I just bought an apartment."
Chapter Two
"Wow! Wow! That's, that's super great. Yeah, yeah, come in!" Paige cheered, inviting him inside.
The Doctor was still on the couch. Although Paige hadn't seen her get up, she now had a bag of chips.
Mr. Colchester and Colin walked in. Paige smiled awkwardly. "So, Hi. This is the Doctor. She's usually like, really motivated. but she is currently chips and TV focused. I'm Paige."
The Doctor made some kind of teen hand sign thing that no one does anymore.
Mr. Colchester didn't seem perturbed. He didn't seem perturbed by anything, really. "So, um, Paige, is it?" Colchester mumbled, looking at his clipboard. "Have You: A. Had any prior extraterrestrial experience, B. Had any connection with the private firm 3sol-"
"Um, honey, I think we can be a little more personal than just verbally giving them the survey." Colin said.
"You're right, it's much faster for them to fill it out on paper," Colchester continued to say in his glacial pace-
"No, St. Jean-"
"Extraterrestial?" Paige interrupted. "You think this has to do with, say, the Weeping Angels or Daleks or something? We've noticed plenty of aliens passing through Cardiff." Paige said.
"Plenty..." Colchester said, quizically...
"Oh, well, like I said, she's the Doctor, I'm Paige, and we travel through time and space!"
"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"Well, I say travel through time and space, we like, haven't really been anywhere outside earth, and like, by ordinary car for the past two months-"
"Druggies." Colchester whispered to his husband in what was very much not a whisper, because he didn't care if they heard him. He turned to go.
"No, please! I'm! The Doctor has totally lost it, and well, you two seem like you're actually aware of aliens, which in itself is impressive, because, well, you know. UNIT puts stuff in the water supply and all that. I just-" Paige stopped herself from increasing in babbling high speed any further. She said slowly and firmly. "I...really...really would like your help."
Colchester seemed to think about it a bit. "How the hell do you know about the Weeping Angels and Daleks?"
"Um, I met them?"
"You're alive? You're in." Colchester said.
Chapter Three
Paige followed Colchester and Colin out into the hallway. "So, you're, like, surveying everyone?"
"Yep." Colin said. "And so far, not one of them, including us, actually recalls A. This building being here more than two days, and B. Decided to come here on more than a whim. Not one of them. No one was looking for estate, it's just as soon as they saw this place, they instantly sold their homes and rushed over here."
"Hm. Mass Hypnotism?"
"I like the way you think, Ms. Paige, but no." Colchester said. "You can't hypnotize someone into doing something they don't want to do like that. That's a myth."
"I have met way too many aliens that can totally do it though." Paige said. "Like, there are loads."
"They aren't here." Colchester grumbled, fully well knowing he was probably wrong.
"So, who's next?" Paige chirped.
"A Mrs. Sarah Lumsdale." Colin said, consulting his clipboard. "Next door down. It says here that she was the first person to purchase an apartment here."
"Well, she'll probably know something. I bet that she'll have the solution to all of this!" Paige said, optimistically.
They knocked on Mrs. Lumsdale's door.
She opened it, a wispy blonde woman that had torn out most of her hair. You could tell because it was in her hands. "Hugo Weaving!" She exclaimed. "Hugo Weaving, Hugo Weaving, Hugo Weaving!" She yelled, foaming at the mouth. She gestured for them to come in.
Paige, Colchester and Colin confusedly entered the apartment, and Mrs. Lumsdale struggled to be polite before her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the floor.
Colchester leaned down to take her pulse. "She's dead." He muttered. "What an insane world we live in."
"You really have a gift for the understatement, huh?" Paige said, crossing her arms.
"Search the apartment. There's no way this wasn't deliberate." Colchester said.
Colin and Paige moved across the apartment as Colchester examined the body.
"You guys have already surveyed like, twenty people so far?" Paige asked, trying to catch up. "Anything in common with all of them?"
"Oh, yes. Absolutely." Colin said. "They all had nothing in common. Now that sounds silly, but we began to notice a pattern. It was genuinely abnormal, the lack of a pattern. All of different nationalities, interests, political views, the only thing in common was that they all had enough money to drop everything and move here as soon as they saw it. And well, you saw Mrs. Lumsdale. They're all loopy here in different ways."
Paige began to feel sick to her stomach. "Like you did. Like we did."
"Um, Paige?" Colin said, nervously. "I seem to have found a needle."
"Don't touch it!" Colchester called, rushing over. He picked it up carefully with a Torchwood brand anti-biohazard handkerchief. "There's some kind of thing in it. Damn. If only I had any of the team here, we could analyze it." He looked over it intently. "It's viscous. Like some kind of liquid metal. I guarantee this is our murder weapon for this woman."
"Wonderful. And who's the culprit?" Paige asked.
"Well, isn't that obvious? Whoever is manipulating us, whoever made us come here in the first place. Maybe it could be a man behind a man, but I think whoever is responsible owns this apartment complex..."
Chapter Four
Paige, Colchester and Colin talked to themselves for a while, but inevitably concluded they needed more information to go any further. They knocked on the next door.
"Oh, hi." said the Man, opening the door.
"Mr, um," Colin checked his clipboard. "Mr. Sean Macguire?"
"Um, yes."
Colchester took charge. "We need to know why you're here, why you bought this place, if you've seen anything suspicious, and also there's been a murder in your nextdoor apartment."
Sean breathed heavily for a second. "I think you need to look at my bathroom."
"Excuse me?"
* * *
Inside Sean's bathroom, there was a giant pulsating mass growing out of the funnel for his shower.
It glowed green, and wasn't organic, but it was hard to say what it was outside of that.
"I went to bed last night, woke up, and well.... stuff happened and when I came into the Bathroom this morning, it was there." Sean said.
"Giant Green mass thing?" Paige asked. "Oh...I wish the Doctor was lucid right now. She'd know exactly what this is."
"Search me." Colchester mumbled.
"Sorry, but, um, Sean, is there anything else?" Colin asked. "Because I thought you mentioned a thing happening."
"Oh, that's not important. I just noticed I had a computer chip embedded in my neck."
* * *
Paige, Colchester and Colin led Sean back to the Doctor's apartment.
"What? What'd I say?" Sean asked, confusedly.
"You didn't mention this as the very first thing?" Colchester yelled.
"Well, there was the shower pulsating mass!"
"This Complex rewrites the brain!" Said Colchester, figuring it out... "I bet that if we go around, half the people who have stayed here overnight will have noticed weird stuff in their apartments. All placed there to keep them from noticing the process that's beginning to work on them. I bet most of them, if not all, will have a chip in their neck."
"So, the High Rise works on a like, mental level? Gets into your head, guides you here, and distracts you so it can do metal grafting surgery on your neck in the middle of the night?" Paige asked.
"Indeed it does. Rewriting of the brain. Insidious. And well, I'm beginning to understand, that-" They finally reached The Doctor's apartment, opening it to find The Doctor was smiling, sitting there, surrounded by metal figures covered in surgical cloth. They were implanting something into her neck.
"Cybermen!" Colchester yelled.
"Hi, guys!" The Doctor said, hazily, as the Cybermen continued to drill into her neck. "Come on in!"
To Be Continued...
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