Pentagon - Episode 1: 'Born Again'

PENTAGON
Born Again

Delivery Suite, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, England, 2013

“Judith, don’t push unnecessarily – wait for the next contraction!” pleaded Sarah Hasland, head of midwifery in the modern hospital establishment that Judith Hunter was giving birth in. She was in excruciating pain, and was hoping it would not be too long at all before her child was delivered.
Judith had been to the Delivery Suite in the Royal Victoria Infirmary before, when she was in labour with her first child, Anthony, although that was seventeen years ago now. This pregnancy was completely unexpected – she and her husband, Alan, were not even trying for a child. She was forty-six years of age now, and had surprisingly (from her own point of view) not yet experienced menopause.
Seconds after Sarah had told Judith not to push without reason, Judith began to scream, her face tightening. She had gone against her experienced midwife’s word. Moments later, she had given birth, and the child (a baby girl) was taken away to be cleansed. She was returned moments later, cradled in the arms of her mother, with her doting new father peeking over, rubbing his finger across her cheek.

From the other end of the corridor, leaving the Maternity Assessment Unit (MAU), was a young female, wearing a skimpy cream white cardigan, revealing part of a yellow bra. Complimenting the fashion choice was an ankle-length skirt, red in colour. Settled in her hair was a cotton red hair-piece. Her hair was tied up, chocolate brown, and her face was perfect, almost too perfect.
She laughed as she bid her friend Jess farewell, who was a nurse in the MAU, but her positive mood changed almost instantly as she noticed a man and a woman, nurturing a baby girl who had been born just moments ago.
It was almost as if Alan felt a familiar presence from the other end of the corridor. He turned and looked at Beth but she turned her face and walked in the other direction. He was concerned, although he knew that he shouldn’t be, so ran after her. Judith looked up to her astounded husband and couldn’t help but wonder what he was up to, but she had no time to ask where he was going, for he had made his way out of the double doors with immense speed.
She shook her head and looked down at her new baby daughter and smiled. She had already thought of a name for her daughter.
“Beth…” she whispered.



The Doctor peeked out of the TARDIS, his face quickly scanning the area. He was in the reception area of the Royal Victoria Infirmary.
“Seems okay… Not too much dust, that’s nice!” he snorted.
As the Doctor stepped out, locking the door to the TARDIS, he noticed a young woman, Beth Hunter, running to the entrance of the hospital. She was upset, tears streaming down her face. A man was following her, he was called Alan, and he was the husband of Judith Hunter, the woman who had just given birth to her daughter, whom she had called Beth.
“Wait up!” Alan shouted, trying to catch up with Beth as she stormed out of the entrance. The Doctor sighed.
“Domestics, eh?” he muttered to himself before fixing his bow tie and putting his hands in the pockets of his leather-effect trench coat.

“Look, will you stop a minute?!” Alan shouted, running out of breath, on the other side of the isolated road that Beth had managed to run across before he could reach her. “Who are you?”
“Nobody!” she shouted back to him, before he started to run again to try and catch up with her.
“Just let me talk to you! Why did you look over at me and Judith?!”
“I didn’t!” Beth shouted, trying not to look back at Alan as he raced behind her.
Beth had now changed tactics. To avoid listening to any more that Alan had to say, she ran towards him, but then past him, in the direction of the hospital.
“Where are you going now?!” he panted. He couldn’t run any more – it had taken all of the energy he had out of him.

“Ah, hello there…” there was a pause, after the Doctor had greeted the woman behind the reception desk, throwing his arms over the glass panel. “…Claudia…” he finished, having read her name on her identity badge. “Why do you people all have such boring names?!”
“What’s your name then?” Claudia asked, more disinterested in the excitable conversation she was having with a man she had never met before than any.
“The Doctor, why? Is that boring too?”
“Well you’ve come to the right place. Doctor who? I’ll log you in on the registers.”
“Oh no, I’m not a Doctor at this hospital. Well, I might be. No, I can’t be. Can I?” the Doctor asked, baffled, but having fun at the same time.
“You ‘ave to ‘ave appropriate qualifications to be a Doctor in this place, Doctor. Do you ‘ave appropriate qualifications to be a Doctor in this place, or are you ‘avin’ me on?” Claudia enquired.
“Well, I was doing some scientific research work for UNIT a long time ago, but now I seem to have gone freelance. Is there anything I could be doing that may be of help to you today?”
“Hold on…” Claudia checked her computer for any information. There was a long pause and the Doctor looked around. He looked out of the entrance and noticed Beth entering. She played with her hair before it settled, and she wiped tears away from her eyes and applied foundation to cover the mascara that had dribbled.
“We’ve got a cleaner down in the Delivery Suite today. You could get a mop and start doing the rounds…” Claudia wondered. She got back to eating a jam donut that she had sacrificed to speak to the Doctor.
“I’m onto it!” the Doctor turned and spotted Beth. He followed her.

“Hello, I’m the Doctor, what’s your name?”
“Beth… why?”
“Could you point me in the direction of the Delivery Suite?”
“I suppose so. I’m headed for there too.”
“Ah, you going to see somebody in particular, or are you dropping a parcel off?”
“It’s a maternity ward, not a post office, you muppet!”
“Oh yes! I always get the two mixed up… Anyway…” the Doctor whistled.
“I’m off to see my mum and dad. My mum’s just given birth to a baby daughter. Except, I’m not quite sure how that one worked out… At all…”
“Ooh, how so?” the Doctor asked.
“I just don’t.” Beth replied, hesitantly. “Right, this is Delivery Suite… I guess you’re on cleaning duty then? Get to work…”
“Yes… I suppose so, then… It was very nice to meet you, Beth!” the Doctor straightened his bow tie.

3 hours later…

The Doctor was making his way around every room in the Delivery Suite. Thus far, he had interrupted a total of four new families. There were the Kumar’s in Suite 1, who had given birth to a baby boy, Mickey. There were the Davidson’s in Suite 6 – Sally had given birth to a baby girl named Ursula. There were also the Oswald’s in Suite 12, who had yet to name their baby girl.
The fourth family he had interrupted was of course, the Hunter’s. Their baby girl Beth was crying as the Doctor walked in, whistling and mopping. His mop was bone dry, which was maybe why all of the families knew that he was in the job for social reasons, not occupational reasons.
“So who do we have here, then?” the Doctor asked, forming a smile on his face as he looked into the baby’s eyes.
“This is Beth Hunter,” Judith replied. There was a pause before the Doctor looked in sheer shock. “What’s up? Is there something wrong?”
“Sometimes I wish, I just wish I don’t have the ability to speak every language under the sun!”
“What do you mean?” Judith asked, puzzled by the Doctor’s actions.
“I speak baby, unless you hadn’t noticed already – and your baby, Beth, just told me to get my sonic screwdriver out and check her DNA, and match it against chocolate head. But who on earth is chocolate head?!”
There was a further pause, before Judith became slightly fragile and scared and started chanting for a nurse. She pulled the alarm chord, and held on tightly to her child. Beth ran past the Suite that Judith and baby Beth were in, but through the circular glass window, the Doctor saw her and got to his feet and entailed a chase.

As the Doctor chased Beth out of the Delivery Suite, inside Suite 13 – Judith was rocking her baby daughter back and forth in her arms, singing a lullaby to her, hoping she would go to sleep, but nothing was working. And in a fragment of a second, there was no child in her arms. No trace of her daughter, Beth Hunter, at all. She had vanished. Her world had been turned upside down, and Alan was not by her side to comfort her.

Beth ran into reception, and headed straight for the TARDIS. The door was open. As she bolted in, she closed the door behind her, and stood there, eyes closed, resting her back against the padded frame that the Doctor had installed not two weeks ago.
“Beth, let me in!” the Doctor screamed from outside of the TARDIS.
“She’s gone… I’m gone…”
“Who’s gone, Beth?”
“Me… I’m not there any more, but I should be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing… It doesn’t matter…” she had shifted from the entrance of the TARDIS, and she was now pacing back and forth at the console. She flicked a few switches. The Doctor opened the door, and closed it behind him as he entered in a swift fashion.
“Listen, Beth… Everything matters right now. What do you mean that you are missing? You’re right here!”
“I’m not. I should be there, but I’m not. I’m here, but it’s just part of me. Part of me is gone, and it’s never going to come back now. A family, devastated.”
“I don’t understand…”
Beth moved in on the Doctor. She straightened his bow tie for him, and then moved her lips up against his right ear. Seconds later, Beth returned to the console. She pulled a lever that was just itching to be pulled.
“Hold on… How do you know how to work the TARDIS? My TARDIS?!”
“I dunno…” Beth shrugged. “Let’s go to Pentalscar.”
“Does that even exist?”
The Doctor was speaking to himself. Beth had vanished. “What?!”
He paced back and forth, pushing buttons and pulling levers on the TARDIS console. “How is she even possible?!” The Doctor stepped back and looked around in sorrow at the emptiness.

The Cave of Mentalthrox de Pent, Pentalscar, 192 BC

“My subjects… Two scientists have now been appointed to complete our mission for us. They will establish where the female is, and they shall do what has to be done. Pentalscar’s fate rests in the hands of Pentrox and Pentalthrax!”

Pent Town, Pentalscar, 2014

The Doctor parked the TARDIS in what seemed like a desert. It was isolated, there was nothing in sight.
“Well, it’s definitely Pentalscar. Now where…?”
The Doctor turned to make his way through the desert, but as he did, he was mauled by a woman who had a claw-like arm. It was fiercely sharp, and silver. It was covered in blood now, and the Doctor lay there, injured and nearly unconscious in Pent Town Desert.



“My name is Wilson Gibson, and I present to you today... the Eyegon!”

“Doctor, you died!”

“With the Eyegon, immortality is guaranteed!”

“No, Beth, you died… Over and over and over…”

“This device will become a worldwide phenomenon!”

“If I have to kill you in order to survive, I will do everything in my power, Doctor…”