"Here we are! Heyleon! A moon of Laurel's Ethereal, somewhere in the constellation known as Orion's Sword. According to Heyleon and other surrounding governments, the galaxy is called the ESS, or the Emerald Sister System. Most people have never been here before." Amy and Rory watched the Doctor scramble around the control room, stopping abruptly, turning around, and added an exception to his statement. "Not me, anyways."
The Doctor stepped away from the console as it roared with the familiar sound some only dream about. The trio was jolted to the floor by the violent rocking of the time machine. The TARDIS abruptly stopped.
"Doctor?" Amy asked an obvious panic in her voice. "Where did we go?" The Doctor rushed to the monitor to see when the TARDIS had landed. On the screen, the Doctor saw adolescent patients with IVs in their arms. Almost all of them had smiles on their faces and families by their sides.
"It's a medical ward!" He exclaimed, barreling through the doors of the TARDIS and into a dark, vacant medical ward. It looked as if no one had laid a foot in there in years. A skeleton was sitting in a rolling chair behind the desk; all the vowels in "informations" and the consanants in "desk" were burnt out or flickering. That was the only light that was casting through the lobby.
The Doctor kicked up dust with every step. Amy and Rory looked at the monitor, the contagious, joyful mood radiating on their face and followed the Doctor out into the ghost lobby, just as puzzled about the vacancy as the Doctor was.
"Just a minute ago there were people visiting, families, nurses... where did they go?" The Doctor hopped behind the desk and scooted the human remains into the hall. The computer turned on with the original Windows tune before a hacker-like screen popped up.
"Welcome to the Tetris Arden Rainier Demetris Iris Sampson complex. Please keep the complex clean, respect property, and please keep your frustrations to yourself."
Rory opened his mouth to say something and nothing escaped as he pointed in a mix of disgust and confusion at the skeleton.
"Yes, it's a skeleton, Rory. It's right there on the screen. Keep your frustrations to yourself." The Doctor said with his signature sass that never failed to make Amy laugh. The grim lobby couldn't even manage a smile out of her.
"Doctor, where are we?" Amy asked feeling the panic and spook of the hospital rising to her throat like an oncoming scream that wouldn't come out.
"We are in a complex."
"Like a house complex?"
"No, like an alien complex with projections and things. There is a controller somewhere here, but what you are seeing is not actually here. We are seeing simply what the controller wants us to see, who is apparently Tetris Samson.
"Complexes were things that were by Europaeans,"
"Europeans? We've never created any complexes..." Amy stopped the Doctor who was busy multitasking by explaining and going through a computer system check.
"Europa, as in the moon of Jupiter, not as in Europe. They were created to keep mental hospitals quiet. Europa is a place that used to have background music of screaming mental patients. They invented complexes to keep them quiet. They let the client project their mind in empty holes in space. We have happened to stumble upon another complex."
"So if this one is here, aren't there thousands of others?" The Doctor shook his head, glance failing to meet his ginger companion.
"Invaders who wanted to keep the empty holes to themselves would kill the controllers, malfunctioning the complexes." Rory cringed.
Finding no information in the complex database the Doctor started down the hallway, Amy and Rory in tow, making a mental checklist out loud.
"Okay, things to do. One, find any other lifeforms who may be trapped in the complex. Two, find the controller. Three, short circut the complex in a way that won't end their life."
Amy spun the Doctor around to face her. "What do you mean 'won't end her life'?" The Doctor tried to avoid the eyes of the hard pressing woman.
"Sometimes when you short circut the complexes, the controllers are left... damaged. They either die or have severe brain damage. Although from the looks of it, killing her would be considered mercy." The Doctor began to look into the rooms seeing nothing but sick bodies.
He approached a young woman, no older than 17, lying on her back with two heart monitors stuck to her chest and an IV hooking her to a bag of blue Kool Aid looking liquid. There were large sores on her translucent skin that were blue and black, the size of tulip bulbs. Her face was pale and her eyes were closed.
"Doctor, come see this." Another patient in another room had looked as if something had ripped through his stomach, like a clown from a jack-in-the-box.
"Hello?" Someone yelled, followed by tired banging. The speaker's voice was hoarse and sounded the way eyes bags look.
"Step one, check!" The Doctor stepped into the hallway. "We're here! I am people and here I am! Only question is where are you?" There was no banging and no sound.
"Where's Madeline?" A young woman's voice asked. "She's got long, medium brown hair and brown eyes and she's really tall, she might be in that room that has a blue door."
"Miss I was just there and all there is is a bubonic plague patient." The Doctor said respectively. The woman sighed deeply, the sound of her back sliding down the door audible through the fake wood door.
A male voice was hoarse through a door across from the woman's. "Don't go in the rooms. You get sick. Everyone always get sick." An Irish accent was obvious behind the tiredness in his voice.
"Flannery! What are you doing in there?" The woman's voice perked up just slightly.
"Dying, Captain." He sighed.
"Right so, Flannery."