DOCTOR WHO:
INSTINCT
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
(A Series Six Request Fic)
The space man had come for him. It had come for them all.
For Amy Pond, instinct kicked in, she grabbed for the gun on the floor and turned to confront the Astronaut, she took swift aim.
"What are you doing?" The Doctor cried out in protest.
"Saving your life" Amy bellowed, and pulled the trigger just as the Astronaut pulled down its visor, revealing the features of an innocent girl.
The bullet grazed the astronaut's helmet, but mercifully did not strike the girl in the face.
This was the last thing Amy saw, the relief was the last thing she would feel.
At least in this body.
Amy's arms and waist fluctuated and twisted into unrecognisable mould it became clear this was horror of a different kind.
As she turned to the Doctor, his features became blurry, the warehouse they were inhabiting came apart at the seams, walls shrank and then expanded, she lost all sense of size and scope as whatever was happening to her played havoc with her depth perception.
Finally, her eyes gave away, melting into a white liquid puddle, her face fell away, and the rest of her body turned to mush, dropping to the floor in a wet and shapeless current of flesh.
This was seemingly the end of it all.
But not quite yet.
She could hear voices all around her, voices that were in a state of proper panic, voices that were telling others that their jobs were on the line, and that the stakes were astronomical, they were wondering how things would be now that Amy was awake.
Amy's eyes snapped open almost on the very utterance of that word.
First her killer instinct had kicked in to save her best friend, now her survival instincts were kicking in.
She sprang up from the bed, disconnected herself from the various feeding tubes and sensory wires attached to her arms and legs. She looked at what appeared to be a computer monitor to the far right of her that was closely monitoring activity in the womb.
Amy was restrained by several medics as she tried to gain some bearing on her location, she noticed an observation window to the left of her, where she was met with nothing but a still black void with very few stars shooting past her.
She could tell she was in flight.
The medics pinned her down, attempting to attach the wiring and sensors back to her body. They made assurances to one another that they would put things right, they would send her to sleep again, and she would live out their employer's little fantasy until it was convenient, until the trap was ready to spring.
Amy would have none of it.
With a burst of energy still in her, she released herself from the grip of the medics, grabbed one by the throat and smashed his head through the table. She kicked another to the right of her square in the stomach and took a needle he was holding and injected its contents into his jaw, before knocking him to the floor with a well-aimed punch.
The sedative she had injected into him did the rest of the work.
She took in her surroundings, unsure how much longer she would have before more unpleasant and unwelcome people would intrude on her person.
She looked at the room, distinctly white, but littered with all kinds of interesting trinkets.
A play pen, a toy keyboard, a small cotton teddy bear, a chute and a swing, and a desk filled with photos of herself and Rory on their wedding day.
Amy's inquisitive instincts were now at work, she was keen to get to the bottom of this mystery.
She had been something else entirely, she had been flesh, but a different sort of flesh, one distinctly manufactured, something that her conscious mind had been projected through to maintain a consistent illusion of normalcy to her friends and loved ones.
She reflected on some of the things said by the medics.
That these were trying times, that she was not yet ready to 'pop'.
Amy thought back to what she had said to The Doctor in the warehouse prior to taking aim at the child with the gun.
"Doctor, I'm pregnant"
She looked carefully at the monitor again; it was reading a life form in her womb.
She hadn't imagined it, she hadn't been unsure; this was as much reality here as it was back there.
She was pregnant.
And all of a sudden, the final most significant instinct kicked in, and she realised at last that what she felt before the flesh fell away was indeed the pangs of guilt that can only come from the betrayal of a solemn vow to do right by the innocents many women carry within them at some point in their lives.
Guilt from one instinct.
The motherly instinct.
Amy sank to the floor, upset, alone, confused, but finally, at the very least, accepting.
The doors of the nursery and observation room slid open and in stepped a woman in high heels, black skirt, leather clothing and her face wielding an eye patch. She was flanked by several men armed with taser guns.
All of Amy's instincts kicked in at this time, combined with one other.
A primal animal instinct.
This governed all of her other instincts, and turned her into a force to be reckoned with as she charged at the troops, elbowing some in the jaw, sweeping their legs out from under them, asking the same question aggressively time and again.
"Who are you?" she bellowed.
"What do you want?" came another.
"What do you want with my baby?" came another.
As Amy fought tooth and nail to keep the guards at bay, Madame Koverian smiled and clicked her fingers, summoning forth more men to surround and ultimately subdue the woman.
She turned to one of the recovering medics.
"You assured me this was a long-term process that she would remain in her avatar state for as long as our needs deemed proper" she said.
"We didn't count on her consciousness rebelling against the flesh, the abundance of emotion she felt in almost committing murder, giving in her to her most dormant fears, and to have that rage projected towards a child was too much for the matrix to sustain" he explained.
"Still, I wouldn't call it a complete failure. She has an impeccable instinct, several actually, and her daughter is sure to share them, or rather an extrapolated take on all those traits. All we need do when we arrive at Demon's Run is extract those parts of her psyche and apply them to what will also be developing in the frame of mind her daughter will have" Kovarian suggested.
She took her leave, looking back at Amy as she was finally brought to heel.
"Demons must when a good girl fights a war" she said.